Figure Skating
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50 free Figure Skating trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Figure skating asks for two things that rarely go together: the power to launch a jump with four rotations and the control to make it look effortless. It is one of the oldest sports on the Winter Olympic programme, and its champions, costumes and controversies have made headlines for more than a century. This quiz covers the sport from the ice up: the jumps, spins and glides and how to tell them apart, the scoring and the vocabulary of the rink, the Olympic champions and rivalries people still argue about, and the pioneers who shaped the sport. Pairs, ice dance and the films the sport inspired get their turn too. It suits anyone who watches the Winter Games every four years as well as fans who follow every season. Each answer comes with a short explanation, so you pick up the story behind the move, the medal or the scandal as you play.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which city's Summer Games staged figure skating's Olympic debut, 16 years before any Winter Games?
London
London held the events in late October 1908 at the Prince's Skating Club in Knightsbridge, three months after the main stadium events had finished in July.
Q 02Which two-time Olympic champion's fans showered the ice with Winnie-the-Pooh toys after every skate?
Yuzuru Hanyu
Yuzuru Hanyu began carrying a Winnie-the-Pooh tissue box to competitions in 2010, and his supporters made the bear their gift of choice. He was the first Asian man to win the Olympic singles title.
Q 03Which British ice dancers got a 6.0 from every judge for artistic impression with a 1984 Boléro?
Torvill and Dean
Torvill and Dean kept their blades off the ice for the first 18 seconds, because their music ran over the limit and the clock only started when a skate touched down.
Q 04Which jump, the oldest and hardest in figure skating, is the only one with a forward takeoff?
Axel
Axel jumps gain an extra half turn from that takeoff, so a triple is really three and a half revolutions. Its Norwegian inventor first landed one in 1882, wearing speed skates.
Q 05Which American won 1994 Olympic silver weeks after an attacker hit her leg with a baton in Detroit?
Nancy Kerrigan
Nancy Kerrigan was hit in a corridor of the Cobo Arena, at the US Championships, by a man hired by a rival's ex-husband. She recovered in time to finish second in Lillehammer.
Q 06Which move, banned for nearly 50 years until 2024, did Surya Bonaly land on one blade at the 1998 Olympics?
A backflip
A backflip was ruled too dangerous by the ISU, and skaters landed it on two blades. Bonaly landed hers on one, knowing it was illegal, and retired soon afterward.
Q 07What name is given to the rinkside area where figure skaters and coaches wait for the scores?
The kiss and cry
The kiss and cry was named by Finnish official Jane Erkko, when TV technicians mapping the arena for the 1983 World Championships asked what the spot was called.
Q 08Which American became the youngest Olympic singles champion, at 15, at the 1998 Nagano Games?
Tara Lipinski
Tara Lipinski announced she was turning professional two months later, which under the rules of the day ended her Olympic eligibility for good.
Q 09Which Norwegian won three Olympic titles in a row, then became one of Hollywood's top-paid stars?
Sonja Henie
Sonja Henie also won ten consecutive world titles, a run no women's singles skater has matched. Her films were often the first time audiences saw the sport on screen.
Q 10Which 1976 Olympic champion's short wedge haircut became a craze among American women and girls?
Dorothy Hamill
Dorothy Hamill's bob was created by stylist Yusuke Suga for her gold-medal skate in Innsbruck. She also invented a spin combination that still carries her name.
Q 11What name do figure skaters give the jagged teeth at the front of the blade that hockey skates lack?
Toe pick
Toe pick teeth dig into the ice to launch jumps and anchor spins and footwork. Coaches teach beginners never to push off with them when stroking down the rink.
Q 12Which pairs move has one partner pivot as the other circles low, head almost touching the ice?
Death spiral
Death spiral rules make the man hold a full pivot with his knees clearly bent while both partners complete at least one revolution. Judges only start counting once both reach the low position.
Q 13Which spin has the skater reach back, grab the free foot's blade and pull it up over the head?
Biellmann
Q 21Which skater won the only US gold medal of the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble?
Peggy Fleming
Peggy Fleming wore a chartreuse dress chosen by her mother, a color named after the liqueur that Carthusian monks make in the mountains near Grenoble.
Q 22Which 1984 Olympic champion, his growth stunted by childhood illness, co-founded Stars on Ice?
Scott Hamilton
Scott Hamilton stopped growing at age two, and doctors only later traced it to a brain tumor he was born with. He carried the US flag at the 1980 opening ceremony.
Q 23Which American edged Canada's Orser for 1988 Olympic gold, both in military-themed free skates?
Brian Boitano
Biellmann spin takes its name from Swiss world champion Denise Biellmann, who made it popular. A later Russian champion invented a double version with a change of foot.
Q 14Which basic spin, borrowed from ballet's arabesque, holds torso and free leg parallel to the ice?
Camel
Camel spin was first performed by British skater Cecilia Colledge in the mid-1930s. Its other name, the parallel spin, describes the shape exactly.
Q 15Which jump, the second hardest in figure skating, is named after an Austrian skater from Vienna?
Lutz
Lutz takeoffs are counter-rotational: the skater winds up one way and jumps the other. Many slip onto the wrong edge, a cheat that fans nickname the flutz.
Q 16The Salchow jump honors a ten-time world champion and first Olympic men's winner from which country?
Sweden
Sweden's Ulrich Salchow gave his name to the jump in 1909. It is usually the first jump that skaters learn to double.
Q 17Which fast one-foot turn that travels across the ice has been called the quad of ice dance?
Twizzle
Twizzle sequences are so exact that Meryl Davis said she and Charlie White tracked each other's feet by the sound their blades made on the ice.
Q 18Which glide on two parallel blades was the signature move of 2006 Olympic champion Shizuka Arakawa?
Ina Bauer
Ina Bauer was the German skater who invented it. Arakawa's back-bending version was repeated so often in Japan that the name became a vogue word for bending over backwards.
Q 19Which glide has the skater travel on both feet, toes turned out and heels facing each other?
Spread eagle
Spread eagle glides are a favorite entrance to a jump, because launching straight out of one raises that jump's difficulty under the scoring code.
Q 20Which segment, once worth 60 percent of the total score, was dropped from international competition after 1990?
Compulsory figures
Compulsory figures, the circular patterns that skaters traced on the ice to show control of their turns and edges, are what gave the sport its name.
Brian Boitano and his rival shared a first name, so the press billed their Calgary showdown as the Battle of the Brians.
Q 24Which East German won a second straight Olympic title in 1988's so-called Battle of the Carmens?
Katarina Witt
Katarina Witt's skirtless, feather-trimmed costume that season led the ISU to demand more modest outfits, a change dubbed the Katarina rule.
Q 25Which Stanford pre-med student became the first Black athlete to win a Winter Olympic medal?
Debi Thomas
Debi Thomas took bronze in Calgary, then finished an engineering degree and went on to medical school, qualifying as a physician.
Q 26Which 1992 Olympic champion had earlier won two US pairs titles with Rudy Galindo before going solo?
Kristi Yamaguchi
Kristi Yamaguchi was born with clubfoot and spent most of her first year in leg casts. Her 1992 win made her the first Asian American to take Winter Olympic gold.
Q 27Which American skater did Margot Robbie play in a 2017 film that won Allison Janney an Oscar?
Tonya Harding
Tonya Harding's story reached Robbie as a script, and the actress did not realize it was based on real events until she had finished reading it.
Q 28Which 16-year-old's 1994 win was the first Olympic gold for independent Ukraine in any sport?
Oksana Baiul
Oksana Baiul skated the final with three stitches in her shin and a wrenched back, after colliding with a German rival in practice.
Q 29Which American won five world titles and nine US titles but never took Olympic gold?
Michelle Kwan
Michelle Kwan came closest in 1998, when she led after the short program and finished with silver. She later served as the US ambassador to Belize.
Q 30Which South Korean won 2010 Olympic gold and never once finished off the podium in her career?
Yuna Kim
Yuna Kim was the first woman to score more than 200 points overall. She helped Pyeongchang win the 2018 Winter Games, then lit the cauldron at their opening ceremony.