Understanding Olympic Figure Skating

In less than two days from now the eyes of the worldcategories of competition in the figure skating event.
will be focused on Vancouver, British Columbia and theThere are the singles, pairs and ice dancing categories.
hundreds of supremely talented athletes who will beIn the singles event (men and women compete
competing there. It might be helpful to have a basicseparately). the participants must perform eight
understanding of the events in which these athletes willmaneuvers of varying degree of difficulty and
take part in order to more fully appreciate the talentconclude with a segment of free style skating. In the
that will be showcased over the next few weeks.pairs category, the goal is to synchronize movements
Figure skating is one of the events that will take centerwhile performing such feats as overhead lifts, throws,
stage and also one of the most beautiful andspins and death spirals. (sounds a bit ominous don't you
technically difficult of winter sports. It requires anagree) The ice dancing is a version of ballroom
enormous amount of instruction and training to be abledancing performed on the ice and is spectacular to
to compete at an Olympic level. First, a little history ofobserve.
this popular activity. The first skating club (that weScoring is based on a 6.0 system wherein marks are
know of) was organized in Scotland 168 years ago. Itgiven for technical merit, required elements and
was probably done more for exercise than anythingpresentation. There are 16 judges, though the judging
else at that time. 28 years later someone had the ideafield is quickly narrowed to a randomly selected 9 from
to combine the smooth glide across the ice with dancewhich the highest score and the lowest score are
elements and that comprised what we now know aseliminated. These results in the seven judging scores
figure skating.which are then averaged to select the overall winner.
In the Olympic games there are currently three