One of the things I love about the Olympics is the totally obscure sports that pop up for a few weeks every four years before disappearing into the mist. Aimlessly clicking through channels in my hotel room in Genoa the other night I came across perhaps the second most obscure professional televised sport I’ve ever seen: floor hockey on roller skates.
It was awesome. Fast moving, exciting, competitive, and totally ridiculous. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s the fact that I associate roller skates (not blades, those are definitely the 1990s) so strongly with the crew-cut 1950s and floor hockey so strongly with gym class in high school. In any event, it was really hard to take them seriously but it was fun too.
It was pretty clear that the culture of Italian professional roller hockey shares more with Italian soccer than the Canadian/American/International hockey culture of the NHL. These guys were diving left and right!
As far as I could tell, the rules were not too far from ice hockey rules but less permissive of contact. No body checking, for sure. There were power plays when a foul was committed although there were also cards (blue though, not yellow or red) handed out for flagrant fouls. The most obvious difference, aside from the surface, was that the sticks were a blend of sticks you would find in ice hockey and field hockey, with shorter, more rounded blades.
Hopefully in Rome I will find some more strange sports to report on. Until then,
Ezra
I think your two cousins played that sport while in high school. Nana and Papa used to go watch them play. Ask Nana what it was like watching them play!
Oh wait, I think they played on roller blades, not roller skates!