"While there is absolutely nothing wrong with preferring a style of skating from a previous era the way one might prefer music from a different generation... this sort of sentiment is peculiar to sports like figure skating and gymnastics. In track and field, for example, there is no yearning for a time when athletes ran slower or jumped lower but embodied some other essential values.... It’s too soon to tell whether the pendulum will swing back toward presentation and skating skills because it’s too soon to know if a critical mass of female skaters will be able to do the quad. The quad mountain is a much steeper climb than the triple hill was.... Historically speaking, anxieties over the safety of female athletes have been used to deny women the opportunity to participate in sports, especially ones that were deemed 'masculine.' There’s a blade-like thin line between protection and protectionism. We, of course, should be concerned about the physical ramifications of training certain jumps, especially during growth periods when athletes are more susceptible to injury. But we have to be wary of the protectionist impulse that stems from a particular worldview about what women’s figure skating is — and is not — and the determination of some to steer it in a certain way so we end up with the 'right' type of winners."
From "The Quad Jump Revolution Has Transformed Women’s Figure Skating. How Far Will It Go?" (FiveThirtyEight).
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America's Sweetheart Dorothy Hamill may not have done any triples. But you know what she DID do that figure skaters don't do now?
Figures.
So, somebody on youtube liked Figure skating in the past before doing Triple-axels were the norm. And 538 noticed. One thing *I've* noticed is that sports writers constantly trumpet the new and now over the old. Everything has to be better in sports than it once was. The time the Sports writers pine for the old days is when they bring up all the old Black Superstars in MLB.
But things devolve as well as evolve.
Anyway, I like Women's figure skating at the Olympics. I liked it in 1984. I'm not sophisticated enough to the tell the difference. I sorta remember Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan. Tonya was more of the athletic skater, Nancy was the more graceful. That's the only time the difference jumped out at me.
Too bad not many people will be watching the Genocide games from China. These atheletes deserve better. Ice Skating was my favorite Winter sport to watch in the Olympics.
Wow. Having read through the entire piece, that was one mighty bit of chopping to create that excerpt. Pages and pages and pages between the ... there.
And people like the grace and beauty of the "old figure staking" because grace and beauty are graceful and beautiful even if today favors athletes with men's bodies in women's sports.
I always liked watching the women's figure skating, but lost interest when it was almost all 14-year olds. Never cared much for the men, the women just seem much more graceful on the ice. I like the jumps.
This article is just pining for a trans-woman to enter women's figure skating and take over with quad, and quin and sextuple jumps. If you want athleticism, you'll get that. And so much for the women.
"The exemplar of the new quad jump trend is 15-year-old Kamila Valieva"
IOW, "women's" figure skating is actually girls’ figure skating.
And this is the way, as the article says, for “women” to intrude on men’s turf?
Even that comes at a cost: early hip surgery for Lipinski, back surgery for the Russians using an inherently unsafe technique. Etc. Child abuse.
Surya Bonaly, 1998 Olympics, backflip landed on one foot. Illegal in competition.
Ahhh for the good old days when women could not run distance races because..... I forgot. But it sure wasn't because they might break something.
The Cutting Edge 1992, romcom getting in dangerous female skating move just as the era changes.
>In track and field, for example, there is no yearning for a time when athletes ran slower or jumped lower>
Nope, just for a time when they weren't doping and they weren't proselytizing their political views.
"While there is absolutely nothing wrong with preferring a style of skating from a previous era the way one might prefer music from a different generation... this sort of sentiment is peculiar to sports like figure skating and gymnastics. In track and field, for example, there is no yearning for a time when athletes ran slower or jumped lower but embodied some other essential values..."
Very true, but I feel like that merits a "No duh" or two.
In the '80s, I was an avid watcher of figure skating - I videotaped many of the championships and would watch over and over. I remember when Kurt Browning landed the first quad jump in a major championship. Midori Ito was the first female to land a triple axel. Both were considered the outer limits for their gender. Most women do not have the special muscles (thigh) to make these jumps which require special height in order to complete the rotations.
How long before a trans women begin to skate as a female? They have the muscles for it - just like trans women who have the shoulders to compete in certain swimming categories.
Top women skaters want to do the quad jump? Easy. Just identify as a man. All top male skaters do the quad.
I seem to recall a story from a few years back (possibly on the ESPN 30 for 30 podcast), about figure skating as an institution discriminating against a female skater who had the physical strength to do flips. These are technically permitted, but generally avoided because of the difficult and danger if the move is not completed. Because figure skating is judged subjectively, she was getting low scores mostly for the unseemly parts of the routine where she built up enough momentum to make these rare and spectacular moves. The more graceful skaters couldn't compete with those moves, so the judges attempted to sideline her for lack of grace.
My takeaway: Figure skating is judged subjectively, on aesthetic merits. Sure, skaters have to be in top physical form to deliver the aesthetics. But you judge the aesthetics, not the physique. Same as with a ballerina. So skaters that try to win by overpowering the competition instead of out-dancing them are always going to be handicapped. Is the quad jump a high-scoring move? Sure. Is powering your way through a high-scoring set the way to the judges' hearts? Probably not.
It all comes back to Thigh Gap, eventually.
-- Loren
How far will it go?
Not very far at all.
To call the quad jump revolutionary is absurdly naive. At this very moment, a product of mad medicine that calls itself a woman is perfecting the quintuple jump.
Dick Buttons is still alive!
Born: July 18, 1929 (age 92 years), Englewood, NJ
I always thought the axel maneuver was for a spinning axle, not some Norge.
As long as music is performed during a routine there is going to be a question about the place of pure athleticism. Perhaps the short programs for all but ice dancing. should be performed without music and with different rules. Interesting contrast with gymnastics where music for women's floor exercise, not for mens'.
I loved the figure skating back in the 1989s but I don’t care anymore. Too jumpy.
One year of dialectic.
Two decades of cultural confusion (sore winners syndrome)
Sixty years of hating the Russians.
A century of Weimar abstraction.
Making sure your daughter's competition has a vagina?
Priceless.
rhharden, if you had a web site devoted to rom coms, I would love it.
Figure skating (like so many current Olympic events) is not a sport. There is no objective measure. T&F, weightlifting, wrestling, swimming, archery, these are sports. Essentially the events of martial origin that comprised the original Olympics are real sports, not subjective popularity contests. That is why there is little nostalgia for the old days in these sports.
... because it’s too soon to know if a critical mass of female skaters will be able to do the quad.
That critical mass will eventually materialize. The quad requires the skater to achieve height and increase the speed of their spins. As physiologists learn more and more about building up muscles in female athletes, more and more will develop the strength and speed to do the quad. And I'm talking female athletes with the XX chromosomes, not fake women.
The apex of the figure skating story arc happened at Lilyhammer, it's all downhill from there, unless the writers can come up with something new to top it.
Firuge skaters pulling their arms in are the standard physics model of conservation of angular momentum.
"I loved the figure skating back in the 1989s but I don’t care anymore. Too jumpy."
Me too. But then, I liked tennis back in the 80s, before the carbon racket and the 150 mph serve. Ah, for the days of Borg and McEnroe and the endless rallies.
Eddie Shore? Old-time hockey?
Are they going to have an Olympics, this year?
My daughter used to compete in gymnastics. When she discovered videos of Olga Korbut she was shocked at what was good enough for a gold medal back then. It was easier than stuff she was doing several levels below the gymnasts we see today.
Like the NBA and the NFL or yore...those sports used to be full contact all the way down the court/field and the quarterbacks didn't wear dresses.
It was much tougher in those days...
Some random thoughts:
What would Brian Boitano do?
This does seem to be of a piece - the further erasure of women. The idea that women need to be more like men to succeed. Not only in sports, but in modeling, art, business. Even physically, that is, sexually, women are told they need to reject their natural fertile womanhood and be like men.
If you're going to make comparisons, figure skating, which is subjectively judged, to track, which is objectively determined, is not it. Speed skating and track are the comparisons. Meanwhile, just like I like my figure skaters graceful, I like my curlers to have that certain grace that is needed to score rather than just speed or brute strength.
There is a place for tough, bad-ass women, but figure skating ain't it.
In '76 I had a huge crush on Dorothy Hamill. Her double axels were quite enough for me.
Maybe it's just that I'm getting old, but I used to find women's figure skating very sexy. In past few years the sex appeal aspect that used to attract me is gone. Too many skinny little girls.
'There is a place for tough, bad-ass women, but figure skating ain't it.'
Tonya Harding disagrees and will smack you in the mouth if you persist...
“America's Sweetheart Dorothy Hamill may not have done any triples. But you know what she DID do that figure skaters don't do now?”
Just found out that Hamill graduated from the same HS that my kid did. They do have mandatory athletics 6-12, but also seem to have maybe one kid in a class who does what Hamill did with flexible schooling. The one in my kid’s class was a skier on the US Ski Team talent squad. But they also have a couple other kids who are serious enough in a sport that they flex a bit in their class schedule. This gets them out of the mandatory athletics. One of those in their class appears to now have the inside track for running the local NFL franchise as the designated single “owner” (they had to pick 1 out of 7 siblings). We always thought that she was just using her family money to slack, but was nationally ranked in college as a skater. Turns out that her mother was a figure skater too (but Canadian at the time - since ice is what they have most of there in the winter).
Hamill supposedly went to my alma mater for college, but that wasn’t listed in her bio. The skater who was an alumna there was Her predecessor as a Olympic Gold Medalist, Peggy Fleming. She was officially listed as having graduated in my class, but no one ever remembers seeing her on campus. The reason for her being there was the World Arena across town, and the coaches coaching there.
There's ice dancing. No throws and limited lifts. More, as one writer said, like ballroom dancing on skates.
Funny, I just watched “Sun Valley Serenade” again last week. Sonia Henie’s skating in that film was enchanting, but compared to today’s skating style, rather simple. I don’t think she incorporated more than a few waltz jumps into the film’s skating segments, concentrating more on the use of the ice in time with the music, and her trademark spins. I suspect that was in keeping with the tone of the movie; she wasn’t supposed to be a famous skater, just a girl who could skate.
The article was a good hit-parade of the various periods of change in women’s skating. I recall many of them, as I started getting into skating around the mid-70s. There were some notables left out, but then, I’m a skating nerd. It’s interesting that the writer notes the 1978 film, “Ice Castles,” without ever mentioning that the lead character skater, Lynn Holly Johnson, was a Junior Nationals champion, who went on to star in Ice Capades in the late 70s. She then dipped her toe into film, playing (of course) the figure skating ingenue in the James Bond film, “For Your Eyes Only”, in 1982.
@rcocean: The media’s obsession with the physical differences between Elaine Zayak and Rosalynn Sumner as noted in the article were carried on somewhat to the on and off-ice competition between Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding; the insinuation being that Nancy, with her long, graceful limbs, and her ability to extend herself in a very swan-like way, was vastly superior to Tonya’s shorter, stockier carriage, and forceful display of physicality. Tonya attacked her programs, (no pun intended) pushing herself athletically to compete with Nancy’s more classical approach. There’s always snarky rivalry in these sorts of pursuits (ballet, most famously) but Tonya did herself no favors by drawing attention to her wrong-side-of-the-tracks persona.
@Bender: coincidence that you mention Brian Boitano. I recall the Olympics when it was all about the “Battle of the Brians”, meaning the head to head competition with Brian Orser, from Canada. Both of their long form programs were technically flawless, but there was just something a little more – artsy – about Boitano; a grace, if you will.
Boitano lives here in San Francisco and uses the city’s indoor ice arena as his home ice. At one time he had a standing weekly closed session for his private use. I caught the last 10 min of one of his sessions (from outside) where he practiced his school figures. It was a joy just to watch. Once I got on the ice I went over and checked the tracery – near perfect. You could see where each subsequent pass overlapped the previous with little evidence of skipping or weaving. School figures are no longer taught, and I think figure skating has not benefitted from its absence.
Things have progressed so far in Women's gymnastics that it has become the hallmark of courage.
How courageous, how brave I am," Biles said. "Because I always like to fake bravery. But I really think that solidified me being brave, speaking up for myself and just putting myself first."
Imagine Dorothy Hamil having the courage to quit! Those were the bad ol' days.
Hemingway is supposed to have said that bull fighting, mountain climbing, and auto racing were Sports. Everything else were just games. He believed that a real sport must involve mortal danger.
Will a training failure cripple the person forever or just ruin their chance to get a gold at the Olympics. If the former protection maybe, if the later protectionism.
The bigger issue than quads is do they have what it takes to pose in Playboy. Katarina Witt took that gold medal too. Even the East German judge gave her a 10.
Life is a real sport.
This story is 20 years old, but I'm sure just as valid today:
much about Dorothy Hamill hasn't changed. She's still gorgeous, still kind. And still skating.
With just a few strokes, she's speeding across the ice, her short brown hair blowing back, a smile on her face. Then she goes into a spin, standing straight up, rotating faster and faster, gradually moving her arms all the way above her head, until she is a blur.
Her execution of this move, a scratch spin, is considered the best in the world. Still....
Hamill still ranks among top figure skaters, years after many younger competitors have dropped out. Her jumps, while not triples, are known for their big, perfect arcs. She carries herself on the ice with elegance, finishing off every move, appreciating every nuance of blade and edge. She skates quietly, almost softly across the rink.
These are qualities often missing in today's younger skaters, whose training and programs focus on hitting multiple triple jumps.
"She's a legend that deserves to be," says Brian Boitano, 36, an Olympic gold medalist and long-time professional champion. "Nobody spins as well as her to this day. I still see her do a scratch spin every night and go, 'Whoa, how does she do that?'
"She's a queen."...
"Any city you go into, she has one of the loudest receptions of anybody," said Michael Collins, tour manager and son of Tom Collins, the tour's founder. "She's not doing the big jumps, but her style of skating is classic. You look out in the audience, and they are mesmerized."
Added Nicole Bobek, 22, the 1995 U.S. champion, who is on the tour: "The way she holds herself, it's exquisite. She can just make one line and get a standing ovation."
It's hard to see how the aesthetic wouldn't have changed over time. The number of people, male or female, with the necessary physical prowess to pull off a triple and then a quad (and eventually a quint) is necessarily limited but if the scoring system works in a way that there isn't another path to a top score, eventually every skater's program becomes a build-up to the attempt at the moneymaker. Once every skater is at least attempting the latest move then the aesthetic vs athletic baseline shifts. It's been a while since I watched any figure skating at any level but I recall even at the triple to quad transition the physics of getting the momentum to carry off the jump dominated portions of the short program. Maybe what is needed is a technical competition for jumps similar to the old technical figures which would allow a reversion to a more aesthetically focused program.
Good article, I'm glad you shared it.
I'm a skater (ice dancer), and have followed skating for years. I recently got into a FB "brawl" with a friend who believes that men and women demonstrate no physical differences in elite sports. I threw figure skating and quad jumps out there to prove her wrong.
The article posits the facts - women can't do clean quad jumps. The Russian technique is to cheat the jump entrance by pre-rotating the upper body before leaving the ice, which, as the article points out, is very bad for your back. Many female skaters "landing" quads only rotate 3.5 times in the air and cheat the landing by finishing the final rotation with the skate on the ice, a 3-turn essentially. This is true of many of the Japanese skaters, who have excellent technique but simply can't get the power to finish the rotations in the air.
What's also clear is that women's skating is a running battle against puberty. The IOC tried to counter the jumping beans like Lipinski and Sarah Hughes (2002 Olympic gold medalist), and Oksana Baiul by raising the age to compete at the Olympics, but you can see the older teens fight off puberty with extreme diets (Gracie Gold the most recent example). AS the article states, the minute teen skaters develop curves they have to relearn the mechanics of the jumps. Many never get back their jumps.
Men do not have this time constraint and can develop the proper technique and muscular strength to fully lift off the ice with the height needed to complete the rotations. It's really a shame that women's skating requires pre-pubescent teenaged bodies to be competitive jump-wise, while men's skating is actually a sport for men.
The women are getting younger. The men are getting more flamboyant. And everybody has to be more athletic. Probably the sport is getting more international now, and less dominated by Americans. I doubt that it has the popularity it once did. The country isn't as united as it once was and can't see itself in someone like Peggy Fleming or Dorothy Hamill or Nancy Kerrigan anymore.
But Peggy, Dorothy, and Nancy are all still looking good in their 70s, 60s and 50s.
This post inspired me to cue up a couple YouTubes of Peggy Fleming. There was a LOT more ballet in the routines back then, and ironically more leaping and spinning. Early in her '68 Olympic program, she does a leap where I would swear she's hanging in mid-air before initiating her spin mid-leap. When you're only doing singles and doubles, you have the energy to do a lot more of them and fit them into the flow of your routine without the major breaks to just build up speed for the triple or now quad.
"Katarina Witt took that gold medal too. Even the East German judge gave her a 10."
Duh. I would hope so. She skated for East Germany.
This is the real future of women's skating...
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0445934/
When you change a sport from something that resembles dancing to something that resembles a stunt show, it's no surprise that many will prefer it the old way.
I'm glad someone recalled Sara Hughes' gold in 2002. I know diddly about figure skating, but her performance to win the gold (and if I recall correctly to win the US team the gold) was breathtaking to watch, especially considering the circumstance and competitive drama in which it was wrapped.
I wish I could watch the figure skating this go-round to learn more about the kerfuffle at hand, but the Genocide Olympics will not be viewed in our house.
Wow! You have a lot of ice skating posts!
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