Shovecraft-you’d be wrong to characterize its players as anything less than serious and determined athletes. While today's derby still maintains some of that showmanship-players often compete under pseudonyms like H.P. Those early contests had skaters circling a track for thousands of miles over a period of a month to test their endurance the current incarnation is more of a contact sport that involves players protecting-or blocking-a player known as a "jammer" who is trying to skate past the opposing team for points.Ī popular sport through the 1950s and 1960s, derby briefly lost some of its luster when a bit of the theatricality usually found in pro wrestling made its way to the tracks to bolster television ratings in the 1970s. When sports promoter Leo Seltzer got the idea to organize a roller skating marathon in 1935, he probably didn’t expect that his event would provide the basis for a fledgling sport known as roller derby.
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