Inline Hockey

Inline hockey, also known as roller hockey or inline roller hockey, is a team sport played on an appropriate smooth surface, in which skaters use wooden or composite sticks to shoot a hard plastic puck into their opponent's net. The game is played between two teams with five players (Four Skaters and a Goalie) on the floor. A team usually consists of three lines of two forwards, three pairs of defencemen, and two goalies. Four members of each team skate up and down the floor trying to take the puck and score a goal against the opposing team. Each team has a goaltender who tries to stop the puck from going into the goal or "net."

While there have been 37 total members of the Fédération Internationale de Roller Sports (FIRS), 53 of 54 medals at the FIRS World Championships have been taken by these seven nations: Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Italy, Switzerland and the United States. Of the 18 gold medals awarded in the senior men's competition at the world championships, only four did not go to the United States. 31 of the 33 FIRS Women's World Championships medals have gone to one of these seven countries, and every gold medal has been won by either Canada, the Czech Republic or the United States.