MPC Black Magic 90mm xfirm

In creating the BlackMagic, MPC scientists have formulated a compound heralded as even better than their legendary BlackTrack wheels, and the BlackMagic’s testing report-card couldn’t have been better: world record times in both the 300 and 500 meter sprints at the 2013 World Championships, making it the fastest wheel on earth.  These results confirm what we’ve known for years, MPC is the leading edge in competition speed skating wheel innovation.

MPC competition inline speed skating wheels aren’t a commodity that are just easily poured, cured and shipped in high volume and without regard for performance. They’re manufactured in small batches, and developed with great attention to detail and tolerance, with consideration of all the forces acting on you when you’re focused on skating, and the wheels are exerting work on your behalf.

Consider the science of speed, specifically Newton’s Third Law of Motion: for each action there is an equal and opposite reaction. What does this mean to a competitive inline speed skater? Relative to your choice of wheels, it means quite a lot. In this case, you’re skating on the road or track, and in real physical terms, your feet are pushing your skate wheels to the side and backward on the ground, and the ground in turn pushes forward on your wheels, pushing you forward. The forces at work, exerted by both you and the road & track (the Earth) are in fact equal and opposite, but because your mass is considerably smaller that that of the Earth, you experience more acceleration than the Earth does when it returns your push (Newton’s Second Law), thus you need a wheel that will harness the forward net force you experience. Knowing this, MPC engineers have developed the most responsive speed skating wheel compound ever formulated, pushing you forward, faster than your nearest competitor.

Creating a wheel that’s both responsive and adhesive (because surface traction equals grip) takes months to test to ultimate satisfaction. The MPC BlackMagic is a combination of the very popular black hub, and a proprietary urethane of the highest stability - even better than that of the BlackTrack that so many champions the world over have skated to victory. The appeal of the black hub is more than based on aesthetics; it’s about top-end performance. The black hubs have a higher percentage of glass, which makes them stiffer and have a higher rebound. Combined with the new urethane, you’ve got the most responsive wheel on the planet, making Sir Isaac Newton proud.

What is the difference between the new Black Magic and the RoadWar Evolution?

Its just the hub. The black hub contains 7% glassfiber reinforcement which makes it slightly stiffer than the orange hub that has 3.5% glassfibers. Black Magic and RoadWar Evolution wheels share the same compound for the inner and outer band, the inner band dimensions are identical!

The more flexible orange hub should suit lightweight skaters better. The flexible hub makes it more easy to change lines on the track and in the pack. This is valuable characteristic in longer races such as a points race or elimination. The stiffer black hub is often the preferred choice of powerful skaters and sprinters like Andres Munoz. The Black Magic wheel has a higher rebound and better roll.

But to have a wheel that performs on all levels, there's one more force to comprehend. With the BlackMagic, MPC presents a wheel designed to handle speed skating acceleration like no other. Knowing that any change in direction constitutes a change in velocity, which is acceleration in its own right, MPC wheels are designed to maximize control and response in the turns. Grip on slippery corners has always been a hallmark of MPC’s. Why is this? Because MPC engineers understand that as you leave the straight-away and enter a turn, you’re accelerating. Even maintaining a constant velocity, your direction is changing; you’re accelerating, moving around the corner on the curved track. It’s your wheels that keep you moving forward through the force of friction between the wheels and the track. The friction is the grip that keeps you on the curved path, accelerating forward. A wheel compound and hub combination that’s not calibrated right will allow for slippage that can’t be recovered from when reaction time is a matter of split seconds. MPC BlackMagics keep you on the track, accelerating completely through the turns, producing the re-entry sling-shot effect that makes the difference between first and the rest.

The lengths to which some will go to get their hands on MPC formulations can sometimes be considered fanatical. Consider this:  during the past 2 years for Europeans and Worlds (2012 and 2013) many skaters tried to locate a set of the coveted Turbo black hub wheels from a CadoMotus dealer somewhere in Europe, looking for them like prospectors digging for gold. Those skaters that were fortunate enough to get their hands on one or two sets saved them for the final of the championships, and won! Within the MPC BlackMagic, the hub is the same as the Turbo wheel, coupled with the new, improved urethane formulation we’ve described.  A combination for domination is ever there was one.

And the road testing for the MPC BlackMagic? We’ve mentioned the records. It was at the 2013 World Championships in Oostende that CadoMotus had prototypes of the new BlackMagic wheel, under the development name called “R-type Turbo”. On that wheel, Munoz captured the world record in the 500m and Weilin Lo the 1,000m.

Not only is the new compound is stable, responsive, it's incredibly durable! This makes investing in a set a very shrewd investment. The BlackMagic is a wheel you buy that you can use in many races under all conditions, because the wheels work great on track, road, sprint and long distance. And as of this post, the titles continue to roll in, with the new formula dominating the field in Korea and in the USA, where the new wheel durability was put to the test, winning both the 100K race in New York City and the 145K race from Athens to Atlanta, Georgia - both on a single set of wheels, which still showed plenty of life left after both those grueling races.

The MPC BlackMagic is simply MPC’s best formulation ever, which offers excellent grip, roll and wear characteristics as proven at the World Championships and beyond.  With a zero-tolerance for defects and a demand for excellence, you can rely on MPC BlackMagic for very consistent performance, no matter where you race next.