Figure Skating Appreciation: Blades On Ice

If you'd like to find recordings of a specific skater, e.g. Michelle Kwan, or a specific event, e.g. the 2018 Olympics, this website is terrific.

It is sometimes difficult to understand written descriptions of the 6 jumps, such as an Axel or Toe Loop. Therefore, I've created a simplified guide to identifying the jumps.

If you'd like to learn to identify the 6 types of jumps in figure skating, there are 4 videos that can help. This video is the longest, but it does the best job of explaining the jumps. This video shows jumps using slow motion, which helps you ID the jump. This video uses cartoon animation, which allows you to just focus on what is most important about the jump. This video shows you the jump on land, without the motion of the skater on ice, which helps you focus on just the jump.

The International Skating Union (ISU) is the governing body for figure skating. They maintain a list of current biographies for skaters, detailed rules, past results and much more. If past is prologue, the ISU will post detailed results for each skating event almost immediately after the event ends at the 2022 Olympics. This will also be posted in the past results section.

If you'd like to learn more about the way figure skating is judged, you can use these pages to learn about the new scoring system and the old scoring system.

Many of you may remember the skating scandal that took place at the 2002 Olympics when the French Figure Skating Association and the Russian Figure Skating Association conspired to judge the Dance and Pairs competitions unfairly. A 4 part TV series about this scandal was recently posted on the Peacock TV channel. Each of the 4 parts is approximately 40 minutes long. I watched the series and felt that it was very well done. The series is named Meddling.