Inline skaters making mark in Olympics.
Once, U.S. Olympic speedskaters hailed almost exclusively from the Midwest, from places such as West Allis and Madison and Champaign, Ill., where they grew up skating on frozen ponds or on the wind-whipped outdoor oval at State Fair Park.
Now, check out the 2018 U.S. Olympic long-track team.
Three members of the team that will compete in the Pyeongchang Games are from Ocala, Fla., where ice is found mainly in drinks. Two more are from North Carolina, one is from Houston and still another is from Crestview, Fla.
The team’s southern flavor is due to an influx of inline skaters who have crossed over to the ice. This isn’t a new phenomenon. Inline skater KC Boutiette showed what was possible when he made the 1994 Olympic team after only a few months on the ice.
Later, Chad Hedrick, Derek Parra and Joey Cheek made the transition, and all won Olympic gold medals.
“Our skaters have been able to realize their Olympic dream on the ice,” said USA Roller Sports vice president Renee Hildebrand. “We don’t go to the Olympics in our sport.”
Hildebrand coached Brittany Bowe, Joey Mantia and Erin Jackson on inlines in Ocala. Bowe and Mantia have made their second Olympic speedskating team and Jackson wowed long-time observers at the U.S. Olympic trials in Milwaukee last month by making her first team after just five months of training on ice.
Bowe is a two-time world sprint champion in speedskating and Mantia, who won 28 World Championship titles and 15 World Cup gold medals on inlines, is considered a medal favorite in the mass start at the Pyeongchang Games.
“Joey and Brittany reached all their goals on inlines,” Hildrebrand said. “They had nothing left to achieve. They were successful in speedskating because they were already world champions (on inlines).
“There’s a certain level of persever-
ance, dedication and mental toughness that you develop as a world champion. When they switched to the ice, they had a lot of those elements within them.”
This isn’t to suggest that speedskaters no longer come up through the ranks the old-fashioned way.
Shani Davis of Chicago, perhaps the greatest middle-distance skater in history, got his start on ice. Davis, 35, a two-time Olympic gold medalist in the 1,000 meters, has made four U.S. Olympic long-track teams and will try to add to his legacy in PyeongChang.
Olympians Brian Hansen of Glenview, Ill., and Emery Lehman of Oak Park, Ill., also learned to skate on ice and have trained extensively on the indoor oval at the Pettit National Ice Center, as has Davis.
But it’s noteworthy that six of the 13 members of the U.S. Olympic longtrack team have inline backgrounds. Club participation in speedskating is declining, and the days of skaters training and racing outdoors are long gone.
“Look at the early ‘90s, the end of the Bonnie Blair-Dan Jansen-Nick Thometz era,” said Cheek, who will work as a television analyst for NBC in Pyeongchang. “A lot of those kids started out by going out and racing on frozen ponds. And there aren’t frozen ponds anymore.”
Initially, the speedskating establishment wasn’t accepting of inline skaters. Purists turned up their noses at the inliners’ hell-bent-for-leather style and their unorthodox technique.
Boutiette, something of a maverick, remembers stopping abruptly on his skates like a hockey player, spraying up a cloud of ice, and getting disapproving looks: That’s not how we do it on clap skates.
“At first, the speedskating coaches were very anti-inline,” Hildebrand said. “I said, ‘There’s a reason why we’re switching over and beating people who have been on the ice.’ ”
Indeed, inline skaters have won 11 of 18 individual Olympic long-track medals for the United States since 2002.
Inline skaters come to the ice with great lower-body strength and conditioning. Hedrick, who won five Olympic medals, was able to skate harder and longer than most of his competitors on ice.
“We get stronger because we’re able to spend more time on wheels than you could on ice,” Hildebrand said. “We might be on our (inlines) six hours in a day. On the ice, you can’t do that. It just trashes your legs.”
U.S. Speedskating now embraces the inline community and has tried to mine it for future Olympians. But participation numbers are declining in roller sports, too, leaving doubt as to where speedskating champions will come from in 2022 and beyond.
“I don’t see a lot of gold medal winners looking forward to 2022, 2026 or however far ahead you want to look,” said Dave Okoniewski, president of the Wisconsin Speed Skating Club. “But from my perspective, being around the Pettit a lot and being involved in the sport, I don’t know if I take a real dire outlook
“It’s going to be a process to develop the next level of talent. I think that speedskating needs to continue to look for ways to attract more kids to the sport.”
Whether they’re from Ocala or Oconomowoc.