How could a pro sport that in the 1950s was televised three times a week live in prime time on a major network and by 1973 had 15 million weekly TV viewers descend so quickly into obscurity?
Such was the fate that met banked-track Roller Derby, a game that was invented in the United States in 1935, grew to achieve widespread popularity over the next few decades and had all but disappeared from the national scene by the late 1980s.
Longtime Las Vegas journalist Ed Koch has spent more than 30 years studying the meteoric rise and spiraling demise of Roller Derby -- conducting interviews, researching data and formulating theories about what happened and why.
The facts, statistics and personal stories that Koch gathered from such Hall-of-Fame skating stars as Bert Wall, Loretta “Little Iodine” Behrens, Ralphie Valladares, and others have been compiled in his new 259-page e-book, Roller Derby Requiem: A Sports Writer’s Retrospective on The Life and Untimely Death of the Banked-Track Spectacle.
Roller Derby Requiem also tells the story of the game’s roller coaster existence through the eyes of such pivotal insiders as Roller Derby chief Jerry Seltzer, Roller Games boss Bill Griffiths, National Roller Derby Hall of Fame curator Gary Powers and longtime Roller Games skater and executive John Hall, among others.
Roller Derby Requiem is the first book about Roller Derby that tackles the tough questions: What went wrong? What could have been done differently? And what are the chances that the banked-track spectacle will overcome staggering odds and rise to prominence once again?