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DVD Revisits 2005 Northshore
Highlight of video is elite men's race
By Robert "Just the Factoids" Burnson
posted Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2006

nsdvd3

Grab from the 2005 NSIM Race Video

Emulating the old saying "Better late than never," Race & Roll skating magazine has just released a DVD of footage of the 2005 (not 2006) Northshore Inline Marathon.

The 2005 NSIM Race Video ($14.95) features 100 minutes of highlights of the event, including video of the expo, race and awards ceremony.

The DVD opens with Race & Roll editor Peter Doucet giving a light-hearted tour of the expo.

It also includes video of many (if not all) of the skaters who participated in the event. (There's 27 minutes of various groups of skaters crossing the finish line and 24 minutes of skaters skating down the highway at Mile 23.)

But the highlight of the DVD is the extensive (23 minutes) of video of the men's pro race, which was shot from the pace truck.

In 2005, the Northshore was still a World Inline Cup event, so the video affords us a view of all the top marathoners in the world. There's Jorge Botero, Max Presti, Shane Dobbin and all the rest of the World Cup stars mixed in with U.S. champs, including Joey Mantia, Dane Lewis and Bret Whitman.

If you've ever wondered what it looks like at the front of a World Cup race, you'll find it here. The video reveals the pro pack through all its accordion-like glory. At times, the pack takes on the look of a shimmering dragon as the skaters speed up, their arms swinging, to catch a breakaway. At other times, the pack appears to nearly stall when nobody wants to take the lead.

At one point in the video, we see Mantia, fresh from claiming his first World Marathon Championship title, at the front of a small breakaway group. He motions for one of the World Cup skaters behind him to take over the lead.

They completely ignore him. "What are you nuts?" they seem to be thinking. "You don't order us around. This is our race."

And that of course is true. The World Cup skaters never lost control of the race and claimed the top four spots. (Mantia only managed fifth.)

Unfortunately, the video quality declines near the end of the race, and the camera misses some of the action at the finish. But nonetheless, we do get an idea of what happened in the sprint and see Fila's Luca Saggiorato raise his arms in victory.

Also unfortunate is the fact that there is no video of the women's pro pack, except for the final sprint.

But despite these shortcomings, the video has some nice moments and will likely prove interesting to devotees of inline racing, not to mention all those skaters who just want to find out how they look in lycra.

Related link
Buy the NSIM video

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Copyright © 2006 by Robert Burnson

Related link
Buy the NSIM video

Latest headlines
Fightin' the Good Fight
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Freestyler: Event crazy in the USA
 

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