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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, with its introduction occurring 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.
Debra Janine Thomas is an American figure skater and physician. She is the 1986 World champion, the 1988 Olympic bronze medalist, and a two-time U.S. national champion. Her rivalry with East Germany's Katarina Witt at the 1988 Calgary Olympics was known as the Battle of the Carmens.
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.
Elizabeth Ann Manley, CM is a Canadian former competitive figure skater. She is the 1988 Olympic silver medallist, the 1988 World silver medalist and a three-time Canadian national champion.
Robin John Cousins MBE is a British former competitive figure skater who was BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 1980. He was the 1980 Olympic champion, the 1980 European champion, a three-time World medalist (1978–1980) and four-time British national champion (1977–1980), winning all of these titles during his amateur career. He followed this with a successful career as a professional figure skater and later starred in ice shows as well as producing several of his own. He is able to spin in either direction, both clockwise and anti-clockwise, which is an unusual skill for a figure skater.
Linda Sue Fratianne is an American former figure skater known for winning two world-championship titles, four consecutive U.S. championships (1977–1980) and a silver medal in the 1980 Winter Olympics.
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Oleg Alekseyevich Protopopov was a Russian pair skater who represented the Soviet Union. With his wife Ludmila Belousova he was a two-time Olympic champion and four-time World champion (1965–1968). In 1979, the pair defected to Switzerland and became Swiss citizens in 1995. They continued to skate at ice shows and exhibitions until their seventies.
Gillis Emanuel Grafström was a Swedish figure skater. He was born in Stockholm, Sweden. He won three successive Olympic gold medals in Men's Figure Skating as well as an Olympic silver medal in the same event in 1932, and three World Championships. He and Eddie Eagan are the only athletes to have won a gold medal at both the Summer and Winter Olympic Games. Grafström has the further distinction of being the only person to have won an individual gold medal in both the Summer (1920) and Winter Olympics, although Eagan remains the only one to have managed the feat in different disciplines. Grafström is one of the few athletes who have competed in both the Summer and Winter Olympic games. He is one of the oldest figure skating Olympic champions.
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Special figures were a component of figure skating in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Like compulsory figures, special figures involved tracing patterns on the ice with the blade of one ice skate. This required the skater to display significant balance and control while skating on one foot.
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.
Shepherd Walton Clark is a famous American competitive figure skater and is the reigning World Figure & Fancy Skating Champion.
The 1965 U.S. Figure Skating Championships was held at the (1932) Olympic Arena in Lake Placid, New York, from February 10 to 13, 1965. Medals were awarded in three colors: gold (first), silver (second), and bronze (third) in four disciplines – men's singles, ladies' singles, pair skating, and ice dancing – across three levels: senior, junior, and novice.
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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.
Eva Pate is an American ice dancer. With her skating partner and fiancé, Logan Bye, she is the 2023 CS Autumn Classic International champion and a two-time ISU Challenger Series silver medalist.
The demise and revival of compulsory figures occurred, respectively, in 1990, when the International Skating Union (ISU) removed compulsory figures from international single skating competitions, and beginning in 2015, when the first competition focusing entirely on figures took place. Compulsory figures, which is defined as the "circular patterns which skaters trace on the ice to demonstrate skill in placing clean turns evenly on round circles", dominated figure skating for the first 50 years of the sport, although they progressively declined in importance. 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. Judging scandals and the broadcasts of figure skating on television have been cited as the reason for the decline of figures. The U.S. was the last country to include figures in their competitions, until 1999. The elimination of figures resulted in the increase of focus on the free skating segment and in the domination of younger girls in the sport. Most skaters stopped training with figures, although many coaches continued to teach figures and skaters continued to practice them because figures taught basic skating skills and gave skaters an advantage in developing alignment, core strength, body control, and discipline.
References
- 1 2 "Special Regulations for Figures" (PDF). U.S. Figure Skating Association. Retrieved 8 February 2024.
- ↑ Hines, p. 35
- ↑ Hines, p. 197
- ↑ "No More Figures in Figure Skating". The New York Times. Associated Press. 9 June 1988. p. D00025. Retrieved 8 February 2024.
- 1 2 3 4 Schwindt, Troy (27 January 2024). "Figures and Fancy Skating". U.S. Figure Skating. Retrieved 8 February 2024.
- 1 2 Sausa, Christie (21 May 2020). "World Figure Skating Enthusiasts take Figures Online". Lake Placid News. Retrieved 8 February 2024.
- ↑ La Franca, Joey (2 January 2021). "Cool as Ice: World Figure & Fancy Skating Championships Thrive in Plattsburgh". Press-Republican. Plattsburgh, New York. Retrieved 8 February 2024.
- ↑ Sausa, Christie (1 September 2015). "Figures Revival". Lake Placid News. Lake Placid, New York. Archived from the original on 29 September 2018. Retrieved 8 February 2024.
- ↑ "World Figure Championship & Figure Festival Coming to Lake Placid, NY" (Press release). Lake Placid, New York: World Figure Sport Society. 24 April 2015. Archived from the original on 29 September 2018. Retrieved 8 February 2024.
- ↑ La Franca, Joey (2 January 2021). "Competitors Carve out Their Talents at Skating Championships". Press-Republican. Plattsburgh, New York. Archived from the original on 5 February 2023. Retrieved 8 February 2024.
- ↑ Radnofsky, Louise (20 December 2019). "Who Needs Triple Axels and Toe Loops—Give Us 'Compulsory Figures'". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 8 February 2024.
