Figure skating

• 1. Introduction

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  Figure skating was the first winter sport ever contested at the Olympic Games, and it arrived through a side door. Its debut came at the 1908 Summer Olympics in London, years before a Winter Games existed at all. On the ice that day, men and women traced patterns that gave the sport its very name. Those patterns were circles, drawn cleanly with the body, and for the first fifty years of competition they decided who won.

  Here is the strange part. A skater could be a mediocre free skater and still take the title, because compulsory figures once made up sixty percent of the total score. The crowds watching at home could not even see them. So how did a sport built on quiet circles on the ice become one where men launch four and a half revolutions into the air? Why does a single jagged set of teeth on the front of a blade separate triumph from disaster? And what does it mean that the best skaters in the world are not, by the sport's own definition, professionals? The answers run through blades measured to the millimeter, through a doping confession, through a plane crash, and through a single perfect score that has never been matched.

• 2. Edges And Toe Picks

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  Toe picks are the most visible difference between a figure skate and an ice hockey skate, a set of large jagged teeth on the front part of the blade. They are used primarily for jumping, vaulting the skater into the air. Used during a spin, the toe pick betrays its owner, causing a loss of momentum or pulling the skater away from the center of rotation.

  Blades are about 4.7 millimeters thick, and viewed from the side they are not flat. They curve into an arc of a circle with a radius of 180 to 220 centimeters, a shape called the rocker. The blade is also hollow ground, with a groove on the bottom that creates two distinct edges, inside and outside. In figure skating it is always desirable to skate on only one edge. Skating on both at once, called a flat, may lower a skater's skating skills score.

  The sweet spot is the part of the blade on which every spin rotates, located just behind the toe pick near the middle of the blade. The apparently effortless power and glide of elite skaters comes from efficient use of these edges to generate speed. Each discipline asks something different of the steel. Ice dancers' blades are about an inch shorter in the rear, with smaller toe picks, made to accommodate intricate footwork and close partnering without blades clashing.

  Modern blade technology increasingly uses carbon fibre and materials other than steel to make blades lighter. These can be more flexible and help cushion jump landings, protecting young athletes' joints. When a skater steps off the ice, hard plastic guards protect the blade from grit on the ground, while soft covers called soakers absorb condensation and ward off rust. In competition, skaters are allowed three minutes to repair their skates.

• 3. The Six Jumps

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  Six jumps in figure skating count as jump elements, and all six land on one foot on the back outside edge. What separates them is the takeoff. They fall into two families: toe jumps, launched by digging the toe pick into the ice, and edge jumps, which use no toe assist. The simplest of all is the waltz jump, done in a half-leap and not even classified as a single.

  The Axel stands alone. It is the only jump that takes off from a forward edge, which forces an extra half rotation into the air. That extra half is why the quadruple Axel demands four and a half revolutions. A few skaters made valiant efforts to land it, most notably two-time Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan, and failed to land one cleanly and fully rotated. The first clean, fully rotated quad Axel was landed by American skater Ilia Malinin at the 2022 CS U.S. Classic.

  Kurt Browning of Canada landed the first ratified quadruple jump, a quad toe loop, at the World Figure Skating Championships in 1988. Malinin's quad Axel came 34 years later, completing the set of six jumps landed as quads in international competition. The takeoff speed of a jump can reach up to 25 kilometers per hour, which is why a skater builds power by skating backward before most jumps. In 1982, the ISU ruled that a skater may perform each type of triple only once in a program, or twice if one is part of a combination.

  Most female single skaters perform triple jumps, though it is rare for a woman to land a quadruple, and very few have been credited with one in competition. Senior-level men perform mostly triples and quads. For clarity, all jumps are described for a counter-clockwise rotation, the direction the vast majority of skaters prefer, because a skater only needs to be able to jump in one direction.

• 4. Art On The Ice

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  Spins look more like art than sport. The New York Times put it this way: 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. World champion and commentator Scott Hamilton described spins as breathing points or transitions to bigger things. Unlike jumps, spins were a graceful and appreciated part of skating throughout the 19th century, and by the late 1930s all three basic positions were in use: the upright spin, the sit spin, and the camel spin.

  The death spiral is one of pair skating's most striking elements. The man performs a pivot with one toe anchored in the ice, holding his partner's hand as she circles him on a deep edge, her body almost parallel to the ice. As of 2011, the woman's head must at some time reach her skating knee. Twist lifts, called the most thrilling and exciting component in pair skating, require the woman to be caught in the air at the waist by the man before landing on a backward outside edge on one foot.

  Figure skating is one of the only human powered activities where travelling backwards is integral to the discipline. The ability to skate well backwards and forwards is considered equally important. A spiral, not to be confused with the death spiral, is an element where the skater glides on a specific edge with the free leg held at hip level or above. Spiral sequences were required in women's and pair skating until the 2012-13 season, when the choreographic sequence replaced them.

  Moves like the Ina Bauer and hydroblading live in the space between elements. An Ina Bauer resembles a spread eagle with one knee bent and typically an arched back. Hydroblading is a deep edge performed with the body as low as possible to the ice, in a near-horizontal position. These moves in the field demonstrate basic skating skills and edge control, and they carry the program from one big element to the next.

• 5. How Scores Are Made

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  In 2004, the ISU adopted the International Judging System in response to the judging controversy at the 2002 Winter Olympics. It became mandatory at all international competitions in 2006, including the 2006 Winter Olympics. Informally it is called the Code of Points, though the ISU has never used that term in its official communications. The system that came before, the 6.0 system, marked technical merit and presentation on a scale from 0.0 to 6.0, the highest being a perfect six.

  Every element now earns a score from its base value plus a grade of execution. A technical specialist identifies each element using instant replay video, verifying details like the exact foot position at takeoff and landing. A panel of nine judges then awards a grade of execution, an integer from minus 5 to plus 5. The highest and lowest values are discarded before averaging. For the 2018-19 season, that scale changed from its previous range of minus 3 to plus 3.

  The program components score rewards the holistic aspects a technical score cannot capture: composition, presentation, and skating skills. Judges award each component a raw mark from 0 to 10 in increments of 0.25, with a mark of 5 defined as average. A skater's final placement is determined by the total of their scores across all segments. No ordinal rankings decide the final result.

  The definitions can be unforgiving. An under-rotated jump, marked with a single bracket, receives 70 percent of its base value, while a downgraded jump is treated as a lesser jump entirely; a downgraded triple becomes a double. A fall is defined as a loss of control where the majority of the skater's body weight is supported not by the blade but by hands, knees, or buttocks. Skaters must perform a minimum of seven elements in the short program and twelve in the long.

• 6. Indoors And Year Round

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  Since 1980, all figure skating competitions must be held in completely covered and enclosed rinks, a rule expanded to practice rinks in 1984. According to figure skating historian James R. Hines, the development of indoor rinks has had the greatest effect on the sport, surpassed only by the bladed skate in the 14th century and the practice of fastening boots permanently to skates in the 19th. Indoor ice meant skating year-round, anywhere in the world, with no events cancelled for lack of ice outdoors.

  The first attempts at artificial ice came during the 1870s in England and the United States. The first notable indoor rink was built in 1876 by John Gamgee in Chelsea, along the north bank of the Thames, measuring 24 by 40 feet. By the end of the 19th century, many major cities in Europe and North America had indoor rinks of their own.

  Rink dimensions vary, and the differences matter. Olympic-sized rinks measure 30 by 60 meters, NHL-sized rinks 26 by 61, and European rinks are sometimes 30 by 64. The ISU prefers Olympic-sized rinks for major competitions because they make the differences in skill between skaters more apparent. If a rink has different dimensions, a skater's jump setup and speed may be hindered as they adjust.

  The ice itself is engineered to a temperature. For figure skating the surface is normally held between minus 5.5 and minus 3.5 degrees Celsius, with the Olympic disciplines requiring slightly softer ice at minus 3.5 than synchronized skating at minus 5.5. After about every two warm-up groups, an ice resurfacer cleans and smooths the sheet, because toe picks cause more deterioration than any other factor. Some rinks even install a harness system on a heavy-duty cable so a coach can lift a skater through a new jump, including one nicknamed the fishing pole harness for how it looks.

• 7. Amateurs Who Earn

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  The word professional in skating refers not to skill level but to competitive status. The best skaters at the highest levels of international competition are not professional skaters; they are sometimes called amateurs, even though some earn money. Professional skaters are those who have lost their ISU eligibility, those who perform only in shows, and former Olympic and World champions who have ended their competitive careers. The sport keeps two worlds separate, and the line between them is money and eligibility.

  The cost of staying in the amateur world is steep. In the late 1980s, the expenses of a top-ten women's competitor at the U.S. Championships reached nearly 50,000 US dollars a year. World champion Patrick Chan's expenses ran to 150,000 Canadian dollars, and Swiss skater Stephane Lambiel said his costs were around 100,000 Swiss francs per season. To fund this, many elite skaters in Germany join the army, while in Italy some join police sport groups; Carolina Kostner skated for the Polizia Penitenziaria's Fiamme Azzurre.

  The rewards rarely match the costs. A singles skater who won the 2011 World Championships earned 45,000 US dollars, roughly 1.8 to 2.5 percent of the prize for winning the tennis US Open or Australian Open. A pair or ice dance title was split, at 67,500 US dollars between two people. The ISU only introduced prize money at major competitions in 1995, funded by television rights, in an effort to keep skaters from leaving for lucrative professional events.

  Age governs who may even enter. To compete internationally at senior level, skaters must be at least 17 before July 1 of the preceding year. The limit was raised gradually, reaching 17 for the 2024-25 season, a move that followed the 2022 Winter Olympics scandal over Kamila Valieva's doping allegations and the controversy over her responsibility as a minor.

• 8. Cameras And Catastrophe

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  On the 15th of February 1961, the entire U.S. figure skating team and their coaches were killed in the crash of Sabena Flight 548 in Brussels, Belgium, en route to the World Championships in Prague. The disaster sent the U.S. skating program into a period of rebuilding. As North America recovered, the Soviet Union rose to dominate, especially in pair skating and ice dance. From 1965 to 2010, only five non-Soviet or Russian teams won the Olympics and World Championships in pairs.

  Television rewrote the sport from the inside. Compulsory figures, the circles that gave skating its name, could not be shown to viewers, while free skating could. Audiences complained when superior free programs failed to win gold. A critical case was Janet Lynn, who won the free skate decisively at the 1971 World Championships yet missed the podium, drawing an uproar and loud booing during the medal ceremony. Beginning in 1968 the ISU progressively reduced the weight of figures, introduced the short program in 1973, and eliminated figures from international competition in 1990.

  With figures gone, athleticism took over. In 1988 Midori Ito of Japan became the first woman to land a triple Axel. In 1984, more than 24 million people in Great Britain watched ice dancers Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean earn unanimous 6.0s for presentation, the only perfect score in Olympic skating history. That same year their performance was later ranked the 8th greatest sporting moment in a UK poll.

  Scandal proved as powerful as artistry. The Tonya Harding scandal in 1994 drove interest higher still. The first night of the women's competition at the 1994 Winter Olympics drew higher Nielsen ratings than the Super Bowl three weeks earlier, becoming, to that date, the most watched sports television program in the United States. To show their support, spectators still throw stuffed toys and flowers onto the ice, though officials discourage flowers that are not fully wrapped, lest the debris endanger the next skater to take the ice.