Ultra Wheels Sabotage MILK 2% Inline Skates

Here at Bladeville we have one golden rule: we sell only good skates. We do not plan to abandon it, ever. This causes a bit of a problem, as many people willing to try skating do not want to spend the kind of money needed for purchase of even entry-level skates made by one of core, professional brands. They simply worry that it will be unnecessary expense if they won’t like the sport. In such cases, we recommend renting a pair, but there are not that many places where you can rent skates around. Thus, it is quite often the case that newcomers drop the idea of buying gear in specialised shop and goes for skates which can be described only as toys, not sports equipment. Low quality, unsupportive boots are the major problem with those and experience of skating them can actually make people dropping the sport pretty soon.

Bearing that in mind, we have been thinking about a solution to bring more affordable skates into our shop. The most obvious one is buying second-hand ones, “refurbishing” them by cleaning, replacing broken parts and giving them fresh set of bearings and wheels (lower budget ones, of course). But there’s an issue – it would be insanely time-consuming and in the end, the price would not be that low, considering how much manual work and resources (new parts!) we would have to put into such project. Life brought us a different, unexpected opportunity.

We have received an offer to buy old stock from one of Swedish general sports shops which is closing business. Problem is, the skates and rest of the gear is over 20 years old. You can imagine our first reaction. But upon taking a closer look, it turned out that there are some skates worth picking up, ones which we’ll be able to sell at very low prices.

The skates in question are made by Ultra Wheels. This brand, founded in USA, no longer exists. They were active during 90’s, a golden era of inline skating . Like many companies focused on this sport, Ultra Wheels has fallen a victim to harsh decline of rollerblading’s popularity in late 90’s and early 2000’s. Apart from fitness skates (we’ll save you a sight of these, they weren’t the most stylish designs out there), they were making hockey ones – even signed some deals with NHL players and made skates named after them. They were also dipping their toes into aggressive skating and made some decent (by standards of the era) skates. They have never gained a market share similar to K2, Roces, Rollerblade or USD, though – so when market has shrunk, they went out of business.

Let’ get something right out of the gate – the Ultra Wheels skates in our shop are true oldschool gear, for better or worse. You won’t find latest, advanced tech here.

There’s one reason why we got into this. We’ve picked only skates that provide a good amount of ankle support, superior to what low quality skates can offer. Thanks to it, they will be safe to take first steps into the world of inline skating on. Of course, if you want to start playing in-line hockey and are on a tight budget – these are very attractive, too.

These are functional, “fully featured” skates which will allow you to start having fun at low cost. In our opinion, the old, but decent gear is million times better than new, but weak one. Of course, the fact that Ultra Wheels does not exist any more, does not mean that if something breaks, you do not have rights to submit a complaint – the law states that you can do it within 2 year from purchase. It’s our responsibility, don’t worry: you are still buying a pair of skates from a shop, not some random guy from the Internet.

Considering their age, it may turn out that skates will have some minor aesthetic flaws, like decolourizations, scratches or won’t come with original packaging, but these do not impact their function. These are technically sound.

If Sabotage Milk 2% skates remind you Rollerblade Tarmac CE, that’s a correct first impression. The looks may be a bit different, but this boot is based around similar, slim cast and template. These are truly old-school aggressive skates, so they come with a high cuff – remember, first plastic mould skates were created after functionality of hockey skates, which have tendon guard at the back. Just below the cuff edge, in the back, you’ll find a small appendix which prevent the skate from flexing too much to the back.

The top buckle is really solid and well protected. Furthermore, the excess ratchet strap goes inside the cuff. All of this in skates from the 90’s, which is pretty impressive  considering that these things couldn’t be taken for granted 10 years ago.

45 degrees strap is, to put it simply, an overkill. Velcro is super strong and wide, but pieces used to attach it to the shell are like they have been taken straight from some military-grade equipment. Heel lift? What’s that?

The liner is well made, although it is clearly “from the era”. It is high cut, just like the shell (wouldn’t make sense otherwise), have reinforced tongue and is covered in artificial leather. When it comes to quality, back then it was a top-shelf stuff.

Okay, but that about what resides beneath the boot? Forget about UFS – these skates came out at point when no one was even thinking about creating any unified frame mounting standard. The frame is riveted to the boot and is a very basic one. It does have groove, but it is not properly reinforced with H-block, so if you plan to try royale tricks on these skates (which won’t be easy, considering there’s no backslide groove/plate of any kind) better dust off your grindplates to make frame last longer. Or just swap places of the ones coming with the skates, as they are mounted on the opposite side of the frame. These are made out of plastic, most likely some sort of UHMW, but we couldn’t find any information, so it may be something different. Grindplate will also fix a problem with exposed axle heads, which can get damaged during soul tricks. About axles – they do offer an option to rocker wheels, so you can tinker with different setups.

The skates have something akin to very minimalistic soulplates. Well, the grinding surface is pretty even for a model from mid 90’s, better than what Rollerblade TRS or Roces Majestic 12/Street have offered at the time. But it is not completely flat like soulplates in modern skates and is way narrower. It is not place in parallel to the ground – there’s slight angle, meaning that you’ll lean more towards heel and push your toes up when grinding ledges. A nice touch is that it protects the rivets from damage, as they are sunken in. Damaging rivets on soul tricks was a big issue back in the day, so we must give Ultra Wheels a credit for fixing a problem which was obvious, but quite often ignored by other companies.

What about wheels? These are 57mm in diameter, so pretty standard for aggressive skating. What makes them standing out is their hardness – 96A is on a (really) hard side and not that common any more. Such wheels are mostly used in middle positions when riding flat these days, with softer ones on the outside, but here, all are of the same hardness. One thing is certain – you won’t have any wheel bite issues with these, they should slide like a butter.

Sabotage Milk 2% look like someone at Ultra Wheels has got an idea “Hey! Let’s copy Rollerblade Tarmac, but improve in all of areas which are its shortcomings, ok?” and just like that, they got to work on it. It is clear that the brand has aimed to create something better than competition – but instead of revolution and unique ideas, they went with evolution of solutions already in place. The history taught us that it was a dead end. Still, these skates are interesting piece of history, worth to have if you are in love with old-school blades. Also – thanks to ability to put in up to 72mm coupled with rigid boot, these can be converted into a skate to start learning basics on. And for a mere 80 Euros? That’s a bargain.