Skating on Thin Ice

By now you have probably heard about this week’s “controversy” in Olympic figure skating. Russian skater, Adelina Sotnikova, won the gold medal upsetting defending champion, Kim Yu-na of South Korea, who got silver. Kim Yu-na was superb. Some people think she got robbed. Adelina Sotnikova, although lovely, did not skate a perfect program. So, one is left scratching one’s head.  How did the judges decide on this outcome? Why is the scoring so hard for viewers to figure out? (Pardon the pun.)  One of the American skaters insisted that these complications do nothing to inspire youngsters to take up the sport and, what’s more, issues like these are certainly driving audiences away from watching it. It seems the figure skating world has a bit of a hitch in its double axel.

I think scoring is the least of their problems. If you ask me, they ought to take a serious look at nomenclature.  I mean. The names they give to the jumps and moves. They’re just so clunky. Salchow? Which sounds like “sow cow” and for years I thought that’s what it was. Lutz? Camel? Twizzle? Death spiral? Hydrant Lift, for gosh sake?

I bet those poor skaters are fighting for their lives to maintain swan-like grace and elegance with a commentator screeching, “There it is! A Triple LUTZ! Oh, that was BEAUTIFUL!” Beautiful? The poor girl just LUTZED! On international TV! Surely, I thought, someone could have come up with a better name for it.

This got me curious about how skating terminology came about.  Basic figure skating forms, like circles and figure eights, were first catalogued in an instruction book published in London, England in 1772. It wasn’t until 1864 that an American named Jackson Haines sought to revolutionize skating competitions by adding ballet and dance movements to the basic patterns. Nobody at home or in England was buying, so he went to Europe to show off his moves and by 1868 he was wowing crowds in Austria and Sweden. His influence led to European Figure Skating Championships and eventually the World Figure Skating Championships first held in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1896. Figure skating made its debut at the Olympics in 1908. Around this time, a Swede named Ulrich Salchow, the greatest figure skater of his day, ten times a world champion, developed skates with serrated blades that allowed for athletic jumps, such as his now famous “Salchow.”

Now, I want to imagine that if he had known, when he egotistically christened that jump with his own name, that 100 years later television announcers would be shrieking, “She nailed that double SOW COW!!!!” he might have shuddered and cast around for something a little less clumsy. A number of skating terms come from their inventors: Axel Paulsen, Alois Lutz. What if someone in my family, those skating Scots, had invented a jump? Would announcers be shouting, “He did it! He landed a perfect Quadruple Malcolm!!” Or if someone in Russia or Ukraine had invented a new move. Would sportscasters be screaming, “OOOH! Look at that! A Triple Wojokowski!” Or from China: “Oh, My! What a beautifully executed Wong.”  

Why the heck, when they had a chance, way back when they were borrowing from ballet anyway, didn’t they adopt ballet language? Wouldn’t “Arabesque” sound a whole lot more willowy and lissome than “Sow Cow?”  Just asking.