24 hours roller skating at Le Mans

It’s 5am in Paris… Only a few hours and things will get serious on the Bugatti circuit in Le Mans, ready for the 2008 edition of the 24h Roller of Le Mans! 650 teams have registered for the race – both amateurs and professionals. Teams, you’d better watch out, ArcelorMittal is ready to go!

Our R&D team’s race strategy is summed up in three simple words: drive flat out. In order to stand the physical effort during the 24h race, they decided to form a group of 3, alternating one skater after each round. During that time, 2 of the team members had a 3-hour rest before taking over from the third.

But those 3 precious hours passed too fast, while the night seemed never-ending. Inevitably, the tiredness brought thoughtless mistakes – forgetting to hand over the microchip that counted the number of rounds performed… And then, at around 4am, the tiredness started to win over their optimism…

But, of course they made it to the end! They skated non-stop for 24 hours, totalling up 109 rounds (107 officially counted…) – that’s 451.44 km at an average speed of 18.8 km per hour! They ranked 530 out of 638, a good achievement for a small group of 5. In the end, the team lived up to the challenge – exhausted, but satisfied: what a bold initiative!