Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com

Published - Friday, April 20, 2007

How low can she go? Girl can skate under 8 inch limbo bar

Seven-year-old Zoey Beda rolls under the limbo bar set to eight inches at the Flying Wheels roller rink in Oakdale. Zoey has cleared 7.23 inches and is looking to set a record for roller limbo. Erik Daily

By DAN SIMMONS | La Crosse Tribune

TOWN OF OAKDALE, Wis. — Ask Zoey Beda, 7, what’s hard about roller limbo, and she smiles broadly.

“Nothing, really,” she says. “Nothing’s hard about it.”

Watch her, and you’ll believe it.

The bar is 7½ inches off the ground, about the height of an unsharpened pencil.

She starts her approach at the far end of the rink. Chubby Checker’s “Limbo Rock” pumps over the speakers at Flying Wheels roller rink.

A few feet before the bar, she drops suddenly, legs splayed out in full splits, hands grabbing her ankles. She dips her head under the bar, pigtails grazing the floor, and rolls under. Then she pops back up and skates away, a smile creasing her cheeks.

“I still say, ‘What did I just see?’” said her mother, Nancy.

Some wait a lifetime to discover their true talent, but Zoey has found hers already. She clears 8 inches regularly and has gotten under 7¼ inches, said her father, Mark.

Her doe eyes next are set on a bigger — or perhaps smaller — goal: a world record. The only problem is, no one’s quite sure what the world record is or whether it even exists.

Mark Beda said he read of a girl in China who made it under 5¾ inches, but it wasn’t official. As far as he knows, the Guinness Book of World Records doesn’t have a roller limbo record on the books — yet.

This all began in September at Zoey’s seventh birthday party at Flying Wheels, about 5 miles east of Tomah. She never had skated before. She’s not in gymnastics and, until then, never knew she was unusually flexible. Then, in a pair of cheap Barbie skates, she tried the limbo.

“And we’ve been here (at the rink) every weekend since,” Mark Beda said. “She took limbo to the extreme.”

Her parents recently bought her shoe-skates that stand 6¾ inches off the ground. To get lower, Mark said, he’s researching the legality of skates with smaller wheels and lower clearance.

In most ways, Zoey resembles other first-graders. She loves doing the “Macarena” dance. She plays on the monkey bars. She can’t wait to see “Spiderman 3.” She picks strawberries and eats more than she keeps. She loves her kitty, Jazz.

One difference: She and her family follow a vegan diet. She loves cauliflower, both raw and cooked. If she breaks the record, she said, she’ll go to Cheese Factory, her favorite vegetarian restaurant in Wisconsin Dells.

And the other big difference comes when she puts on her black leotard and rainbow-stripe tights and laces up her black skates. The music blares. She skates to its rhythm as the bar approaches. And you see there’s nothing ordinary about her.

Dan Simmons can be reached at (608)791-8217 or dsimmons@lacrossetribune.com.