Roll With It

Hong Kong’s female-driven roller skating group is going to knock you out

- Lauren James

Plastic wheels honk, clatter and purr across the oblong concrete arena as a squad of figures in skates rounds the corner in pack formation, ready to pick up speed on the straight. Faces glisten with sweat beneath crash helmets and thigh muscles ripple with exertion as the skaters fly through their drills. One loses her footing, tumbling to the ground. She is helped up by teammates and carries on; in a fast, tactical, contact sport like roller derby, a little tumble is par for the course.

Among the boards, scooters and inline skates in the city’s rinks and bowls, quad skates are an increasingly common sight, largely thanks to the efforts of Hong Kong Roller Derby (HKRD), a sports group founded in 2013 that runs training sessions, organises social events and whose members operate a shop to sell and rent skates.

Originally developed in the US, roller derby is one of the more niche subcultures to have arrived in Hong Kong in recent years. Boosted by viral videos on platforms like TikTok, retro quad skating—as opposed to roller blading, which uses in-line skates—has boomed in popularity in the US and Europe due to its kitsch, visual nature, increased prominence in popular culture, such as the 2009 film Whip It, and a message of female empowerment and inclusion at its core.