Colombia News- Coach Del Valle Suspended & Worlds, Track Time- Ice & Inline, Canadian Skaters

Colombia News- Coach Del Valle Suspended & Worlds: I was at the YMCA working out last night and I had another good discussion with Jose Hernandez. In case you don't know him, he works at the YMCA that I use. It is right by Square One in Mississauga. I enjoy talking with Jose because he used to be a trainer/ massage therapist with the Colombian team 3 years ago. He recognized me a few months ago while I was working out. Last night, we got into talking about the Colombia coach Elias Del Valle and his 6 month-long suspension- Jose told me that he will surely be reading about it later in the newspapers and watching updates on television (he gets to watch races from Colombia on televised while living here in Mississauga (Toronto). I want the channels he’s got! You can read more here and here about Del Valle’s suspension.


Elias Del Valle getting shade at the 2006 world championships in Anyang, Korea
While I’ve got you focused on the topic of Colombia (can I call it a topic? I guess I just did), I’ll direct you to the world championships website- the site is filled with news and goodies. Just in case you don’t know, this year’s world championships are slated to take place from August 17th to the 25th in Cali, Colombia. The race schedule has been released- this is good, very good.


Track Time- Ice & Inline: This one is super juicy! Yummy yummy- I’ll copy the text from this link in Yahoo’s Speed_skating group: ‘End 2007 the 4,7 km long and 5 meters wide track on Dorhout Mees in Biddinghuizen (in the Flevopolder) will be ready. For probably 100 days per year as an icetrack (till plus 12 degrees Celsius), rest of the year track for cycling and skeelering. In the open air (of course), including dykes and bridges. They expect around 200,000 people per year’. Maybe they could build one of these in Mississauga?

Ande now how about this track that is being built in Argentina’s city of Quiaca. If you’re one of those track-heads who is big time into seeing tracks being built, you can run the article through Babel Fish Translation (I don’t know if that was a properly written sentence).



Canadian Skaters: Sigrid Ziegler offers her account of the Seoul World Inline Cup.

In his post Party and Countdown, Aaron Arndt offers his account of the party that took place at his house and then he challenges me for this year’s Athens to Atlanta victory. About A2A, Aaron says that ‘Well Peter, for that you will a) First learn how to sprint, and b) push me into a ditch close to the end of the race. WHAHAHA!!! ’. After my choir performs for the education week/ cultural show tonight, I am going to skate alone with Aaron. Maybe tonight’s skate will turn into an Athens to Atlanta scouting mission for me. It's on!

Ok, last Canadian skater to post some stuff for you is Andrew Hegarty; in his post Where oh where has my internet gone?, Andrew talks about the WIC skaters. Again, some good perspectives for those wanting to leave home to skate elsewhere.