Land vehicles – Skates – Runner type
Patent
1996-06-03
1998-07-14
Camby, Richard M.
Land vehicles
Skates
Runner type
280 1119, 36 89, A63C 302
Patent
active
057792461
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to an ice skate which includes an outer shoe, a blade mounted on the sole of the outer shoe, and an inner shoe which is fitted in the outer shoe and which surrounds at least the rear part of the wearer's foot, including heel and ankle.
A conventional ice-hockey skate includes a hard boot which is laced up in a traditional manner, with the laces being threaded through eyelets or holes, from a hard toe cap, past the ankle joint to the beginning of the shinbone. The purpose of this lacing is to provide the stablest possible connection between foot and boot. The boot is often made of a combination of plastic and leather, partly to protect the wearer's foot against blows and puck impacts, and partly to provide stability so that the foot is unable to twist or move sideways. This stability is necessary in order to transmit power from the foot to the leg. In principle, the same conditions prevail in ice hockey as those that prevail in downhill alpine skiing sports, where it is endeavoured to transmit power from the legs to the skis rather than from the feet, since the leg muscles constitute the strongest muscular unit of the body.
Lateral stability is normally achieved at the cost of longitudinal mobility. As a result, the majority of ice-hockey players do not lace their skates up to the shinbone, but only as far as the ankle joint, and then tape the skate firmly to the leg guard, or shin guard, from the ankle and upwards. This is because tape is more elastic than boot laces and allows a certain degree of movement longitudinally. The extent of this taping will vary in accordance with the strength of each player's feet.
Typical lacing of an ice-skate boot prevents the foot from lifting from the inner sole of the boot, and the foot will therefore constantly have the same relative position to the blade. This is unnatural and does not occur with any other type of shoe, and, among other things, sudden accelerations of the wearer when skating will not be as powerful as they would otherwise be if the foot could be flexed.
In an attempt to solve this problem, it has earlier been proposed that the ice-skate boot be secured to the blade in a manner which enables the rear part of the boot to move relative to the boot in a manner similar to a conventional ski boot, see EP-A2-0 192 312 and U.S. Pat. No. 1,789,182. The use of a divided blade has also been proposed, such that the rear part of the blade can be lifted together with the boot, see U.S. Pat. No. 1,751,692. None of these solutions, however, provide the stability between ice skate and foot/lower leg that is required when playing ice hockey, among other sports.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The main object of the present invention is to provide an ice skate which will allow a certain degree of mobility to the rear part of the foot while maintaining lateral stability between foot and boot.
The invention is based on the concept that this object can be achieved by using a partially movable inner shoe in an outer shoe and lacing the inner shoe firmly around the rear part of the foot and the ankle, therewith replacing the taping that is applied at present to afford a certain degree of mobility in the longitudinal direction. Because the outer shoe embraces the lower part of the foot up to and including the ankle and firmly connects the lower foot part with the blade as a result of lacing the outer shoe, lateral stability will be retained despite having improved the longitudinal mobility.
It has earlier been proposed to place an ankle support in an ice-skate boot, see U.S. Pat. No. 2,165,879. This ankle support, however, is not intended to hold firm the rear and the upper part of the foot, as is made evident by the statement that the ankle support can be used either with or without laces. The ankle support would also appear to be fixed firmly in the ice-skate boot, and can therefore not solve the problem that is solved by the present invention. U.S. Pat. No. 1,743, 689 also describes an ankle support which is fixedly mou
REFERENCES:
patent: 2165879 (1939-07-01), Wilkinson
patent: 3798800 (1974-03-01), Rathmell
patent: 3828448 (1974-08-01), Leonildo
patent: 4826183 (1989-05-01), Bratland et al.
Camby Richard M.
Orebroskenan Aktiebolag
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