Skating History

History

There are two types of skating – Figure Skating and Speed Skating.

American Jackson Haines is considered to be the founding father of modern Figure Skating in the 1860s - established not in his home country, but in Vienna, Austria, where audiences loved his carefully choreographed, ballet-influenced style.

Before Haines, Figure Skating concentrated largely on required figures - skating a figure eight, several times exactly the same way - and movements.  Haines brought in musicians to play on the ice while he skated, while adding interesting costumes and exciting spins and pirouettes.

Figure Skating was an Olympic sport before there was an Olympic Winter Games.  Figure Skating first appeared at the London 1908 Olympic Summer Games with events for Pairs and Singles (indoor ice rinks could be kept cold even in hot weather).  Ice Dancing joined the Olympic Winter Games in 1976, when the Games were held in Innsbruck, Austria.  The compulsory figures competition was dropped from the Figure Skating program prior to the Albertville 1992 Olympic Winter Games.

Speed Skating emerged on the canals of Holland as early as the 13th century - a time when iron skates on wooden soles served as a mode of transportation.  Competitive racing is known to have been held in Holland as early as 1676.  In the early 19th century, the Dutch shared the concept of Speed Skating with their European neighbours.

Speed Skating has been part of the Olympic Games since the first Winter Games were held in Chamonix in 1924.  Originally only men took part in competition.  At the Lake Placid 1932 Games Women’s Speed Skating was a demonstration event and became a full medal event at the Squaw Valley 1960 Olympic Winter Games.

Speed Skating is the fastest human-powered, non-mechanical aided sport in the world.  Skaters can reach speeds of more than 60 kilometres per hour.


Technical

Speed Skating takes place on a 400 metre oval ice rink.  Timed to one-hundredth of a second, athletes compete in pairs, skating counter-clockwise around the oval and changing lanes once per lap, to equalize the distance covered.  The skater in the outside lane has the right-of-way at the crossover if the skaters arrive at the changeover point at the same time.

At the Olympic Games. each of Figure Skating’s four disciplines are adjudicated by a separate panel of 9 International Skating Union (ISU) championship judges using a computer scoring system to measure the quality of each performance.  Before each event, there is a secret and random draw to determine which judges’ scores will form the result of the segment.  Only seven of the 9 scores are used. A new draw is done for each segment.

During each performance the judges assign a grade of execution (GOE) to every element that is executed.  This makes up the technical score.  At the conclusion of each performance, the judges assign additional programme component scores that measure the overall technical and presentation abilities of the skater or team.  The individual or team with the highest totals of technical and programme component scores is deemed the winner.

In addition to the panel of judges, there is also a technical panel that determines the name and the level of difficulty of each element as it is performed.


Major Players

The Netherlands are the world’s strongest nation at Speed Skating though Russia are the dominant forces in Figure Skating as both topped their respective medal tables at the Turin 2006 Games.


Bluffers’ Guide

In Singles Skating, skaters must complete both a short programme (maximum 2 minutes 50 seconds) of required steps, jumps, spins and combinations, and a longer free skating programme (4 minutes for Ladies, 4 minutes 30 seconds for Men), both set to music.  The free skate - worth two-thirds of a skater’s final score - allows the athletes to demonstrate their creativity, innovative moves and technical difficulty.


Useless Information

The long, straight section of a speed skating oval track is called the straightaway.