Australia On Track To Roll Up A Title
The Age
Saturday November 4, 1995
The word ``rollerskate" is stuck in a time warp crowded with Californian teen movies.
But competitive rollerskating has moved with the times, on to in-line skates and into Australia for the world speed rollerskating championships in Perth next week.
The Australian team came third in last year's world championships in France, but organisers hope the home-track advantage will allow Australia to regain the top position it once occupied.
More than 150 skaters from 22 countries will skate over distances ranging between 300 metres and 42 kilometres at speeds up to 55 kmh.
Among them will be 20-year-old student Michael Byrne, the only Victorian in the Australian team.
His events include the 10,000 metre points decided on points awarded for mid-race sprints and the 20,000 metre elimination, in which people tailing the field are steadily removed until only three remain to race out the final laps.
Byrne first went rollerskating with his family as an eight- year-old when a rink opened close to his house in Eltham.
Before long he got his first rollerskates. Then the chance to attend a free speed training session came up and he has hardly missed a session since.
Byrne hopes to take a year away from university to pursue skating full-time next year, possibly in the United States.
In America today's pre-eminent speed rollerskating country sponsorships equivalent to full-time salaries are available for the top skaters.
In Australia, sponsors provide skating equipment, but that is it. (Top skaters use a new set of wheels costing about $170 for each race they enter. A set of racing boots, wheels and bearings costs about $1200.) The operations manager for the world championships, Eric Millett, said Byrne was ``a real fireball fire in his tummy and ice in his brain".
The executive director of Roller Sports Australia, Alan Boosey, said the group had about 7000 members who competed in speed skating, artistic rollerskating, roller hockey and in-line hockey at about 100 rinks around Australia.
World-class speed skaters pump iron, ride bikes and skate for four or five hours a day. The training schedule leaves many of them jobless.
Four of the 16-member Australian team moved to Western Australia because the best coach lived there. Never mind that you would be lucky to win more than a few hundred dollars in an Australian race.
According to a 1994 survey by market research firm Brian Sweeney & Associates on Australians and sport, 8 per cent of Australians and 12 per cent of Victorians over the age of 16 participate in rollerskating or rollerblading.
© 1995 The Age