Leo Seltzer

Leo Seltzer is the founder of Roller Derby. He created the sport in 1935 at the Chicago Coliseum, initially as a multi-day endurance event modeled on the marathon-walking contests of the early Depression years. Over the next decade he reshaped the format into a banked-track contact sport with two opposing teams, fixed periods, scoring jams, and the visible roles — pivot, jammer, blocker, referee — that still define the sport's variations today.

Under his ownership, Roller Derby grew through the 1940s and 1950s into one of the most-televised early American sports, with nationwide tours and franchised teams. He passed operational control of the company to his son Jerry Seltzer in 1958, and the sport continued to evolve under that second-generation leadership through 1973.

Leo Seltzer was inducted into the National Roller Derby Hall of Fame in 2005 in the executive category, alongside his son Jerry. The Seltzer family thus became one of the institution's defining family lineages — and Roller Derby Legacy, as a third-party archive, recognizes the historical pivot the Seltzers represent for the entire sport.