Roller skaters working to get in Olympics

LINCOLN, Neb. - You won't see it at the Sydney Olympics, and it has yet to crack TV's weekend sports roster. Forever in the shadow of ice skating, roller skating for medals just hasn't caught the public imagination.

"It's one of the nation's best-kept secrets," said Gary Bair, a 57-year-old pairs skater from Euclid, Ohio, who competed here at the recent U.S. Roller Skating Championships.

He is among the sport's small cadre of dedicated followers trying to dispel misconceptions about roller skating and to get it sanctioned as an Olympic sport.

First, the sport is nothing like roller derby, the raucous competition of flailing elbows and crashing bodies. Roller skaters perform dance routines before judges just like ice skaters, or play hockey and speed-skate on wheels.

Second, roller skating is not just for rec-reation or Saturday night dates. It's a serious sport. One of the world's most famous ice skaters, Tara Lapinski, got her start on roller skates.

"You ask anybody who Tara Lapinski is, they'll tell you," said Don Milton of Orlando, Fla., a former competitor who now coaches his three children. "But ask them who Luca D'Alisera is and they have no idea."

Luca D'Alisera?

"He's probably the best roller skater I've ever seen," Milton said. D'Alisera, an 18-year-old Italian star, was the junior world champion in free skating from 1995 to 1999.

The three-week event earlier this month attracted about 10,000 people - but most were competitors, coaches, friends and families.

Fans lay blame for the lack of interest in competitive roller skating on ineffective marketing and no television coverage.

"I watch ESPN and all the other sports channels," said Steve Tupe, a local volunteer working at the championships. "If the national jump-rope competition and the national five-card stud championship can make it on, there's no reason why this competition can't make it."

Part of a planned image overhaul includes changing the name of the sport's national governing body, based here in Lincoln, from USA Roller Skating to USA Roller Sports. That's partly to reflect the increasing popularity of in-line skates, which have single wheels in a line beneath the foot, as opposed to traditional skates with two pairs of parallel wheels.

Roller skaters have been trying to get Olympic recognition since the 1950s. Their goal now is the 2008 Summer Games, for which 10 cities are bidding: Bangkok, Thailand; Cairo, Egypt; Istanbul, Turkey; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Osaka, Japan; Seville, Spain; Paris; Beijing; Havana; and Toronto.

The three major disciplines in USA Roller Sports are artistic skating, speed skating and hockey. Within each are individual events, some that use in-line skates and some performed on traditional quad skates.

The proposal before the International Olympic Committee is to add just two events: in-line speed skating and in-line hockey, which is played with a field-hockey type of stick and a hard rubber ball.

"If we can get one of the events in, then you have an opportunity to get others in," said Gary Castro, board chairman of USA Roller Sports and a former world champion roller skater. "There's a magic to be called an Olympic sport."

The International Olympic Committee says word on which events will be included in the 2008 Olympics could come early next year.

"Every day in practice I say, `I'm practicing to skate in the Olympics,"' said 15-year-old Heather Mulkey of San Antonio, who won the gold medal in women's single skating at the world championships last year. She placed second at the nationals in Lincoln and will defend her world title Sept. 4-17 in Springfield, Mass.

National roller-skating competition began in 1939. Since 1976, the sport has been part of the Pan American Games, which are summer contests every four years among nations of the Western Hemisphere.

Roller sports are popular worldwide, but in the U.S. are all but eclipsed by ice skating.

Lou Marciani, executive director of USA Roller Sports, says the sport must become more credible through aggressive marketing, including eye-catching logos and more media coverage.

In essence, he says, roller skating must be made hip.

"I think people would enjoy roller skating as much as they do ice skating," Mulkey said. "It just hasn't caught on yet."