Getting into the olympic spirit, or something

There are two reasons why I'm making this post.

Firstly, the Sochi Olympics are on right now. I'm not a huge fan of the winter olympics, except (maybe not surprisingly) for the events that take place on skates. Not so much fancy ass figure skating stuff, but ice hockey and speed skating.

So here's my favorite winter olympics moment EVER: Steven Bradbury winning Australia's first ever gold medal at Salt Lake in 2002.

And he won it because he was so far behind everyone else in the finals he didn't get caught in the pileup. And that's also how he made it to the semis. And in the heats he didn't qualify but then someone who did got disqualified and he got bumped up. Yeah. That is seriously one of the greatest stories ever told RIGHT THERE.



But hey, that's in the past. Here's some NEW NEWS, speaking of speed skating:

Francey Pants is training for the Winter Olympics. YES. 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, here she comes. Is there anything that she can't do?!

You can read all about it in this article.

Backwards scrimmage!

So backwards skating is not a new thing in derby, but check out this video of Gotham having backwards scrimmage practice:

Also check out the awesome backwards crossovers on the red Jammer when she gets out of the pack!

Obviously this is much easier for the blockers, who can see the jammer coming and can wall up (e.g. look at how red's wall holds together and moves when the black jammer tries to make their way though). This is an excellent exercise in getting comfortable going backwards and blocking that way (look at some of those laterals), which of course would be useful for forwards derby.

Rebel Girl

So this is popping up on the interwebs today. It's Estro Jen, being badass as usual.

Holy crap. I get so nervous with outdoor skating, but this looks TOTALLY awesome. I wish I could do like 10% of the stuff she does in this video. I have to admit that I do find it a bit cringeworthy when she's skating all like this without pads on, but it's nice to see that sometimes even the superstars still stack on sidewalks though. :)

Happy Friday!