Fun Facts About the World of Figure Skating

Our nation loves to watch figure skating. Figure skaters have glided and twirled and performed their gravity-defying leaps of faith right into our hearts, creating the sixth-largest sports fan base of people (male and female) 12 and older (only the NFL, MLB, NCAA football and NCAA basketball rank higher).

In large part, this is because it is such a beautiful, graceful and entertaining sport. But did you know it all started for the exact opposite reasons?

Read on for how the sport began, plus many other fun facts about the world of skating.

Ice skating began as an energy-saving way to get across large icy areas during travel and times of war. The oldest pair of skates known, date back to about 3000 B.C., and were found at the bottom of a lake in Switzerland. The skates were made from the leg bones of large animals, holes were bored at each end of the bone and leather straps were used to tie the skates on.

An old Dutch word for skate is “schenkel” which means “leg bone.”

In the 1860s, American, Jackson Haines , founded modern figure skating as he was the first to include movements from ballet and dance, such as jumps and spins, into his skating.

In 1876, John Gamgee built the Glaciarium, the first artificial ice rink (mechanically-refrigerated) in Chelsea, London, England.

The first Olympic figure skating competitions also took place in 1908.

From 1892—when the International Skating Union (ISU) was founded—to 1902, only men competed in figure skating. The first woman to compete was Madge Syers, who finished second in the competition. The ISU quickly banned women from competing against men, but established a separate competition for “ladies” in 1906.

Pairs skating was introduced at the 1908 World Championships, where the title was won by Anna Hübler & Heinrich Burger .

On March 20, 1914 an international figure skating championship was held in New Haven, Connecticut which was the ancestor of both the United States and Canadian National Championships. However, international competitions in figure skating were interrupted by World War I.

In the 1920s and 1930s, figure skating was dominated by Sonja Henie , who turned competitive success into a lucrative professional career as a movie star and touring skater. Henie also set the fashion for female skaters to wear short skirts and white boots.

Dick Button , 1948 and 1952 Olympic Champion, was the first skater to perform the double axel and triple loop jumps, as well as the flying camel spin.

Frank Zamboni was the inventor of the famous Zamboni ice resurfacing machine. The Zamboni family ran an ice manufacturing plant in the 1930’s. When refrigerators came into being, they decided to build an ice skating rink to replace the loss of their ice business. The rink is called Iceland in Paramount and is one of the best places to skate in southern California. It has a large ice surface that is 100 feet wide and 200 feet long.

The kiss and cry area is the area in an ice rink where figure skaters wait for their marks to be announced after their performances during a figure skating competition; The term was coined by Jane Erkko, a Finnish figure skating official who was on the organizing committee for the 1983 World Figure Skating Championships which were held in Helsinki. In Finland in the 1970s, Jane and her fellow skaters noticed that the competitors kissed and cried while they were waiting for their marks to be displayed, and they commented on this fact. This expression remained a joke among the skaters and with Jane as the place where the skaters would sit down after skating their programs. The term is now used officially in the International Skating Union Regulations.

In 1964, at age 15, Peggy Fleming became the youngest person ever to win the U.S. women’s figure skating championship. She won the only gold medal for the U.S. four years later at the 1968 Olympics at Grenoble, France.

In 1997, at age 14, Tara Lipinski became the youngest woman to win the World figure skating championship. Just a year later at age 15, she became the youngest Olympic figure skating champion in history when she edged fellow American Michelle Kwan for the gold.

Michelle Kwan won her first world championship in 1996 at the age of 15 and went on to capture the title in 1998, 2000, 2001, and 2003 as well. Her victory in the 2005 U.S. Figure Skating Championships was her eighth consecutive and ninth overall.