Eddy Matzger

Eddy Matzger is amazing. He is one of those athletes who you just have to root for.

He won the New York 100k recently.
http://www.inlineplanet.com/10/10/ny100k-victory.html?sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4ca65027aea17140%2C0

Here is a quick interview after his NY 100k win:
http://community.inlineplanet.com/video/eddie-matzger-wins-the-100k


Then he followed that up with his 9th (I think) A2A win a few days ago, at the age of 44:
http://a2a.net/10result/RESOV87.TXT


I remember back in 2008, my first A2A, reading about the finish. One of my fellow skaters in Atlanta witnessed the finish and wrote this:
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"Nancy & I watched Eddy Matzger be a overt gentleman to his competitor skater from Chicago just prior to the finish line. Eddy said he let the young skater go ahead and finish first; but really, I could not understand why. Why race an ultra-endurance race and just prior to the finish line, completely stop in a full pause to permit two skaters to pass from behind you to in front of you? I'm too out of shape right now to really know the honest answer.

"So Nancy & I watched Eddy tote around with giggles & continuous smiles behind oversized, round, cateye sunglasses, as if he hadn't even skated around Piedmont Park. No. Better yet - as if he hadn't even skated up the hill to the finish line. Though we all watched him do it, as Cindy Spalding eagerly announced our excitement over the makeshift P/A system."
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I asked Eddy about the finish, because I had heard the same thing. He simply said, "I've won enough." He later gave his third place medal to my daughters.

He is also known for keeping his skates on and skating back up the course to cheer other skaters on. Meanwhile, the rest of us sit down and get our skates off as quickly as possible!


Eddy conducts Skate Farm workshops in Floyd, Virginia. Highly recommended. I've gone twice.
http://skatecentral.com/page29.html

What's Skate Farm like? Eddy brings his video camera with him on all the skates. Check out this video, from when I was there in 2008. My daughters steal the show in the video, in my biased opinion!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMqUN4mlJcM&playnext_from=TL&videos=CTk91Mnrj2U


He also is conducting Skate Farm workshops in Thailand in January 2011.
http://skatefarmthailand.weebly.com/


Here is an interview with Eddy from 2004. Still great reading today.
http://www.inlineplanet.com/Interviews/introtheeddymatz.html