Figure Skating

I

Introduction

Figure Skating, competitive sport that involves skaters moving across an ice rink performing a series of jumps, spins, turns, jumps, and (in pairs and ice dance events) holds and lifts to musical accompaniment. It is an artistic and performance sport that is judged on technical elements and on the stylistic interpretation of the music. Many liken it to ballet, or more generally dance, on ice. Competitors perform singly (men’s figure skating and women’s figure skating) or as part of a couple (the pairs and the ice dance competitions) (see more below).

Top figure skaters also feature in skating spectaculars, shows that give full artistic licence to the dancers and choreographers. Figure skating, more loosely termed ice skating, is also a recreational pastime that usually takes place on artificially formed ice in indoor and outdoor arenas known as rinks. More generally, ice skaters (rather than figure skaters) take part in other sports such as ice hockey, speed skating, short-track speed skating, and curling, as well as long-distance skating events, for example.

II

Equipment and Clothing

Skaters wear stiff leather or synthetically moulded boots with blades attached by screws. Guards are placed on the blades to protect them when the skaters are not on the ice. The blades are 4 mm wide and are known as hollow ground in that they have a groove that runs the length of the blade. Thus there are inside and outside edges to each blade. There are teeth at the front of the blade known as toe picks (or toe rakes). They are used for digging into the ice to stop the skater from moving, for pivoting on, and for launching jumps from. Skaters generally wear elaborately decorated costumes with beads, spangles, rhinestones, and so on.

III

Rules of the Sport

The rules of figure skating have evolved considerably over the years, especially in respect of judging (see below). Traditionally, most skating competitions tested two elements of the skater’s skills: compulsory prescribed figures; and a free skating routine. In the compulsory figures (which came to an end in 1990), skaters used their blades to draw circles, figures-of-eight, and similar prescribed lines on the ice and were marked on their accuracy. In the early days such drills formed a major part of an overall score (around 60 per cent) but they became less and less important as the spectacle and drama (both for audiences and the television viewing public) became preeminent from the 1970s onwards. Compulsory figures were held in the men’s and women’s figures.

Today, skaters perform a short programme (for a third of the available points) and a free skating programme (two-thirds of the final score). In ice dance, compulsory dances are skated, together with an original dance and a free dance, with the last mentioned counting for half the total score.

In free skating routines the skaters perform a series of movements based on the traditional compulsory figures, including balletic leaps, spirals, jumps, spins, steps, and linking movements. There are many of these, all of which have technical names: for example, bracket, loop jump, axel, flip jump, lutz, salchow, split jump, layback spin, and so on. Many are named after the skaters who first performed or introduced them.

A

Jumps

Jumps form the basis of a skater’s routine and are classified according to the number of complete rotations in the air (singles, doubles, triples, and quadruples). There are also many types of jumps categorized by the way the skater takes off and lands. Toe jumps involve the skater placing the toe pick of the skate on the ice to form a take-off platform. Jumps formed in this manner include the toe loop, flip, and lutz (named after the Austrian skater Alois Lutz (1898-1918)). Three further jumps are performed by taking off from the edge of the blade: the loop, the salchow (named after Swedish skater Ulrich Salchow (1877-1949)), and the axel (named after Norwegian skater Axel Paulsen (1855-1938)). Jumps also have their own variations, frequently created by individual skaters and named after them, such as the “tano”, invented by Brian Boitano, who performed the lutz with one arm raised above his head. Many of the jumps mentioned above are performed in combination in a routine. For example, a triple, followed by a double, and then a single jump with no pause in between is known as a combination (of which there are many variations). Other (single) jumps, for example walleys, are used in a performance as linking movements between the major elements. Most skaters rotate their jumps in an anticlockwise direction.