B10 N THE NEW YORK TIMES SPORTSTUESDAY, JULY 30, 2019
It sounds like a human freight train:
wheels clattering around the turns, bodies
thumping against one another, toe stops
shrieking against the track. A rainbow of
hair and wheels goes by in a blur, shouts and
grunts punctuating the din. It’s part endur-
ance race, part wrestling match, combining
strategy, athleticism and camp. And it’s all
done on roller skates.
At first glance, roller derby seems like a
feminist punk fever dream. It is unapologet-
ic and aggressive, a full-contact whirlwind
populated by characters with names like
Carnage Electra, Miss U.S. Slay and Bleeda
Kahlo. But the blood, sweat and mascara
that seem so essential to the modern sport
have roots stretching back nearly a century.
“For women to have been playing a con-
tact sport back in the 1930s was unheard-
of,” Margot Atwell, the author of “Derby
Life: A Crash Course in the Incredible Sport
of Roller Derby,” said in a phone interview.
“Feminism is in the DNA of the sport. And
having a space that centers female and gen-
der-expansive aggression is really impor-
tant.”
Roller derby was born on Aug. 13, 1935, at
the Chicago Coliseum. The story goes that
Leo Seltzer, an event promoter who had cut
his teeth on walkathons, was looking for
something a little more exciting to draw De-
pression-era crowds. After reading in a
magazine that more than 90 percent of
Americans had roller-skated at some point
in their lives, he decided to put his show on
wheels.
Twenty thousand people came out for the
first Transcontinental Derby to watch two-
person teams, each consisting of a man and
a woman, skate 57,000 laps around a flat
track, Keith Coppage writes in “Roller
Derby to RollerJam: The Authorized Story
of an Unauthorized Sport.” Small lights on a
large map tracked the skaters’ progress as
they took turns whizzing around the ring,
their mileage blinking along the route from
New York to San Diego. The first team to
complete the roughly 2,700 miles from coast
to coast was declared the winner. On aver-
age, a single race took more than three
weeks.
Worried that the endless laps were get-
ting, well, repetitive, in 1937 Seltzer turned
to the sportswriter Damon Runyon. Togeth-
er, they created what would become the en-
during structure of roller derby and intro-
duced the full-contact thrills that define the
sport today.
In each bout, as a roller derby match is
called, 10 skaters at a time take to the track.
There are five players from each team: one
jammer, whose job is to lap the other team
and score points, and four blockers, who try
to stop the other team’s jammer and clear a
path for their own. At the start of each
round, known as a jam, the two jammers
race to get out of the pack first. Whoever
prevails becomes the lead jammer. The jam
then goes for two minutes, with teams earn-
ing a point every time their jammer laps a
member of the opposing team. The lead
jammer can also end a jam early by tapping
her hands repeatedly on her hips.
“It’s a very physical and mental game,”
says Danielle Sporkin, a.k.a. Spork Chop,
the league president of New York’s Gotham
Girls Roller Derby. “It’s one of the only
sports where you’re playing offense and de-
fense at the same time.”
By 1949, roller derby had become a na-
tional sensation, with skaters like Billy Bo-
gash, Gerry Murray and Midge “Toughie”
Brasuhn becoming well-known names.
ABC broadcast the bouts up to three times a
week. Mickey Rooney took the sport to thesilver screen in the 1950 film “The Fireball”
(which also featured a 24-year-old rising
star named Marilyn Monroe). That year,
the short film “Roller Derby Girl” was nomi-
nated for an Academy Award.
But just as quickly as it had flamed into
the public consciousness, roller derby
faded. By 1953, with public interest waning,
Seltzer moved his operation to California.
He held a final New York training camp to
recruit new skaters.
Judi McGuire, already a U.S. flat-track
speedskating champion, was a senior in
high school when some friends invited her
to check out the derby training program. On
her second day, she said, she was drafted.
“One of the girls on the New York team
had to leave because she was pregnant, so I
got her spot,” recalled McGuire, who is now
79 and lives in Escalon, Calif. “I was skating
Thursday through Sunday and then going
to school the rest of the week.” She graduat-
ed in June and left the next day for the West
Coast.
In 1959, Leo Seltzer handed the reins to
his son, Jerry. The younger Seltzer decided
to take a new tack: Maintain the athleticism
of roller derby while upping the drama. He
also started videotaping the games and li-
censing them to local TV stations.
Roller derby blazed back into the zeit-
geist. In 1965, 13,421 fans thronged to watch
the championships when the skaters re-
turned to Madison Square Garden after a
13-year absence. By 1971, the crowd had
swelled to more than 19,000. And just as in
the sport’s earliest days, men and women
skated by the same rules, for the same
amount of time, on the same track.
“This is the best sport for women to be
in,” Sandy Dunn, the captain of the New
York Chiefs’ women’s squad, told The New
York Times in 1972. “Women tennis players
and golfers aren’t recognized as much as we
are, and we’re equal with the men.”
Leo Seltzer had bragged about the equity
of the sport from the beginning (an equity, it
should be noted, that did not always extend
to the league’s pay scale). “This is the only
American sport ever created where men
and women are equal,” he told The Times in- “The women can see themselves in the
Roller Derby:
Eight Decades
Of Twists, Turns
And Thwacks
BARTON SILVERMAN/THE NEW YORK TIMESFans packed Madison Square Garden in 1971 to watch roller derby,
which was not a full-contact sport when it originated in 1935.
BARTON SILVERMAN/THE NEW YORK TIMESBy JENNIFER HARLANJan Vallow, top, prepared to toss Judi McGuire, who nevertheless recalled,
“Roller derby was like Hollywood to me.” Mike Gammon, middle, leapt to de-
liver a hit on Bob Woodberry. Tempers flared, above, during a match in 1970.
DONAL F. HOLWAY/THE NEW YORK TIMESBARTON SILVERMAN/
THE NEW YORK TIMES‘Feminism is in the
DNA of the sport.’
MARGOT ATWELL,
a.k.a. Em Dash, the author
of “Derby Life: A Crash
Course in the Incredible
Sport of Roller Derby”As we digitize some six million photo prints
in our files — dating back more than 100
years — we are using those images to bring
vivid narratives and compelling characters
of the past to life.Past Tense
nytimes.com/spotlight/past-tense