On Figure Skating

in progress...

A figure skating rink is such a finite and confined space. In many field sports you can run out of bounds, go into foul territory, but other than Midori Ito's famous exit from the rink there is no easy way to go beyond the boards of the rink. This doesn't seem like a very important consideration to most people. You watch the figure skating on the olympics and the skaters look so graceful out there on the big open rink all alone. Even when you go to see the figure skating shows with all the former Olympic stars the groups of skaters are so well choreographed and skate with such precision that they hardly ever end up "in the flowers".*

I've been lucky enough the past few months to be able to spend some quality time at 40 degrees. That is I've been able to adjust my work schedule such that I can take Lindsey to the rink for her daily practices and lessons. Now keeping a large facility like our two rink arena air conditioned is a costly affair and there is every incentive for the management of the rink to get as many skaters on the ice as possible for each freestyle figure skating session. I guess that must be why they also want to focus as much energy as possible on Hockey where there are always 12 skaters on the ice and a bench with several replacements.

Now let's get back to the figure skating discussion. When we were watching the single skater out on the ice during the Olympics it was graceful and beautiful. The additional skaters of the ice shows made things a little more exciting. Now imagine this. When the skaters practice the don't usually have the luxury of a nice wide open rink. No instead the management likes to have as many paying skaters on the rink as possible. So let's try to imagine, say, 10-16 figure skaters on the ice. Then let's add a few coaches say maybe 4-8 per session. Now try to imagine all those skaters all skating at the same time. It's like some sort of strange life sized physics model of a complex molecule with neutrons and protons rotating slowly in different corners of the ice, and whirling around at the speed of light, wild electrons circling around. Large circular patterns of electrons rotating in different directions and at different speeds in different arcs. And then they leave the ice and fly through the air rotating rapidly and then either landing gracefully back on the ice or crashing with the sound of fine Sheffield steel scraping the ice and landing painfully in a heap sliding along the frozen surface on their bottom quarks.

And we parents sit on the frozen bleacher benches watching as this process is repeated over and over again. Wondering how many times that bottom quark can hit the ice before it splits. And then finally the leap into the air, the rapid rotations are completed and there is the smooth almost silent sound of steel landing gracefully on the ice as we have finally landed a single/double/triple something. It may be a flip, a loop, a lutz or maybe even an axel. And we smile quietly to ourselves and watch as she then goes out and falls a few more times. Now remember that this isn't just my daughter out there on the ice this is my daughter out there with 10-15 of her competators at all different levels of skill. Each one as focused on landing his or her jump, keeping their spins tight and centered, or properly executing their choreography.

All this leads me to that point where all the parents suck in their breath and gasp as one skater almost backs into an other doing a camel spin, or comes just a little to close to the skater doing a backwards spiral. But for the most part they don't crash. It is as if they have some sort of internal radar that alerts them that they are about to collide (or maybe they can hear all the parents inhale at once). There is a certain magic when you get all those skaters flying around on the ice. An ability to anticipate the motion of the other skaters. An ability to see where the ice is going to clear so you can make your jump. The skaters, and the parents, become familiar with each skater's music. Sometimes way, way too familiar with some of the music. There is an internal sense of who is skating their routine, and where on the ice they are or will be. There is a protocol that the skaters adhere to that requires them to give those who are skating a program extra space so they can complete the routine and not have to focus so much on the other skaters but instead focus on their skating.

* In the flowers is a skating term I heard from one of the coaches that describes the act of going beyond the edge of the ice during a show and ending up in the decorative flower arrangements located around the ice.