World Skate is the only governing body in the world for all sports performed on skating wheels. The organisation is the successor of the Fédération Internationale de Roller Sports (FIRS) founded on 21 April 1924.
Due to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, World Skate banned Russian and Belarusian athletes and officials from its competitions, and did not stage any events in Russia or Belarus in 2022.
Disciplines
World Skate serves as the international governing body for:
Artistic skating
Inline alpine skating
Inline downhill skating
Inline freestyle skating
Inline hockey, also called roller in-line hockey
Inline speed skating
Roller derby
Roller freestyle skating, also called aggressive inline skating or rollerblading
Roller hockey, also called rink hockey or quad hockey
Scootering, also called freestyle scootering
Skateboarding
Skate cross
History
World Skate was established as the (FIPR) on 21 April 1924 as an organ for creating multinational European championship tournaments for roller sports. The founding meeting was organized by Fred Renkewitz and Otto Myer and included representatives from France, Germany, Great Britain, and Switzerland. Renkewitz served as president of the FIPR from its founding in 1924 until 1960.
The FIPR began organizing World Championship events in the later 1930s, with the first Rink Hockey World Championship hosted in Stuttgart in 1936. The inaugural Speed Skating World Championship was held in 1937–38, with events in Monza, Italy; London, United Kingdom; and Ferrara, Italy. After a pause to all sport competition during World War II, the World Championships resumed in 1947 and the first Artistic Skating World Championship was held in Washington, D.C., United States.
During the 1960s, the organization was recognized by the International Olympic Committee and the governing body for all roller skating sports and renamed as the (FIRS). It gained member status in the General Association of International Sports Federations (GAISF) in the 1970s.
Artistic skating, rink hockey, and speed skating remained the principal sports regulated by FIRS until inline hockey was included in the 1990s, with the first Inline Hockey World Championship held in 1995. At the FIRS Congress in 2000, a vote approved the modification of the name from Fédération Internationale de Roller Skating to ; the FIRS acronym remained unchanged.
The FIRS continued to expand the scope of its governance to additional roller sport disciplines and, by 2017, it served as the governing body of ten sports. The inaugural World Roller Games in 2017 served as the world championship for all ten of the FIRS' governed sports, merging the various world championship tournaments into a two week skating event hosted in Nanjing, China. The second World Roller Games were held in 2019 in Barcelona, Spain.
The FIRS rebranded as World Skate in June 2017. Along with the rebrand, the World Roller Games were renamed the World Skate Games. The 2022 World Skate Games in Argentina will be the first edition to utilize the new name.
Due to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, World Skate banned Russian and Belarusian athletes and officials from its competitions, and will not stage any events in Russia or Belarus in 2022.
Competitions
World Skate Games
Since 2017, World Skate has organized the bi-annual World Skate Games, comprising all roller sport disciplines governed by World Skate. The World Skate Games are a multi-sport event that serves as the World Championship of 11 disciplines: alpine, artistic, inline downhill, inline freestyle, inline hockey, rink hockey, roller derby, roller freestyle, scooter, skateboard, and speed.
The first edition of the event was hosted in Nanjing, China during September 2017 as the 'World Roller Games.' Over 3,000 athletes, 193 national teams, and 61 national federations participated in the fifteen-day festival, which named world champions in ten sports.
The second edition of the World Roller Games attracted more than 4,000 athletes to Barcelona, Spain during July 2019. Seventy-six national federations participated in eleven sports.
The third edition of the event – the first to be contested under the rebranded 'World Skate Games' moniker – was originally scheduled to take place in during October and November 2021 in the host cities of Vicente López, Buenos Aires and San Juan, Argentina. It was later announced that the Games would be postponed until 2022 due to scheduling conflicts caused by the COVID-19 pandemic but were expected to be hosted in Argentina as originally planned.