60 Fun Facts About Ice Skating

Research suggests the earliest ice skating took place more than 4,000 years ago in which country?

Bone skates about 3,500 years old have also been found at a Bronze Age site in north-west China.

Which people are credited with adding sharpened edges to ice skates in the 13th or 14th century?

Before steel blades, skaters in London improvised with butchers' bones.

The world's first mechanically frozen ice rink, the Glaciarium, opened in 1876 in which city?

John Gamgee, a veterinarian, built it in a tent in Chelsea after studying refrigeration on a trip to look at Texas cattle fever.

Figure skating was the first winter sport at the Olympic Games, debuting at which Games?

Men's and women's singles were two of four skating events held that year.

Which American is called the 'father of modern figure skating' for his mid-1800s innovations?

He introduced ballet-inspired movement and found his warmest welcome in Vienna.

Which jump is the only basic figure skating jump with a forward take-off?

That gives it an extra half rotation, so a triple is really three and a half turns.

Norwegian Axel Paulsen first performed his namesake jump in 1882 while wearing what?

It happened at the first international figure skating competition, in Vienna.

How many World Championships did Swedish skater Ulrich Salchow, namesake of the Salchow jump, win?

He skipped 1906 in Munich, fearing biased judging against a German rival, and also won nine European titles.

Madge Syers prompted the creation of a separate women's world championship after doing what in 1902?

She won the first two ladies' events and the 1908 Olympic title.

How many Olympic gold medals did Norway's Sonja Henie win in women's singles?

She won in 1928, 1932 and 1936, then became one of Hollywood's highest-paid stars.

How old was Sonja Henie when she finished last of eight at her first Olympics in 1924?

Her furrier father gave up his business to manage her career.

Which skater landed the first competitive double Axel in 1948 and the first triple jump in 1952?

He then spent more than 40 years as ABC's famously blunt figure skating analyst.

Compulsory figures, which gave figure skating its name, were dropped by the ISU in which year?

Until 1947 they made up 60 percent of a skater's score.

Torvill and Dean's gold-medal Boléro at the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics earned how many perfect 6.0 scores?

More than 24 million Britons watched; the pair from Nottingham had been an insurance clerk and a policeman.

Ice dance became a Winter Olympic medal sport in which year?

It had joined the World Championships in 1952 and grew out of ballroom dance steps.

Which East German skater won back-to-back Olympic golds in 1984 and 1988?

Between 1984 and 1988 she won ten golds in eleven major international events.

Peggy Fleming was the only American to win gold at the Winter Olympics of which year?

Her coach had died in the 1961 plane crash that killed the entire US figure skating team.

Kristi Yamaguchi's 1992 Albertville title made her the first Asian American to do what?

She later won Dancing with the Stars, as did short-track skater Apolo Ohno.

How many world championships did Michelle Kwan win, tying Carol Heiss for the most by an American?

She also took nine US titles but never Olympic gold, winning silver in 1998 and bronze in 2002.

In 1991, Tonya Harding became the first American woman to land which jump in international competition?

Only Japan's Midori Ito had done it before her.

Nancy Kerrigan was attacked on January 6, 1994 with what weapon?

She recovered to win silver in Lillehammer behind Oksana Baiul; Harding was banned for life.

Hanyu's 2018 win made him the first man in 66 years to defend Olympic gold, since whom?

He was also the first Asian men's Olympic champion and won four straight Grand Prix Finals.

Which 2022 Olympic champion defended a world title during his spring break from Yale?

He was the first singles skater to win both team and individual gold at the same Games.

Which American landed the first clean, fully rotated quadruple Axel in 2022?

The quad Axel means four and a half rotations in the air.

How long is a standard long-track speed skating oval?

Short track uses a 111.12-metre loop on a rink the size of a hockey rink.

Speed skating first reached the Olympic programme at the 1924 winter sports week in which town?

American Charles Jewtraw won the first gold; one Nordic country took the other four.

How many individual gold medals did Eric Heiden win at the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics?

That was more than any nation except two managed at those Games; he also delivered the athletes' oath.

How many Winter Olympic medals did short-track skater Apolo Ohno win?

Two gold, two silver and four bronze; he also won Dancing with the Stars in 2007.

Short-track speed skating first appeared at the Winter Olympics as a demonstration sport in which city?

Four to six skaters race together on the 111-metre oval.

The Elfstedentocht, a nearly 200 km skating tour, takes place in which Dutch province?

It needs 15 cm of natural ice along the whole route and has been held only three times in the last 50 years, most recently in 1997.

Frank Zamboni developed the first ice resurfacing machine in 1949 in which California town?

He was in the refrigeration business and had built the Iceland rink there in 1939.

In which year did Rockefeller Center's famous skating rink open, replacing unprofitable shops?

The complex's Christmas tree had first gone up in 1933.

The touring show Ice Capades was founded in 1940 in which state?

Nine arena managers set it up in Hershey to fill their buildings in winter; it prospered for 50 years.

Which diarist recorded skating with the future King James II in St James's Park in December 1662?

Half a century later Swift still assumed the sport was unfamiliar to his friend Stella.

Which royal once had to be rescued by his wife after falling through the ice at Buckingham Palace?

Queen Victoria and a lady in waiting pulled him out.

The figure skating team event was first held at the Winter Olympics in which year?

It combines men's, women's, pairs and ice dance.

John Gamgee's first notable indoor rink in Chelsea in 1876 measured roughly what?

Modern Olympic rinks are 60 by 30 metres.

Women's speed skating events were first held at the Winter Olympics in which year?

Men had raced since 1924.

How many skaters typically race together in a short-track heat?

That is why short track is famous for pile-ups and photo finishes.

Which country, home to the Thialf hall in Heerenveen, is a speed-skating hotbed alongside Norway and South Korea?

Marathon races there are held on canals and lakes, or 100 laps of a 400 m track.

What are the jagged teeth on the front of a figure skate blade called?

They are used for jumping and should never be used to spin, since they kill momentum and pull the skater off centre.

How many different jumps count as jump elements in figure skating?

All of them land on one foot on the back outside edge; they are told apart by their take-offs and split into toe jumps and edge jumps.

Which toe jump takes off from the back outside edge, unlike the flip's inside edge?

Doing it from the wrong edge earns an 'e' for edge violation and a lower grade of execution.

In which year did Kurt Browning land the first ratified quad at the World Championships?

Jozef Sabovčík had landed one at the 1986 Europeans, but it was ruled invalid three weeks later because his free foot touched down.

Which Japanese skater became the first woman to land a triple Axel in competition?

The jump pushed the technical level of women's programmes just as compulsory figures were losing their value.

The ISU's 2004 International Judging System responded to a scandal at which Winter Olympics?

The system became mandatory at all international events in 2006; fans call it the Code of Points, a name the ISU has never used.

Along with the upright spin and the sit spin, what is the third basic spin position?

Skaters also perform flying spins and combination spins built from these positions.

The death spiral is a required element of which discipline?

The man pivots on one anchored toe while his partner circles him on a deep edge, body almost parallel to the ice.

By what name was the synchronized discipline formerly known?

Teams of twelve to twenty skaters perform wheels, blocks, lines, circles and intersections.

The first World Figure Skating Championships were held in 1896 in which city?

Only men competed in the early years, until Madge Syers entered the men's event in 1902 and finished second.

What is the name of the area where skaters wait for their scores in front of the TV cameras?

Television's focus on it helped popularise the sport and helped end its strict amateur-status rules.

An Ina Bauer is a variation of which gliding move, done with one knee bent and usually an arched back?

Both are two-footed edge moves often used to connect elements in step sequences.

In which year was the International Skating Union founded?

The first European Championships had already been held in Hamburg the year before.

According to ISU rules, a figure skating rink for an ISU event should if possible measure what?

That is Olympic size; NHL rinks are narrower and some European rinks longer.

The first organised skating club, formed in the 1740s, was based in which city?

Candidates for admission had to skate a complete circle on either foot and then jump over one, two and three stacked hats.

The first instructional book on skating, published in London in 1772, was written by a lieutenant in which force?

Robert Jones's The Art of Figure Skating was written solely for men and marked the split between speed and figure skating.

The National Skating Association, the world's first national skating body, was founded in 1879 in which English city?

Professional Fens skaters met at the Guildhall to set it up, and its first British professional championship was raced at Thorney that December.

The 'rink mania' artificial rinks of 1841-44 used a skating surface made mainly of what?

Real refrigerated ice had to wait until John Gamgee's Glaciarium opened in London in 1876.

Bronze-age skates made of animal bones, roughly 3,500 years old, were found at the Gaotai Ruins in which country?

Archaeologists called them clear evidence of Bronze Age contact between China and Europe because they resemble bone skates found in Europe.

Who won the very first ISU championship, held in Saint Petersburg in 1896 with only four competitors?

The ISU had been founded four years earlier in Scheveningen in the Netherlands.