The Cost of Going to World, News for Today

The 2007 World Roller Speed Skating Championships will be taking place in Cali, Colombia. I'm planning on competing at the championships- but I will need sponsors to help me get there. Roller Sports Canada usually gives each skater $250 and last year's fundraising added no more than half of that amount to the total. Seeing that it costs about $3500-4000 to get to the world championships, I need to find another $3000 or so.


Junior men on the track at the 2006 world championships in Korea- who's turn will it be to shine in Cali, Colombia in 2007?
On top of that, I am planning on qualifying for and competing at the Pan American Games, which are taking place in Brazil. I understand that for Canada, Roller Sports athetes will receive no funding to attend the games. That means I'll have to tack on another few thousand dollars for the Pan American Games. Racing only at worlds and Pan Ams already makes for an expensive racing season.

Below is a general outline of how much I paid to attend the 2005 world championships in China-

-World Team Trials- $135
-Nationals entry- $50
-Hep immunization- $65
-WT training camp- $60
-Airline ticket- $1550
-Hotel for Shanghai- $89
-More immunizations- $135
-Visa to enter China- $50
-Travel; food & drink- $50
-Suzhou Hotel/ food- $1000
-Wheels- 200$
-MISC food- $50
-Touristy stuff- $150
Total... $3584

News For Today: This past weekend, the Silver Strand Half Marathon took place in San Diego. The InlinePlanet has a nice write up on the event. If you're a Herb Gayle watcher, he placed in the top-20 overall (you have to scroll down to find the results). Here's some pictures that you can view. Since I've mentionned the InlinePlanet, might as well link up to a couple of good news articles: Hayward Goes Long (good A2A prep) and Sqiggy Expansion.


Herb Gayle finishing the Roller Sports Canada Canada Day Marathon in July 2005 in front of Rhett Cappleman and Nick Zacchia- Herb competed in the Silver Strand Half Marathon this past weekend
In other news, if you've got a sanction for your event, you can get some publicity courtesy of USARS. I hope the Roller Sports Canada website gets something like this- I guess it would have to be updated from the 2003 stuff.