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The history of inline skating is much older than you think! Did you know that the first pair of roller skates known were invented in 1760? Online-skating.com reveals the historical developments and improvements of roller skates, inline skates... Discover all the inventors who made modern rollerblading ...
47 articles for the section All
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Our wheels have been turning for nearly 250 years. Wood, ivory, metal, tire, rubber or urethane... Wheels have been made of all kinds of materials. Technological innovations gave a fresh boost to skating in the 90's. The use of plastic materials in 1979 was a small revolution. Overview of the innovations that marked the history of our dear skate wheels...
on 08/11/19 - Read 41046 TimesRead more
Roller-dance
Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rodgers and Donald O'Connor set milestones in history of skating musicals with their outstanding performances. Onlineskating did some researches to make these memories revive.
on 27/11/18 - Read 6370 TimesRead more
Slalom skating
Jürgen Pfitzner, product manager at Powerslide, explains us how the German brand developed the 3-wheel skates in freestyle slalom with its entire team...
on 30/10/18 - Read 6646 TimesRead more
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The bodies ruling roller sports at national or international levels often seem far and their task unclear to us. Let's take a look into the history and the role of the FIRS to know more about it...
on 08/09/18 - Read 14475 TimesRead more
Speed-skating
Interview with Shane and Kalon Dobbin, former inline speed-skating World Champions, about the brand Arma Racing, founded in 2014.
on 20/04/18 - Read 4012 TimesRead more
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The story of the Samuel Winslow Skate Manufacturing Company is based in its origin on the story of James Leonard Plimpton since Winslow was his employee. However, the student outplayed his master with his sales that went all over the world...
on 15/01/18 - Read 5085 TimesRead more
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Legrand's career is very special. As an educated butcher, he invented a roller skate, which the German composer Giacomo Meyerbeer used for his opera "the prophet"...
on 14/01/18 - Read 5101 TimesRead more
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Robert John Tyers revolutionized inline skating with his model Volito. Down to the present day, this model remains a source of inspiration...
on 13/01/18 - Read 6171 TimesRead more
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Some say that a rather unknown Dutchman invented the first roller skate. According to rumors he was skating along canals. However, you will not find any traces of him. In contrast to the Belgian John Joseph Merlin who documented his whole invention. He deserves an article...
on 08/01/18 - Read 10013 TimesRead more
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Micajah C. Henley became the successor to Plimpton in the United States. He tried to bring the traditional roller skates to perfection. He was not restricted to the production of roller skates, but he also expanded on other areas...
on 04/01/18 - Read 4149 TimesRead more
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The skating vanities influenced the history since their creation in 1942. Among the skaters, there were only a few celebrities with a similar reputation as Gloria Nord. Nord was the muse of Harold Steinman's group...
on 02/01/18 - Read 5218 TimesRead more
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The biography of John Spence could be a children's story. He was an inventor in the XIX century and worked in many different fields during his life, in search of his right path. His dreams and his everyday life revolved around the mechanics...
on 01/01/18 - Read 4113 TimesRead more
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Levant Marvin Richardson (USA) is the founder of Richardson Ball Bearing and Skate Company. Like many manufacturers of his time, he contributed an important part to improving the technology of roller skates...
on 31/12/17 - Read 4775 TimesRead more
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Some personalities set a milestone in the history of skating. At the beginning of the 20th century, the American "The Great Monohan" became a roller skating legend due to his acrobatic performances.
on 30/12/17 - Read 3110 TimesRead more
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In 1789 the Dutch Maximiliaan Lodewijk Van Lede invented the "roller skate for the ground". He was known above all for his talent as a sculptor...
on 20/12/17 - Read 4610 TimesRead more
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Without any doubt, James Leonard Plimpton is the quad-inventor with the biggest success. He brought lots of innovations and helped roller skating a lot to grow worldwide.
on 19/12/17 - Read 7045 TimesRead more
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August Löhner is another Austrian inventor who developed a roller skate with a three-wheeler system...
on 19/12/17 - Read 3074 TimesRead more
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Charles Choubersky left traces in his era through the diversity of his inventions. The railway engineer initiated the beginning of bicycle roller skates in the 19th century. Biography...
on 17/12/17 - Read 3692 TimesRead more
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Before China got the world's greatest place of production, Montebelluna in Italy (not far from Venice) was the number one place of production for inline skating. The region was responsible for almost 80% of ski boot production and 50% of skate production...
on 19/11/17 - Read 5721 TimesRead more
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Roces was born in Montebelluna, not far from Venice (Italy): from ski boots, over ice skates to inline skates. Review of a 65 year long history...
on 11/11/17 - Read 13393 TimesRead more
Street skating
The Hypno brand pioneered in the late 90s and early 2000s with their stiff shoes and removable frames. A flashback...
on 30/10/17 - Read 16094 TimesRead more
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While visiting the facilities of the next Roller Games in Nanjing, we had the opportunity of visiting the FIRS World Roller Museum, which opened for the Speed Skating World Championships in September 2016...
on 06/06/17 - Read 6835 TimesRead more
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We all know those historic great brands of inline skates such as Rollerblade or Roces... But who of you has heard about Speed, Midonn, Jack, Olympic or Gloria, Chicago or Hustler? Traveling through the history of the industry of skating...
on 05/09/16 - Read 51935 TimesRead more
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There are a few places worth visiting if you are a skating history lover. Museums dedicated to skating are not even a handful in the world...
on 06/01/16 - Read 6244 TimesRead more
Hybrids
Maybe do you already know roller soccer and roller basketball, here is Roll Ball! A sport mixing skating and handball with a basket ball. The practice saw the light in India around 2002-2003. Discovery...
on 15/09/15 - Read 15391 TimesRead more
Speed-skating
With the upcoming 2015 edition of the Skating Marathon of Berlin, we wanted to trace history fragments of the biggest skate race in the world, since its opening to skating in 1997 until today...
on 04/09/15 - Read 10197 TimesRead more
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OLS publishes an overview of the history of skating, from the creation of the first inline skates to traditional skates through ‘cycle-skates’. Let’s pay tribute to one of the few skate historians, Sam Nieswizski, the author of 'Rollermania' (1991), that remains the key reference in the history of skating through the ages…
on 25/08/15 - Read 244148 TimesRead more
Inline-hockey
Rivalry between Rink Hockey (on quad skates with a curved stick and a ball) and Inline Hockey (on inline skates with a ice-type stick and a puck) is a thing. The histories of the two disciplines have been intimately related since the beginnings...
on 21/08/15 - Read 8233 TimesRead more
Inline Alpine
The practice of inline alpine skating is meeting with increasing success in Europe and obtained its recognition by the FIRS in 2011. But what is this sport about?
on 09/08/15 - Read 11644 TimesRead more
Speed-skating
Bont was founded in 1975. The Australian brand celebrates its 40th anniversary. We met Alexander Bont to learn more about the past ant the future of Bont...
on 30/07/15 - Read 9420 TimesRead more
Freeride skating
BoarderCross, BladerCross, InlineCross, SkateCross, obstacle races on skates changed names over the years. The practice structured little by little and has now become a recognized discipline with world series. History...
on 26/04/15 - Read 8891 TimesRead more
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The four high level disciplines of skating have been on the program of the World Games since their creation. Rink hockey has been replaced by roller hockey, but artistic and speed skating have been there from the very start...
on 29/03/15 - Read 7008 TimesRead more
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There are more and more dual density wheels on the market, for speed skating, long distance, freeskate, roller derby, hockey and even aggressive skating. What is the use of this technology? Answers...
on 18/01/15 - Read 12088 TimesRead more
Speed-skating
The Federation International of Roller Sports (FIRS) and CEC released an updated table of the speed-skating World and European records. A lot of records were broken during the last World Championships in Oostende (Belgium) and in Geisingen (Germany)...
on 10/08/14 - Read 19558 TimesRead more
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Inventors never run out of ideas and skating has made its way through time decked out with more or less useful or strange means of motorization. OLS offers you a travel in time with that article by Sam Nieswizski, our skating historian…
on 05/05/14 - Read 13906 TimesRead more
Speed-skating
The following article is constantly evolving. The market of speed skating wheels is one of the rare markets to be in perpetual motion. In less than 20 years, the wheel diameter has grown from 76 mm to 110 mm and it seems that the race is not over...
on 09/10/13 - Read 50893 TimesRead more
Speed-skating
Originally there was the Swiss cup of marathons, called the Swiss Inline Cup. In 2002 from that basis was born the World Inline Cup, the world cup of marathons. If at first the circuit gathered mainly European competitions, it reached an international dimension over the last years. Story...
on 20/07/13 - Read 19140 TimesRead more
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The places and their protagonists have not always been the way we know them today. In 70 years, the Trocadéro has witnessed generations of skaters: dancers, jumpers, quad skaters, inline skaters, young and old. Travel through the history of the most famous skating spot of Paris...
on 15/05/13 - Read 19107 TimesRead more
Street skating
After our first part dedicated to the genesis of outdoors and long distance skating, let's turn the spotlight onto more recent history, onto a renewal period for outdoors skating, from 1980 'til today. Here we go for a little time warp...
on 24/03/13 - Read 14538 TimesRead more
Speed-skating
Most of inline speed-skaters and downhill skaters have heard about Mogema and Cadomotus, the famous frames' brands. We met Diederik Hol, founder of Cadomotus and former designer of Mogema ...
on 28/01/13 - Read 20173 TimesRead more
Hybrids
Have you ever thought about using another mean that your own strength to propel yourself while skating? Most of skaters did. With a kite, a dog, a horse, a bicycle or anything else, there are plenty of fun solutions...
on 11/01/13 - Read 19412 TimesRead more
Speed-skating
The overview of speed skating circuits around the world is quite contrasted: the discipline stays behind the door of the sports which entered the Olympics, the historic sponsors cut their investments into the professional teams. Stock taking...
on 22/12/12 - Read 9676 TimesRead more
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From the small business created when he was a student at the age of 18 years to one of the most famous brands in the World of skating. What a course for Matthias Knoll and his partner with Powerslide! Back on a German success story ...
on 06/12/12 - Read 21628 TimesRead more
Hybrids
As suggested in the name, Roller Soccer is a sport consisting in playing soccer on skates. It gathers soccer lovers as well as sliding sports lovers, especially skaters...
on 09/03/12 - Read 13462 TimesRead more
Street skating
Many people think that long distance and tour skating only developped with the boom of inline skating in the middle of the 90's. They forget to take into account our predecessors, strapped onto wooden or metal wheels. A bit of history...
on 09/12/10 - Read 16315 TimesRead more
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A trip in Paris (France) bring us to the shop Hawaii Surf. Eric Gros, the owner, allowed us to visit his miracle cave. In the abyss of the cellar, behind the most recent models, hide some unknown and rare pieces, skates which crossed through the ages, absurd inventions, outmoded design. Travel through the time...
on 09/11/07 - Read 28283 TimesRead more
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Years passing, we could have believed that the reputation of the roller would have evolved a lot. Nevertheless, in mind of numerous persons, this practice evokes more a leisure than a real sport. Some consider it as a totally childish pastime. Others are even surprised when they learn the existence of speed-skating race. Roller-skating : childish pastime or real sport?
on 19/03/07 - Read 30505 TimesRead more
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