A Sibling Rivalry On Wheels

Sometimes being Dante Muse's younger brother is more than Tony Muse can stand. Dante, 21, of Des Moines , is the best speed roller skater in the U.S. Tony, who's 16 months younger, is the second best, neck and neck with his brother according to the U.S. Amateur Confederation of Roller Skating (USAC/RS). It's a situation Tony detests, he says, "because nobody ever remembers second."

What makes Tony's plight even less tolerable is that speed skating, a non-Olympic sport, is not exactly mainstream. Its competitors race in packs on 200- to 400-meter tracks outdoors—or on 100-meter courses set up in roller rinks. And while it might seem as if we're talking about an uptown version of good old roller derby, the histrionics of roller derby are to speed roller skating what Hulk Hogan is to amateur wrestling—something of an embarrassment.

Dante Muse is a bona fide speed roller skater. He has won the indoor national title in his age division three out of the past six years, and he has been outdoor national champion. He was the world-record holder at 5,000 meters in 1986 and the three-time world champion at that distance, and he won five gold medals at the Olympic Festival in '87.

It's not as though brother Tony never wins—he just won the world championship, and he has won the indoor national title and the outdoor national title. Also, he came in third in the 300-meter sprint (31.26 seconds) at the worlds last year in Grenoble , France , to become the first American ever to place in the sprints. It's just that he seems to come up short when compared with Dante. "Tony wins all the time," says their brother Mark, 34, who is also their coach. "But when Dante wins, he walks away with it." Not surprisingly, Tony lives to beat his brother. "If I win, Dante hates it," he says. "He just goes insane. But it's the best thing in my whole life."

To look at Dante you wouldn't think he could pose much of a threat to anyone in the rough-and-tumble action so common in pack skating. He's a lean 5'10", 140 pounds, with ankles as slender as a ballerina's. His casual attitude toward his sport seems little suited to the role of roller terror. "I don't train hard; I hardly train," says Dante. He rarely rides a bicycle, a favored training device for many skaters. (Tony rides 30 miles a day, six days a week.) Dante never, ever lifts weights. (Tony hits the weights three times a week.) His training consists of a two-hour indoor skating workout three times a week in the winter and six times a week during the rest of the year.

Dante wins his races, he says, "because I run the curves so close nobody can get inside me. When I'm in second, I follow so close I can pass on the corners. If I'm in front and some guy is laying on my back, I hesitate on the first step into the corner. He slows down, and I have room to take off."

Perhaps the most impressive thing about Dante is the smoothness with which he skates, and always has skated, ever since he was two years old. Other skaters barrel down the straightaways at full speed—up to 25 miles an hour outdoors, where the straightaways on 400-meter ovals can be 100 meters long—and then slow down before they hit the corners. Dante's balanced stride allows him to maintain his speed deep into the corners. He has the stamina for the long races in outdoor competition (the longest is 12.4 miles), but his style works best on the 100-meter indoor ovals, where the curves are tighter and a slick spot often forms on the floor where the skaters have slowed down repeatedly. "Everybody knows he's fast in the corners, so they try to follow him," says Mark. "He stays inside [the line taken by most skaters]. They hit the slick spot, they slide, and he's gapped them."

Together, the Muses make up the only real challenge to the perennially powerful Italian national skating team. The brothers proved this four weeks ago at the world championships in Cassano d'Adda, Italy . Dante won golds in the 10,000 meters and in the 10,000-meter relay, and came in second in the 5,000 and 20,000 meters, the only American to win more than a bronze. Tony won the overall individual world title, which is based on points given for the number of skaters beaten, even though he never placed higher than third in any event. The American team also won the overall crown. Oscar Galiazzo, 23, Italy 's three-time European champion in the 300 meters, says, "The Americans are strong on curves. We are much stronger where speed is concerned. Undoubtedly, they are our biggest antagonists, followed by the French. But the Muses are the only ones who really worry us."

It's 11 a.m. on a sunny day in the Muses' hometown of Des Moines , and America 's fastest roller skaters are just getting out of bed. The brothers live in the compact three-bedroom house they grew up in, which is tucked, like a tidy Hobbit hole, into an embankment at one end of Skate West, a roller rink their parents own. Dante and Tony are the youngest of Ramona and John's six children, whose ages span 16 years. Both boys began skating almost as soon as they could walk. "We didn't necessarily want them to be skaters," says John. "It was just easier to keep track of them that way, being in the rink business." By the time they were six and seven years old, the boys were competitive skaters.

The trouble was, they hadn't specialized in speed skating, and they weren't always all that competitive. Furthermore, as Mark says, his father "is excellent at teaching technique, but horrible at positive reinforcement. For years I'd see Tony and Dante come to the nationals, and they'd look at the program and start naming off all these national champions they had to skate against, and they'd be scared. They'd race step-for-step with the champions in the heats. Then in the finals, they'd come in last." Mark, himself a former indoor skater who now manages Skate East, one of the family's other two rinks in Des Moines , took over the coaching of his brothers and the Des Moines club team in 1982. That summer the youngest Muses won the indoor national championships in their age groups. Dante was soon sweeping indoor events—which range from 1,000 to 5,000 meters in length—and earned the nickname Silver Bullet for his speed and his silver uniform.