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Skating at the Halfmarathon

A Report from the Champion

2001-04-05

At 9.30 a sunny morning in Berlin, more than 1600 skaters were waiting for the start signal for the 21st Berlin Halfmarathon.

At the start line were the teams of Rollerblade, Salomon, Roces and the Dansih Team Viking Rubber. Every team was ready to put down the pedal for the first big race in Germany and hoping for victory for their team.

The start went and 1600 skaters were on their way on this great course around the center of Berlin.

From the begining the Team Salomon was trying to the make the pace fast, with Team Roces, Team Rollerblade and Team Viking Rubber just following along. Everybody was watching one another. Until the 9 km there were no big attacks, only small testflyers. All four teams where waiting for the first attack, because all the teams knew that coming home in a head to head sprint with Team Rollerblade wouldn´t be a good idea. At 10 km the first 100m of couplestones had to be passed - here Team Viking Rubbers Steven A. Madsen, the defending champion, makes the first attack, but quickly closed by Team Rollerblade, at 11 km the next coupels -Steven again tries to attack and this time got a small gap on the field, Christian Gerhardt Team Roces closed the gap, but the two of them could see that it was hopeless - the field was closing up with Team Rollerblade in front. From then on - it was the three from Team Rollerblade - Marco Kessler, Nico Wieduwilt and David Hensel and the two members from Team Viking Rubber Steven A. Madsen and Kasper Schneider who were in front with Team Viking Rubber making flyers again and again trying to get away from the field with Rollerblade closing the gaps every time. The speed was furious going up and down with no time to rest. The other teams were saving there energy for the sprint.

1 km to go - Kasper Schneider, Team Viking Rubber attacks coming around the left hand corner 600m to go, just before the railway bridge -300 m to go - Rollerblade catches Kasper, Steven Madsen Team Viking Rubber makes his final attack surprising Team rollerblade - coming out the the last righthand corner first - 100m to the finishline - Nico and Marco of Team Rollerblade can´t close the gap and Team Viking Rubber takes the 1. place for the second year in a row in a new course record, nearly cutting 2 min of the old record.

Steven A. Madsen
Team Viking Rubber 2001