Diederik Hol (born 10 April 1972) is a Dutch Design Engineer, designer of the
Dual Box inline skate
Inline skates are a type of roller skate used for inline skating. Unlike quad skates, which have two front and two rear wheels, inline skates typically have two to five wheels arranged in a single line. Some, especially those for recreation, ...
frame and the Narrow Shape Cross-Section (NSX)
ice blade
is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Tsutomu Takahashi. It was serialized in Kodansha's ''seinen'' manga magazine '' Monthly Afternoon'' from 1992 to 1999, with its chapters collected in nineteen '' tankÅbon'' volumes. The ...
, and founder/director of skate company
CadoMotus Skating BV.
Education and early career
After obtaining his
engineer's degree
An engineer's degree is an advanced academic degree in engineering which is conferred in Europe, some countries of Latin America, North Africa and a few institutions in the United States. The degree may require a thesis but always requires a non- ...
in Design Engineering from
Delft University of Technology
Delft University of Technology ( nl, Technische Universiteit Delft), also known as TU Delft, is the oldest and largest Dutch public technical university, located in Delft, Netherlands. As of 2022 it is ranked by QS World University Rankings among ...
in the Netherlands, Hol became involved in a graduate project with Interraps - a Dutch producer of inline and ice skates - working on a planned improvement of the first (Viking) clapskate design with the aim of turning a 100-year-old patent into a product that could break ice speed skating world records. He graduated having worked on the Rotrax skate, a complex clap skate conceived as a multiple-
hinge frame aimed at controlling deformation and allowing for a more powerful push-off.
Product line designer
After spending time as a designer working on a wide variety of other projects, he was able to return to the niche skate design industry full-time in 1999 when approached by Sportsinline International BV to design an entire product line of inline skates for its
Mogema brand. With previous employer Interraps possessing the patent that basically covered all existing inline frames at the time, Hol was driven to come up with something completely new.
Clap Your Skates: Innovation All Along
(August 06, 2004
ScienceMag.org
/ref> After a year working on the project, Hol completed the Dual Box inline frame. Results on the product were to come 2 years later in 2001 with the worldwide inline racing success of elite skaters of the period such as Jorge Botero (Colombia), Arnaud Gicquel (France) and Kalon Dobbin (New Zealand) using Dual Box frames in World Inline Cup The World Inline Cup is the leading competition in inline speed skating.
History
In 1999 first attempts in order to establish a racing series with standardized evaluation system and rules were made. The then called ''European Inline Cup'' was mana ...
and World Inline Speed Skating Championship events.
Ice speedskating
Subsequently, Hol returned his design focus to ice speedskating
Speed skating is a competitive form of ice skating in which the competitors race each other in travelling a certain distance on skates. Types of speed skating are long track speed skating, short track speed skating, and marathon speed skati ...
and, based on technologies being utilised in the development of hockey and figure skates, designed the Narrow Shape Cross-Section (NSX) ice blade. The NSX was the first ice skate produced under the Mogema name and was a departure from the traditional rigid, pre-bent racing blades used in longtrack speed skating, providing a straight blade that featured an adaptive radius. The NSX product line was expanded by Mogema in response to growing market interest at the time, however in a traditionally change-resistant ice speedskating market the product never achieved a significant market share.
New business
Following the decommissioning of Sportsinline International by its parent company in 2006, Hol started work on his own company. In February 2007, new skate company CadoMotus Skating BV appeared online and through a global network of distributors in the niche speed skating market with ice and inline speed skates.
References
External links
CadoMotus - inline and ice speed skates
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hol, Diederik
1972 births
Living people
21st-century Dutch inventors
Skating people
Delft University of Technology alumni
People from Apeldoorn