People have been trying to come up with a parabolic blade since bending blades first became accepted as the norm in short track speed skating. Short track skaters have always sacrificed their straightaways for the corner. The parabolic having a curve on both sides of the blade like a carve snow ski lets you turn around the corner without sacrificing your left foot push on the straight. Hence the possibility of greater speed. Our testing has indicated a 20% increase in power on the left foot on the straightaway push. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to work out what this means…

However, we see the greatest advantages in the sport of long track where technology in skates has sadly been lacking for many years. When a skater pushes out to the side in short track, as the blade leans over, due to the inbuilt turning effect that a bent blade has, the blade turns back towards the skater during the push as the blade leans over. This allows for far more power to be put into the blade effecting a much longer stroke. Compared to long track where the push is straight out to the side with no resistance. It’s like sailing… a boat can only go as fast with the wind as the wind, but when he sails across the wind he can go much faster due to the resistance..

We know that some skaters have been fiddling with bending long track blades with some success. However bending the left blade sacrifices the long straight which is counter productive. So bending the left blade is not an option. Now with the parabolic you can have your bend on the left side of the blade and the blade can be either straight or curved back in again on the right side of the same blade. Resulting in much longer strides on the straightaway allowing the stronger skaters huge benefits over weaker skaters and holding the curve like short trackers have done for many many years. Running starts are improved due to increased traction.

The difference between a short track skater skating on a straight blade verses a bent blade is approximately 1 second per 100m over 500m. We feel that long trackers should be able to achieve similar results considering short trackers cover 560m (actual distance covered) in a 500m race in 41 seconds every time they race. Long trackers average 36 seconds for 500m at most race meets for 500m. In other words, if you put a speed gun on a short tracker and a long tracker, we believe that the short tracker is actually traveling at a faster speed.

Why is this so? This is due to bent blades and stiffer boots. If a short tracker can get around a tiny little rink in a high cut stiff boot, why can’t a long tracker get around a huge rink in the same equipment? This would result in better starts, and more power transmitted to the ice with a non flexing boot. Every time the boot flexes when a skater pushes, the boot absorbs 5-6% of the energy, robbing the skater of forward momentum.

We see skates in long track in the future being almost the same as short track boots now. The trend has already started with 2 bolt mounting systems, extruded aluminum blades, and fibreglass/Kevlar/carbon fibre boots … which we have been using for 20 years now. We feel that the differences between long track and short track in the 500m should be around 9 to 10 seconds like it was in 1981. But technology in the field of short track has brought this figure down to around 6 seconds. The advent of the parabolic blade in short track will close the gap even further. A sub 40 second 500m short track time is now on the cards for the 2002 Winter Olympics on parabolic blades and it probably would have already been close if claps had not been banned from short track. People who are not grasping the new technology now will be looking at peoples backsides when they cross the line like non clap skaters verses clap skaters today.

Source: ISU 2000