Figure skating is a sport in which individuals, pairs, or groups perform on figure skates on ice. It was the first winter sport to be included in the Olympic Games, when it was contested at the 1908 Olympics in London. The Olympic disciplines are men's singles, women's singles, pair skating, and ice dance; the four individual disciplines are also combined into a team event, which was first included in the Winter Olympics in 2014. The non-Olympic disciplines include synchronized skating, Theater on Ice, and four skating. From intermediate through senior-level competition, skaters generally perform two programs, which, depending on the discipline, may include spins, jumps, moves in the field, lifts, throw jumps, death spirals, and other elements or moves.
Ice dance is a discipline of figure skating that historically draws from ballroom dancing. It joined the World Figure Skating Championships in 1952, and became a Winter Olympic Games medal sport in 1976. According to the International Skating Union (ISU), the governing body of figure skating, an ice dance team consists of one woman and one man.
Figure skating jumps are an element of three competitive figure skating disciplines: men's singles, women's singles, and pair skating – but not ice dancing. Jumping in figure skating is "relatively recent". They were originally individual compulsory figures, and sometimes special figures; many jumps were named after the skaters who invented them or from the figures from which they were developed. It was not until the early part of the 20th century, well after the establishment of organized skating competitions, when jumps with the potential of being completed with multiple revolutions were invented and when jumps were formally categorized. In the 1920s Austrian skaters began to perform the first double jumps in practice. Skaters experimented with jumps, and by the end of the period, the modern repertoire of jumps had been developed. Jumps did not have a major role in free skating programs during international competitions until the 1930s. During the post-war period and into the 1950s and early 1960s, triple jumps became more common for both male and female skaters, and a full repertoire of two-revolution jumps had been fully developed. In the 1980s men were expected to complete four or five difficult triple jumps, and women had to perform the easier triples. By the 1990s, after compulsory figures were removed from competitions, multi-revolution jumps became more important in figure skating.
Spins are an element in figure skating in which the skater rotates, centered on a single point on the ice, while holding one or more body positions. They are performed by all disciplines of the sport, single skating, pair skating, and ice dance, and are a required element in most figure skating competitions. As The New York Times says, "While jumps look like sport, spins look more like art. While jumps provide the suspense, spins provide the scenery, but there is so much more to the scenery than most viewers have time or means to grasp". According to world champion and figure skating commentator Scott Hamilton, spins are often used "as breathing points or transitions to bigger things"
Michelle Wingshan Kwan is a retired competitive figure skater and diplomat serving as United States Ambassador to Belize. In figure skating Kwan is a two-time Olympic medalist, a five-time World champion and a nine-time U.S. champion. She is tied with Maribel Vinson for the all-time National Championship record.
Tara Kristen Lipinski is an American former competitive figure skater, actress, sports commentator, and documentary film producer. A former competitor in women's singles, she is the 1998 Olympic champion, the 1997 World champion, a two-time Champions Series Final champion (1997–1998) and the 1997 U.S. national champion. Until 2019, she was the youngest single skater to win a U.S. Nationals and the youngest to become an Olympic and World champion in figure skating history. She is the first woman to complete a triple loop-triple loop combination, her signature jump element, in competition. Starting in 1997, Lipinski had a rivalry with fellow skater Michelle Kwan, which was played up by the American press, and culminated when Lipinski won the gold medal at the 1998 Olympics.
The World Figure Skating Championships ("Worlds") is an annual figure skating competition sanctioned by the International Skating Union. Medals are awarded in the categories of men's singles, women's singles, pair skating, and ice dance. Generally held in March, the World Championships are considered the most prestigious of the ISU Figure Skating Championships. With the exception of the Olympic title, a world title is considered to be the highest competitive achievement in figure skating.
Synchronized skating, often called synchro, is an ice skating sport where between 5 and 20 skaters perform together as a team. They move as a flowing unit at high speed over the ice, while performing elements and footwork.
Compulsory figures or school figures were formerly a segment of figure skating, and gave the sport its name. They are the "circular patterns which skaters trace on the ice to demonstrate skill in placing clean turns evenly on round circles". For approximately the first 50 years of figure skating as a sport, until 1947, compulsory figures made up 60 percent of the total score at most competitions around the world. These figures continued to dominate the sport, although they steadily declined in importance, until the International Skating Union (ISU) voted to discontinue them as a part of competitions in 1990. Learning and training in compulsory figures instilled discipline and control; some in the figure skating community considered them necessary to teach skaters basic skills. Skaters would train for hours to learn and execute them well, and competing and judging figures would often take up to eight hours during competitions.
Figure skating was first contested in the Olympic Games at the 1908 Summer Olympics. Since 1924, the sport has been a part of the Winter Olympic Games.
Pair skating is a figure skating discipline defined by the International Skating Union (ISU) as "the skating of two persons in unison who perform their movements in such harmony with each other as to give the impression of genuine Pair Skating as compared with independent Single Skating". The ISU also states that a pairs team consists of "one Woman and one Man". Pair skating, along with men's and women's single skating, has been an Olympic discipline since figure skating, the oldest Winter Olympic sport, was introduced at the 1908 Summer Olympics in London. The ISU World Figure Skating Championships introduced pair skating in 1908.
The ISU Judging System (or the International Judging System (IJS)), occasionally referred to as the Code of Points (COP) system, is the scoring system that has been used since 2004 to judge the figure skating disciplines of men's and ladies' singles, pair skating, ice dance, and synchronized skating. It was designed and implemented by the International Skating Union (ISU), the ruling body of the sport.
The history of figure skating stretches back to prehistoric times. Primitive ice skates appear in the archaeological record from about 3000 BC. Edges were added by the Dutch in the 13th and 14th century. International figure skating competitions began appearing in the late 19th century; in 1891, the European Championships were inaugurated in Hamburg, Germany, and in 1896, the first World Championship were held in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire. At the 1908 Summer Olympics in London, England, figure skating became the first winter sport to be included in the Olympics.
The following is a glossary of figure skating terms, sorted alphabetically.
A figure skating competition is a judged sports competition in figure skating.
Single skating is a discipline of figure skating in which male and female skaters compete individually. Men's singles and women's singles are governed by the International Skating Union (ISU). Figure skating is the oldest winter sport contested at the Olympics, with men's and women's single skating appearing as two of the four figure skating events at the London Games in 1908.
The short program of figure skating is the first of two segments of competitions, skated before the free skating program. It lasts, for both senior and junior singles and pair skaters, 2 minutes and 40 seconds. In synchronized skating, for both juniors and seniors, the short program lasts 2 minutes and 50 seconds. Vocal music with lyrics is allowed for all disciplines since the 2014-2015 season. The short program for single skaters and for pair skaters consists of seven required elements, and there are six required elements for synchronized skaters.
The original dance (OD) was one of the programs performed by figure skaters in ice dance competitions, in which the ice dancers skated "a dance of their own creation to dance music they have selected for the designated rhythm(s)". It was normally the second of three programs in the competition, sandwiched between the compulsory dance (CD) and the free dance (FD). The rhythm(s) and type of music required for the OD changed every season, and were selected by the International Skating Union (ISU) before the start of the season. The ice dancers were free to choose their own music and choreography and to create their own routines. They were judged on a set of required criteria, including skating skills and how well they interpreted the music and the rhythm.
The Axel jump or Axel Paulsen jump, named after its inventor, Norwegian figure skater Axel Paulsen, is an edge jump performed in figure skating. It is the sport's oldest and most difficult jump, and the only basic jump in competition with a forward take-off, which makes it the easiest to identify. A double or triple Axel is required in both the short program and the free skating segment for junior and senior single skaters in all events sanctioned by the International Skating Union (ISU).
The compulsory dance (CD), now called the pattern dance, is a part of the figure skating segment of ice dance competitions in which all the competing couples perform the same standardized steps and holds to the music of a specified tempo and genre. One or more compulsory dances were usually skated as the first phase of ice dancing competitions. The 2009–10 season was the final season in which the segment was included in International Skating Union (ISU) junior and senior level competition. In June 2010, the ISU replaced the name "compulsory dance" with "pattern dance" for ice dance, and merged it into the short dance (SD) beginning in the 2010–11 figure skating season.
