Roller sports hope to be in the Olympics by 2016
Carrying a hockey stick and rollerblades, Mike Ciolli travels the globe for the only sport he has loved, unable to avoid the same question.
You play roller derby?
No, he plays inline hockey. And he wants to play in the Olympics.
The Colorado Springs resident will get his chance at the 2016 Summer Games if roller sports are ratified as Olympic sports during an International Olympic Committee assembly in October 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Six other sports - baseball, golf, karate, rugby, softball and squash - are expected to make bids to the IOC, which probably will approve 26 sports and has a 28-sport ceiling. Baseball and softball are being played at the Beijing Games in August but not in London in 2012.
Roller sports consists of figure skating, hardball hockey, inline hockey and speedskating - on wheels. It's governed nationally by USA Roller Sports, based in Lincoln, Neb., with limited U.S. Olympic Committee funding.
The sport has been contested at the Pan American Games and was a demonstration event at the 1992 Barcelona Games. It failed in a 2005 attempt for London inclusion.
Inline hockey is perhaps the main attraction of roller sports, despite stiff penalties for fighting, a plastic puck and the lack of a blue line.
Most games feature wide-open action since there are five players on the rink - a goaltender, two forwards and two defensemen. Skaters are protected by the same rules that exist in ice hockey, meaning clutching and grabbing isn't allowed.
"There are people that look down on the sport," said Brian Yingling, manager of Tour Inline Hockey Arena in Colorado Springs. "It's just getting people to watch a game or to play it. Once that happens, they're hooked."
Yingling, 30, will join Ciolli, 38, and C.J. Yoder, 32, also of Colorado Springs, for the World Inline Hockey Championships next month in Dusseldorf, Germany.
The U.S. finished fifth at the 2007 world championships, trumped by powerhouses in Canada and the Czech Republic and improved teams in France and Switzerland. It had won nine gold medals and two silvers the previous 11 world championships.
"The other countries are getting better," said Yoder. "It helps the sport to know the other countries are catching up to us."
A former minor league ice hockey player, Yoder is an inline hockey pioneer, having founded the Professional Inline Hockey Association with his father and brother.
The league began with eight teams in 2002. There are 43 teams in 16 states, including the Colorado Springs Thunder.
"It's definitely growing," Yoder said of inline hockey. "All the kids that grew up on rollerblades are in college, and they're pushing the sport. I think we're going to get an upswing the next couple years."
A spot in the 2011 Pan American Games in Guadalajara, Mexico, is a good start.
Exposure also comes from annual events such as the Inline Speed Skating Banked Track and Road National Championships that end today at Printers Park Market Center in Colorado Springs.
"Any athlete's dream is to play for their country in the Olympics," Yingling said. "It doesn't look like it's any closer. But there's still hope."
