Figure skating
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Figure skating is both an art and a sport, in which people skate around on ice, doing jumps and spins. It is done at the Winter Olympics, and it has its own world championships.
In figure skating, sometimes women or men skate alone, or they skate in couples. Couples dancing includes pairs and ice dancing. Pairs skating has jumps, and sometimes the man lifts the woman in the air. These things are not done in ice dancing. In ice dancing, the woman must be held in the man's arm. Another kind of figure skating is synchronized skating, done in groups.
The first ever figure skating club was started in 1742 in Edinburgh, Scotland. World Championships began in 1896 (the first in St. Petersburg, Russia).
Some well-known figure skaters:
| Women | Mens | |
|---|---|---|
|
|
Pairs:
- Emilie Rotter & Laszlo Szolas (Hungary)
- Maxi Herber & Ernst Baier (Germany)
- Barbara Wagner & Robert Paul (Canada)
- Ludmila Belousova & Oleg Protopopov (USSR)
- Irina Rodnina & Alexei Ulyanov (USSR)
- Irina Rodnina & Alexander Zaitsev (USSR)
- Ekaterina Gordeeva & Sergei Grinkov (USSR)
- Xue Shen & Hongbo Zhao (China)
- Tatiana Totmianina & Maxim Marinin (Russia)
- Dorota Siudek & Mariusz Siudek (Poland)
Ice dance:
- Jean Westwood & Lawrence Demmy (Britain)
- Eva Romanova & Pavel Roman (Czechoslovakia)
- Diane Towler & Bernard Ford (Britain)
- Lyudmila Pakhomova & Alexander Gorshkov (USSR)
- Jayne Torvill & Christopher Dean (Britain)
- Natalia Bestemianova & Andrei Bukin (USSR)
- Isabelle & Paul Duchesnay (France/Canada)
- Marina Klimova & Sergei Ponomarenko (Russia)
- Oksana Grishuk & Evgeny Platov (Russia)
- Tatiana Navka & Roman Kostomarov (Russia)
[change] Sources
- Figure Skating: A Celebration, by Beverly Smith
