Inline skating: The line kings

When the flying Dobbin brothers, Kalon and Shane, strapped on their conventional roller-skates and did laps around the forecourt of their parents' Palmerston North service station, nobody would have predicted that it would take them anywhere.

Fast forward nearly two decades and wheels on feet have certainly taken them somewhere - Switzerland and France to be precise.

The Dobbins, both two-time world champions, are back in New Zealand for the national indoor and road champs, to be held in Auckland beginning today.

But Kalon has not forgotten his humble beginnings in the sport.

"Someone saw us [skating around the service station], and at that stage we didn't even know there was a skating rink at the end of the road. He told us to come down for a session. We went and played around a bit, but being boys we just wanted to go fast."

This was circa 1986. A speed-skating coach spotted their talent, the line was thrown out and both were hooked.

Both have come a long way, much like their sport which now races with its wheels inline (New Zealand was one of the last countries to switch).

The Dobbins race for European professional teams on the World Inline Cup.

"In '99 I heard they had a circuit that paid money. I'd been going to the world champs since '95 and thought I might see how I got on," Kalon says. "I stayed with friends, won a few races and got offered positions on a couple of teams."

Kalon went with the France-based rollerblade team, where he stayed until last year, before taking on the responsibility of team leader of the Swiss Athleticum team.

"It's really big in Switzerland," Kalon says, which sounds a bit like those Kiwi bands who went on European tours of beer and bingo halls and bragged about how they were "big in Belgium".

But it doesn't always pay to have preconceived ideas. Judging by the amount of Swiss-based websites dedicated to inline skating it would appear that it is, indeed, pretty big in the home of neutrality.

"They had this guy who was looking to start up a team and they wanted me as team leader - I really wanted to go for it," he says.

The European dream didn't happen because Kalon wanted to get rich in the sport - his first contract was for equipment only and he's had a succession of part-time jobs to keep him going. Neither was it a need to travel.

It was an altogether more sinister bug that sent him north.

"At the 1998 worlds I broke a world record in training. I got food poisoning two days before the event, only came fifth and was really pissed off that no one knew how fast I was. Then I heard about overseas racing."

Kalon was an instant success and it's fair to say he paved the way for others - most notably Shane, two years his junior - to follow.

The Europeans soon realised that Downunder was a fertile ground for talent it could harvest.

To understand professional inline skating teams it is easiest to draw a parallel with cycling. Kalon is the one his team-mates aim to get over the line first as he has the sprinting legs. To get him into that position, he needs strong people to work from the front and old heads who can monitor and react to breaks and good climbers.

"It's exactly like cycling," Kalon, who is a very handy cyclist himself, exclaims. "We have a five-man team, with the leader being the hard, attacking racer."

The responsibility of being numero uno, rather than a domestique, has sat well on his shoulders. "It's great, for sure. I've spent the past five years working for other people so it's nice to have people working for me."

Next year he'll have Aucklander Scott Arlidge in the Athleticum team. Shane will remain with the Rollerblade team.

Kalon, 27, made a name for himself on the 200m banked tracks, winning the world championship 300m time trial in 2001 and 2002.

Shane is similar in body type and ability to Kalon but has gone in a different direction, winning the world championship double marathon (84km) in 2000 and the 2004 8000m points race.

Kalon says it's difficult to put his finger on why they have ended up specialising at opposite ends of the distance spectrum but he believes both have the ability to cross over.

"If we concentrated on the opposites - me on long distance and Shane on sprints - I think we'd be almost as good as each other," Kalon says.

However, the rivalry is good for both. Although Shane lives in Australia when he's not in Europe, the two get together often enough to argue over who is going to win their next race.

This week, head to the inline champs to find out who was right.

The distances

Inline skating is made up of different disciplines and distances but many skaters cross over. There is racing on a 200m parabolic track, road racing (at the Mt Wellington go-kart track this week), indoor racing (to be held at ASB Stadium) and marathon racing on the roads.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY