Zen and the Art of Speedskating

Again, my senses are happily overwhelmed. Mexico city… WHAT an experience. Here are a few images that hopefully can give a small impression of the last few days.

When it’s 72 degrees outside, why should one wear a full-length skinsuit? Life is about having unique experiences; skating short track in an inline skinsuit definitely qualifies. Yes, crashing would suck, but not as much as crashing on pavement.

Skating in Mexico is different- at night, I thought I saw bats flitting around streetlights, in the morning hundreds of frozen potato-chip-like bodies of HUGE MOTHS littering the ice.

My skate gives a good size reference.

I have not had the pleasure of spending time around Travis Jayner until this trip. He is not only a world-class short track skater, but also an excellent fellow with a great sense of humor. Here he is with a little skater who sends the cute-o-meter into overload, and later than same day, doing pivots on his left hip!

This image was just before his hip touched the ice, he wanted to do a pivot on his head, but there was not enough time. Have you ever warmed up behind a skater, and even at slow speed just can see their astonishing ability? Travis has some “serious game”.

Speaking of games, during an evening practice session, a mystery speedskater swept onto the ice, in a Bont T-Shirt and traditional Mexican wrestling mask. He circled the rink daring anyone to take him on-

Luckily, Olympic gold medalist Derek Parra was up to the challenge, the match was on!

Even though he lost, he remains unmasked, I will leave it up to this “Bont Avenger” if he will reveal his secret identity here. Or maybe someday he will appear at the Salt Lake Oval, or your local oval, ready to match blades & moves with anyone strong enough to take him on.

Here is a figure skater defying gravity during a calmer moment of that same practice session.

Actually, its not just any skater, that’s Ana Cecilia Cantu, the national champion of Mexico, she finished well at Oceana champs last year, and then competed at worlds. She’s an absolute sweetheart, Jessica & I truly enjoyed spending time with her (Jess was able to come along on this trip, and took all of these photos).

It was interesting speaking with figure skaters like Ana, and learning about their sport. This is her below, during the performance. Just like speedskating, a lifetime of work to be able to do something for the briefest moment.

At moments, I really feel like we are doing the same sport, the mental factor, visualization, the doubting yourself, the huge sacrifices necessary, injuries, coaches, traveling, technique, staying healthy under huge training loads, the support of family & friends, no guarantees of anything, etc, etc.

But in other aspects, we are worlds apart.

They face judges, long trackers like me face the electronic eye (short trackers face other skaters, the electronic eye, and judges).

No one cares if a speedskater “looks” ugly when they skate, as long as it’s fast, figure skaters value asthetic and precision, and even though their heart rate will hit a maximum by the end of a long program, they must hide the effort & smile while attempting incredibly difficult things.

Also, I’ve never worried about if my make-up is sweatproof!

I have huge respect for them.

There was quite a bit of international-skater vibe, on the left is Jackie, from Guadalajara. In the center is Alexi, from the Ukraine, and on the right is “rather famous skater” Surya Bonaly from France.

I had a totally star-struck moment when I realized that was Surya, she looks so powerful on the ice, but in person, she is TINY, and with tremendous personality. She’s intense, opinionated, and a lot of fun. She lives & coaches in Vegas, and during the performance, did one of her signature backflips.

As for the performance, it was the closing ceremony for the rink, around half a million people had skated on it FOR FREE since the Mexican government opened it.

They had cleaned all the frozen moths off the ice, put around 7-10,000 people in the stands & around the rink, and had a FAR larger Live TV audience. Possibly many hundreds of thousands in 7 countries.

But this is not a blog about figure skating, it’s about speedskating!

And there was a reason that I was in Mexico, it was for a tiny slice of TV time. For the hour long live show, they had the speedskaters lead off the whole evening of festivities (probably because we could not skate on jumped-on-chewed-up ice)

Kim Kraan gave us the start-

To the wild cheers of the crowd, Eric Kraan, wearing his Mexico team skinsuit, led us for the first few laps

I passed Eric and had one lap sprinting as hard as I could in the front (Derek said I kicked up big chunks of ice, making him flinch as he followed).

Then Derek & Travis decided to actually get serious, one passed on my left, one on my right with an audible whoosh!

Derek hit the warp speed button-

Then Travis went ludicrous speed.

And crossed the line quite a bit ahead, to the wild applause and chants of the crowd.

That tiny moment of TV was why there were speedskaters in Mexico.

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There is no way for me to properly wrap my mind around the experience I had in Mexico. I’ve tried & tried, but it was just so intense, so big, so overwhelming.

The 6 of us were the first ice speedskaters EVER to skate in Mexico, on a brand new ice rink in the heart of one of the biggest cities in the world. A city that is full of contradictions like fire & ice.

This video is a reflection of that experience. Chaotic, wide ranging, & full of a driving rhythm that was so different from anything I’ve ever done or seen.

From a practice session at 8am, to skating at night in front of 50,000 people & an insane atmosphere, to a performance in front of 15,000 in 3 inches of water.

Click here for the quicktime, or start the Youtube below:

Here are a few pictures of our group on the first night. Arnim Ruelas, Eric Kraan, Myself, Sebastian Cano (with a “borrowed” bit of costume from a figure skater) & Chris Creveling.

Jessica Smith joined us after the first day, here she is, soaking up the sun- It was HOT!

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(this is not about speedskating, but worth mentioning due to the world we live in)

Tuesday evening, about 6:45pm at the JFK airport in NYC. Someone “runs through” the airport security checkpoints, eludes the grasp of TSA personnel, and disappears into a very crowded terminal.

They lock all the doors & post guards, stop every flight, and no one can go in or out.

For 90 minutes grim looking armed teams of every description sweep through the terminal.

Then they decided to evacuate JFK! So several thousand people, including your humble narrator, get to stand outside for 3 hours, with a cluster of helicopters hovering over us.

It was a nice evening (maybe 50 degrees) and I had a thick leather jacket, so I was fine, just bored.

But I suddenly understood in that very brutal way, how truly vulnerable the very young, very old, and unhealthy are during large-scale social weirdness. There are several babies hidden under the coats of the people sitting here.

In the grand scale of things, this was an inconvenience, but I hope it’s not an omen towards continuing freaky screwed up world-wide karma. After my experience on the train, I am suspecting the population of hateful people might be reaching critical mass.

After 3 hours standing outside the terminal, they slowly let us back in. About 30% of the flights were cancelled outright.

As I walked to my plane, past locked stores, kiosks, and empty airport bars, I see a TV playing CNN towards the empty terminal. I wanted to see our little “incident” flash by in the news ticker on the bottom of the screen. There would have been some truths of our modern existence in that.

Although rumors were rampant among the crowd during the event, according the NY Newsday, here is what happened.

I didn’t get home till 4am, and I still feel like crap… bleh…

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Over the years I’ve owned almost every kind of blade there is, Bont, Maple, Zandstra, & of course, Viking.

Somehow, no matter what I try, I keep coming back to my trusty Vikings. They are like a pair of comfy shoes that I skate quite fast in. On ebay last year I bought a pair of classic Viking sprint specials, and they are so much fun to skate on (slower than a clapskate, but fun).

I mentioned to my host, Jules, that I’d like to visit the Viking Factory, to see the place my blades were made.

Ignorant American that I am, I did not know that they don’t give public tours. But Jules is resourceful, and made several phone calls. Because of this website, and my connection with Dimon Sports (John has been a big Viking customer for many years), he was able to arrange one! Mazzel Jules!!!

Oddly enough the first photo I see walking in the door is inline racing!! These guys are racing on 2-wheel Viking skeelers in the late 1940’s . The combination of wheels & ice has gone on for a long time!

Henk, Simon, and Bianca were wonderful hosts, and I saw many things that I’d like to relate about the largest speedskate manufacturer in the world. The first room I saw was their “Hall of fame” containing the following bits of skating eccentricity.

The VERY FIRST clapskate from February of 1985, note how there is no true pivot, the boot itself flexes.

The different stages that metal is cut, shaped, and folded to make an old-style hardtail Viking skate.

Olympic 10k gold medalist Bob DeJong had his old Vikings turned into a pair of dancing shoes for his moment on “dancing with the stars”.

A computer in your skate? Actually this was a mechanism that Viking built so you could use a toe-start, & use the superior pressure of fixed blade for the first few steps, then after a set amount of time it would release to a clap-skate for the rest of the race.

The ISU banned things like this, but the prototype lives on. I wonder if it uses Mac or Windows operating system? (probably Mac! fewer crashes! actually the viking blade straighter machine runs on ancient MS-DOS!!)

There was poster after poster of signed Dutch & German world champions; among them were these fast North Americans:

After the hall of fame, we went into the very heart of the factory & saw every step in the blade life cycle.

All blades start out on this massive roll of flexible steel, and then are fed through a machine that stamps them into blades, you can see a bin of them behind the spool

Then they have the tube welded on, and are sent to the Viking blade robot. It needs no breaks, no vacation, has minimal healthcare needs, and if you have bought a pair of top Viking blades in the past 7 years (roughly 50,000+ blades) this fella has handled them.

You have seen the robot in action in my previous post-

Although some of their boots are made in China, and some in Romania, there is lots of activity by guys in blue jumpsuits.

After the blade construction facility we were led upstairs to a room that was off limits until very recently.

About 5 years ago, Viking must have realized that with custom boots becoming more & more common, they had to get into the custom boot game if they were going to continue being a “skate” company, instead of just a “blade” company.

Only in the past 2 years have they even allowed folks like me into their upstairs room where they make them.

Here is a rack of boots for the German National team, although the only name I can read on them is Sverre Haugli, and he is an elite Norwegian Allarounder.

Here is a set of boots for Jan Bos, what I would give for just a few moments to skate as smoothly as “the catman” does. Will world cups be won on this boot?

As customs go, these boots have a radically different philosophy than most North American customs. They were not that stiff or freakishly light. They were built with “ice feel” being paramount. Viking believes that a boot needs some inbuilt flex to feel the ice (Van Horne’s flex a little bit too, same idea), this is quite unlike my SS customs, or a Marchese, that are so stiff you can almost skate short track on them.

Note that one of the logos on Bos’ boot is printed backward, they gave some long convoluted answer about the one facing the TV cameras being correct, so that is why the one on the other side is backwards. I’ve noticed almost their entire lot of customs look like this.

They save the foot castings of everyone they do boots for. This is their WALL OF FEET. Just for the completely skate-crazy fans out there, click on the image and you can see a full size version, you can read many of the names on these boxes.

For Eric Gee in toronto, just starting out on making customs, I thought you would appreciate this larval custom boot.

Back down the stairs to their warehouse. OMIGOSH! THAT IS 100,000 SKATES!!!

These shelves were truly endless-

There is a weird secret to the Viking factory in these shelves-

On a normal year, they will sell 20-30,000 pairs of skates. But in a year where significant natural ice covers the canals in Holland, they will sell over 100,000 skates!

You can’t just make that many skates all at once, so they have them in stock. Just waiting for the canals to freeze, and the Dutch public to go crazy again.

The Dutch wait for ice like skiers wait for snow, and you can imagine how this company feels about global warming!

And how about these littlest Vikings? They look warm & comfy & like I would have put stickers all over them if they had been mine

If you are looking for breaking news from Viking, I think there are 2 things worth mentioning, that are not commonly known.

1. Viking will be releasing a brand new short track blade in a few weeks. They used to have one some years ago. But this is a whole new design. The first prototypes should be in John Dimon’s hands soon.

2. Viking has been doing experiments with heavier skaters using slightly thicker blades in certain conditions. Their PM 1.1 blade is an example of that, and it’s a blade that already has world records to its name. They found that depending on the size, power & style of the athlete, on “warmer” indoor ice a thicker blade has better feel & speed. Lighter athletes or hard outdoor ice are best served by the standard thickness (or thinner). They also are making their 1.1 mm thick blades by starting with 1.3 mm steel, and grinding it down.

Whoa, this post has gotten long. Again, I want to truly thank Henk, Bianca, and Simon, for being wonderful hosts. (when I arrived, Bianca knew John Dimon & I are Diet Coke addicts, so guess what she had waiting!)

I’ve always known Viking blades as a “thing” now I know some of the good people who make the company work.

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Filed under: on the road

I have so many posts half done, mountains of information to relate. My days here have been so full, I’ve been skating & Museum-ing, not writing & photoshopping (the Viking factory post is HUGE!).

I am actually looking forward to the 17 hour travel day to get back to SLC, so I can properly catch up.

But for the moment, here is Jessica and I last night, at the gigantic Amsterdam Friday night skate.

If you skate, no matter if it’s recreationally or competitively, an urban skate of this size is an important thing to experience, at least once or twice in your life.

I can’t imagine getting to do it every friday!!

That must be what heaven is like…

More soon…. A whole lot more!!!

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Filed under: on the road