In 1852, George Anderson, a member of the Glasgow Skating Club, published the following advice on skate sharpening under the pseudonym Cyclos:
The edges should … be kept sharp by occasional grinding, perhaps once in a season, or even less; and in doing it, the iron should be held across the face of the grindstone, which, by giving an almost imperceptible concavity, ensures a sharp edge.
Cyclos 1852, 34
A grindstone, or grinding wheel in today’s metal shops, is the abrasive stone that forms the core of a bench grinder. The stone spins fast, grinding down the surface of whatever it comes in contact with (keep your fingers away!). This produces lots of hot sparks when grinding metal (including skate blades).
To sharpen a skate on this grindstone, you’d hold it sideways, with the toe pick pointing to the left and the heel of the blade pointing to the right, perpendicular to the stone. Then, you’d turn the crank (or have an assistant turn it) so that the wheel rotates counterclockwise. As the wheel spins, you’d slowly push the blade across the stone from left to right, starting with the toe and ending with the heel, then lift it up and repeat. After a number of strokes, the blade would match the curvature of the stone.
The radius of hollow this produces depends on the size of the stone. The one in the photo has a radius of about five inches. Five inches sounds like a really shallow hollow—too shallow even for figures, by today’s standards—but keep in mind that blades were wider then. Cyclos writes,
The lower surface of the iron should be a quarter of an inch broad or thereby.
Cyclos 1852, 34
The width of the blade makes a difference. (This is why ice dancers use deeper hollows than freestyle skaters—dance blades are narrower.) According to Sidney Broadbent, what you feel when your blade hits the ice is the bite angle, not the radius of hollow (ROH). This is the angle created at the corner of the blade by sharpening. Make it too small, and you skid. Too large, and you can’t stop. Broadbent gives an equation relating the ROH (R), blade thickness (T), and bite angle ($latex \theta$).
$latex \sin\theta = \frac{T}{2R} &s=4$
Broadbent 1997, I:2
T is the thickness of the blade, and R is the ROH. Today’s freestyle blades are about 0.15″ wide, so with a pretty normal 0.5″ ROH, the bite angle is about 8.6 degrees. For a patch blade with the same width and an ROH of 1″, the bite angle is about 4.3 degrees. Dance blades are narrower, about 0.11″ wide, so a 0.5″ ROH on a dance blade produces a bite angle of 6.3 degrees. This is why ice dancers prefer a deeper hollow.
Cyclos recommends blades that are much wider—0.25″. A five-inch ROH on a quarter-inch blade yields a bite angle of about 1.4 degrees, which is very shallow. It corresponds to a three-inch ROH on a modern patch blade, which is what Robert Ogilvie recommends for high-test skaters (1985, 111).
Conclusion: Cyclos’s recommendations are in line with late twentieth-century thinking on patch sharpening when differences in equipment are accounted for. I’ve neglected differences in ice, though, which do play a role.
To end, Cyclos warns readers of the dangers of learning on grooved skates, like those used for freestyle, dance, and recreational skating today:
it ought not to be grooved, as is sometimes done,—much to the detriment of the beginner, who, after learning on grooved skates, will feel himself like a cat on walnut shells when he puts on plain ones.
Cyclos 1852, 34
Skaters using patch skates for the first time may identify with this remark.
The competition took place on August 28 and 29, following a Figure Festival from the 25th to 27th, on ice that had been painted black with white lines demarcating patches. Initially, entrants had to have passed US Figure Skating’s 8th test or an international equivalent, or have competed in the World Championship or Olympics before 1992. Later, this requirement was relaxed to the 6th test or equivalent. The entry fee was set at $500 ($485 early bird, $650 late). List numbers of competitors, figures, scoring info.
The first World Figure Championship was sanctioned by the ISI (endorsement #3-2552-2015). All skaters and judges were enrolled as ISI members by Peak Edge Performance, Inc. It did not use the ISI’s standard judging criteria or format; instead, skaters completed each set of four figures while the judges were absent. A time limit was set for each figure. Skaters commenced as a whistle blew and had until the next whistle to complete the six required tracings; the time allotted was quite generous. A referee watched each skater to note penalties (e.g., if the skater put a hand or foot down, fell, crossed a patch line, or exceeded the time limit), if necessary. Then, the judges examined and ranked the marks left on the ice without knowing who had skated them. Following the ISI system, each judge focused on a particular component: turns, edges, tracing, center, and alignment. Skaters received ordinal marks, which were combined with any penalties to produce a points core for each figure. This system remained in place for subsequent years of the event.
Figures
Figure
Name
1.1
Paragraph Double 3
1.2
Counter
1.3
Rocker
1.4
Change Loop
2.1
Paragraph Double 3
2.2
Change Bracket
2.3
Change Bracket
2.4
Paragraph Loop
3.1
Paragraph Double 3
3.2
Counter
3.3
Rocker
3.4
Change Loop
4.1
Paragraph Double 3
4.2
Change Bracket
4.3
Change Bracket
4.4
Paragraph Loop
Tie breaker
RFOI-LFIO Paragraph Loop
Figures skated at the 2015 Championship. The starting feet have been lost to time.
Results
Place
Ladies
Men
1
Jill Ahlbrecht
Richard Swenning
2
Sandy Lenz-Jackson
Shepherd Clark
3
Mandy Sisson-King
Stephen Thompson
4
Jan Calnan
Dmitri Peshkilev
5
Pamela Giangualano-Roberts
Christian Hendricks
6
Maggie Licata Brothers
7
Brooke Pitman
8
Nancy Blackwell-Grieder
9
Tiffani Healey
10
Tracey Mulherin
11
Kami Healey-Netri
12
Jennifer Tieche
13
Doris Papenfuss
14
Kim Millette Verde
Results of the 2015 Championship.
Other Achievements
The Championship was accompanied by a Figure Festival that included workshops and informal competition. This continued in subsequent years.
The Richard Dwyer “Spirit of Skating” Award was presented to Jennifer Tieche. This award “is granted to a person who positively furthers World Figure Sport’s mission by expressing congeniality, dedication, and service to the outreach, promotion, and development of Figure & Fancy Skating, as exemplified by the life of Richard Dwyer,” according to the Hall of Fame page.
2016 Toronto
The competition was held on December 20-21, with practice on the 19th and the Figure Festival on the 22nd and 23rd. This was after rescheduling; it had originally been announced for August 23-27. The competition format remained essentially the same, but no sanction was mentioned in the announcement. Prospective competitors were initially asked to submit videos of their skating, but this requirement was dropped in favor of a description of their skating background. This year marks the inclusion of the first special figure (the Swiss S) and a creative figure.
Inclusive Skating events were added to the Figure Festival. They’ve been an annual feature since then.
The Richard Dwyer “Spirit of Skating” Award was presented to Karen Courtland Kelly.
2017 Vail, CO
This year’s event, held from September 28 to October 1, was called the “World Figure & Fancy Skating Championships” and sanctioned by “WorldFigureSport.org.” Skaters were allowed to participate by skating individual figures, in which they were ranked, but were not considered championship competitors unless they completed all segments. Two men and four women took advantage of this. Instead of charging entry fees, competitors were encouraged to raise $1500 for the organization.
Figures
Figure
Name
1.1
RFO-LFO Circle Eight
1.2
RFO-LFO Loop
1.3
LBOI-RBIO Serpentine
1.4
LBOI-RBIO Change Loop
2.1
RBI-LBI Double Three
2.2
LFI-RBI Counter
2.3
RFI Maltese Cross
2.4
LBI Swiss S
3.1
RFI-LFI Circle Eight
3.2
RFI-LFI Loop
3.3
RFO-LBO Rocker
3.4
LFOI-RFIO Change Loop
4.1
RFOI-LFIO Paragraph Loop
4.2
LFI Maltese Cross
4.3
RBI Swiss S
4.4
Creative Figure
Figures skated at the 2017 Championship.
Results
Place
Ladies
Men
1
Nancy Blackwell-Grieder
Shepherd Clark
2
Jennifer Lupia
Richard Swenning
3
Julie Schott-Lipsky
Christian Hendricks
4
Heather Zarisky
5
Sarah Jo Damron-Brown
6
Stephanie Chace Bass
7
Liz Schmidt
8
Kim Millette Verde
Results of the figures event at the 2017 Championship. Only skaters who completed all requirements are included.
Other Achievements
The Richard Dwyer “Spirit of Skating” Award was presented to Deborah Hickey.
“Fancy skating” (freestyle with an artistic orientation) was offered as a separate event with two competitors in the men’s category and four in the women’s.
The Junior Championship for competitors aged 21 years or under was inaugurated.
The World Figure Sport Society offered exams in individual figures during the Festival for the first time. Skaters are scored on a scale of one through six. I posted about taking some of these exams.
2018 Vail, CO
The 2018 competition was held from September 27 to September 30. It followed the pattern of the 2017 event. There were a total of 13 skaters in the ladies’ event and seven in the men’s event, but not all received overall rankings.
Figures
Figure
Name
1.1
RFO-LFO Circle Eight
1.2
RFO-LFO Loop
1.3
LFOI-RBOI Change Three
1.4
LFOI-RFOI Change Loop
2.1
RBO-LBO Double Three
2.2
LFI-RBI Counter
2.3
RFI Maltese Cross
2.4
LFO Swiss S with Diamond Coutners
3.1
RBO-LBO Circle Eight
3.2
RBO-LBO Loop
3.3
LFO-RBO Rocker
3.4
RBOI-LBOI Change Loop
4.1
LFOI-RFIO Paragraph Loop
4.2
RFO Swiss S with Diamond Counters
4.3
LFI Maltese Cross
4.4
Creative Figure
Figures skated in the 2018 Championship.
Results
Place
Ladies
Men
1
Brooke Pitman
Shepherd Clark
2
Lisa Elmore
Marc Fenczak
3
Jill Ahlbrecht
Matt Snyder
4
Heather Zarisky
5
Nicole Lemanski
6
Shannon Cattaneo
7
Sarah Jo Damron Brown
8
Beth Woronoff
9
Jamie Chandler
10
Kim Millette Verde
11
Elisa Koshkina
Results of the 2018 Championship. Only skaters who completed all requirements are included.
Other Achievements
The Richard Dwyer “Spirit of Skating” Award was presented to Richard Stansberry posthumously.
The Maribel Vinson Trophy Lifetime Achievement award was inaugurated to reward “individulas [sic] who, throughout their life, have had a distinguished legacy within the skating world.” It was presented to Slavka Kouhout Button.
The Edinburgh 8 Record for the most skaters (18) skating on a single forward outside eight was set after the competition ended.
The first perfect 6 on an exam was given to a forward outside eight tested at the Festival.
2019 Vail, CO
The 2019 World Figure & Fancy Skating Championships, held from September 26 to September 29, featured a new requirement: a fancy skating segment replaced the first figure of the second set. Additionally, this year, skaters shared strips instead of having a whole strip to themselves, which enabled the competition to run more quickly as all skaters in the ladies’ event were able to compete at the same time. The division of each set of figures into two flights was unnecessary. This was possible because the figures were much smaller than usual, none larger than a standard two-circle figure from the ISU schedule.
A total of fourteen women and five men competed in at least one figure. Six women and four men received overall rankings.
Results of the 2019 Championship. Only skaters who received overall rankings are included.
Other Achievements
The Richard Dwyer “Spirit of Skating” Award was presented to Jonathan Chausovsky.
The Maribel Vinson Trophy Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Donald Jackson.
At the end of the event, skaters were offered the opportunity to set records. Lisa Elmore skated the Maltese cross 16 times on one foot, without touching down.
2020 Plattsburgh, NY
This competition will be held from December 30, 2020, to January 2, 2021.
Figures were once the backbone of figure skating on ice (hence the name in English), but experienced a steep decline in popularity after they were dropped as a competitive requirement in 1991. Today, ice skaters rarely do them. In roller skating, in contrast, figures continue to thrive—on quad skates. They don’t really work on inlines.
Roller figures in 2011.
In roller skating, figures and freestyle were combined (as they were in ice skating) in the 1940s, but in 1949, American competitions separated them. For a decade or so after that, American skaters were known for having great jumps but poor skating skills (Pickard 2010, 116). This is exactly what happened on ice in the 1990s.
This separation had another effect in roller skating that seems to have been missing from ice skating:
The RSROA’s separation of figures and free sakting events in 1949 encouraged dance skaters to spill into figure skating as a second event by the elimination of the acrobatics formerly required in combined event [sic] with free style.
Pickard 2010, 133
Some roller skaters continued to do both figures and freestyle, and the influx of dancers helped keep figures going. The singles event remained combined (requiring both figures and freestyle) in the world championship until 1980, when they were separated there, too (Pickard 2010, 116). Yet roller skaters continued to skate figures. Even now, 40 years later, roller skaters still do figures, and figures events are common and competitive. In contrast, on the ice, on the rare occasion that a figures event is offered, the number of competitors is very low.
Why have figures done so well in roller skating and so poorly on the ice?
References
David H. Lewis. 1997. Roller Skating for Gold. London: Scarecrow Press.
George Pickard. 2010. Titans and Heroes of American Roller Skating. Lincoln, NE: National Museum of Roller Skating.
The radius of hollow is very important to skaters because it determines how the blades feel on the ice. It’s set during sharpening. When you get your skates sharpened, you can request a particular radius of hollow. What if you don’t know what hollow your blades have? Or if you want to check that the hollow on your blades is what you want it to be?
To answer these questions, use a blade gauge. Blade gauges aren’t readily available commercially, though experienced skate technicians generally have one (or a set, depending on the design). I made my own out of aluminum using the CNC router at CIADC.
Blade gauges for freestyle and figures. The numbers represent the radius of hollow in inches.
To use them, try to fit the arm of the gauge into the hollow on the bottom of the skate blade. Here’s an example.
See how the gauge doesn’t fit all the way into the hollow? One inch is too big for this blade. It’s a freestyle blade.This one fits into the hollow with room to spare. 3/8″ is too small.9/16″ is just about right.
9/16″ is what I asked for last time I got these skates sharpened. The person who sharpened them did a great job!
Freestyle slalom skating is interesting because it preserves some moves that have been lost in modern figure skating, like grapevines and the full range of pivots, and because it doesn’t try to be like ice skating. Instead, it takes advantage of the architecture of inline skates. It’s also still developing.
USA Roller Sports has set up a series of levels, or “grades,” in freestyle slalom skating. These parallel the tests figure skaters have worked at for over a century: passing one gives you a feeling of accomplishment and concrete evidence of your skating skill.
The slalom tests are structured like the ISI freestyle tests in figure skating: first you do each maneuver in isolation, then you skate a program (1:45-2:00 minutes) to music of your choosing that incorporates at least six of the tricks. General skating skills and transitions are considered in the program.
Here are the USARS freestyle slalom test requirements, with links to video tutorials. I’ve given preference to English-language tutorials. I am not affiliated with any of these videos or USARS. The tests are copied from the USARS site, and I found the videos by searching YouTube.
Since my last post on them, I’ve been tracking Mr. W. A. V. Waldron and Miss B. Waldron through Ancestry.com. Here’s some of what I’ve been able to piece together.
William Arthur Vaughan Waldron was born in 1876 in Kent and died in 1933 in Penzance. Tracking this name through the census records revealed the most likely candidate as the William Waldron who, in 1891, was living in Hampstead, London with his dad Herbert, who was a retired army captain, and two sisters, Lilian and Kathleen.
Going back to the 1871 census, a few years before William was born, yields more information about this family. At that time, Herbert and Margaret Waldron were living in Sussex. They had four-year-old twin daughters, Beatrice M. and Lilian C., who were born in Southsea, and a ten-year-old son.
The 1901 census records 24-year-old Vaughan Waldron, born in Kent and working as a secretary, living with his 34-year-old sister M. Beatrice, born in Southsea. The names are slightly different, but the ages and birthplaces match my earlier finds. Beatrice apparently had not married, leaving her “Miss B. Waldron.” They lived, with a cook from Barbados, at 154 Sauderdale Mansions in London.
Were these the W. A. V. and B. Waldron of skating fame? It seems possible, but there is much more work to be done.
References
1871 England Census, Colgate, Sussex, digital image s.v. “Lilian C Waldron,” Ancestry.com.
1891 England Census, Hampstead, London, digital image s.v. “William Waldron,” Ancestry.com.
1901 England Census, Paddington, London, digital image s.v. “M Beatrice Waldron,” Ancestry.com.
“Cornwall, England, Parish Registers, 1538-2010,” digital image s.v. “William Arthur Vaughan Waldron,” Ancestry.com.
“England & Wales, Civil Registration Birth Index, 1837-1915,” digital image s.v. “William Arthur V Waldron,” Ancestry.com.
The Field began in 1853 as a weekly magazine in 1853 aimed at rich men with estates in the country. They apparently needed advice on a variety of sporting matters—hunting, fishing, yachting, shooting—as well as agriculture and investments. Winter issues included regular columns on skating.
These columns are fascinating for anyone with a geeky interest in skating around the turn of the previous century. They include reports on competitions, tests passed, and meetings of the National Skating Association. The big names in the development of figure skating reported their new discoveries, like counters and rockers. Debates raged over what to call turns, how figures should be skated, and, later on, whether the English style or the International style was superior. Skaters who had traveled abroad to train related the details of their experiences. Sometimes, they included photographs or (more often) diagrams. Historic books about skating occasionally refer to articles published in the Field, making it an important part of skating history.
Its short and vague title makes the Field difficult to find in library catalogs. The best source for it I’ve found is the British Newspaper Archive, which has all issues from 1853 to 1911 (except 1857 and 1864) in a searchable format. The search function isn’t perfect, but it is much better than paging through heavy volumes of crumbling newsprint by hand. The main drawback is that the site requires a subscription fee.
Although the Field is still published today, you won’t find anything about skating in it!
Johan Ekeblad (1629–1697) was a prolific Swedish letter-writer who spent a lot of time on the Continent. According to the Swedish Academy, publisher of a great dictionary that’s rather like the Swedish version of the OED, he was the first to use the word skridsko in Swedish. This word is for metal-bladed skates, not bone skates, which have their own word, islägg.
Ekeblad wrote many letters to his brother, Claes, while he was abroad. The Swedish Academy says he first used skridsko in 1650, and it appears several times in his numerous letters. Here’s an interesting bit about his own skating experience, from a letter dated December 15, 1652, in Stockholm:
Jag tror visst om I visste att jag igår var ute och försökte till att löpa på skridsko, så skulle I mena att jag nu vore helt bättre i mitt lår. Men jag skall försäkra. Er på jag lopp inte mycket, utan av ett fall jag strax i begynnelsen gjorde har jag nu så ont igen så I skola inte tro det. Dock haver jag nu hittat på en slags olja som mig mycket lisar och blir fulle bättre hoppas jag.
I think certainly if you knew that I was out yesterday and tried to skate [literally: run on metal-bladed skates], you would think that my leg would now be completely better. But I will reassure you. I haven’t skated much, [and] aside from [because of?] a fall I took right at the beginning it is now so bad again that you wouldn’t believe it. However, I have now found a type of oil that makes me very happy and I hope to become completely better.
Ekeblad 2004, 67-68. Translation my own.
I don’t know what was wrong with his leg, but he complained about it frequently in his letters.
His letters put Ekeblad’s skating in Stockholm a decade ahead of English diarists Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, who famously observed skating in London in December, 1662.
According to British Ice Skating’s records, Miss B. Waldron finished third in the Challenge Cup, which functioned as the British National Championship in the English Style, in 1904. This seems exciting, because it makes 1904 the first year—and the only year before 1950 (I haven’t seen records after 1949)—that two of the three medalists in this co-ed event were women. The winner was Phyllis Squire, and H. M. Morris took the silver.
Wanting to find out more about this, I looked for contemporary coverage in the British Newspaper Archive. The coverage in the Field says it was Mr. Waldron! Here’s the article from the March 12, 1904 issue.
The coverage of the 1903 events—the Challenge Shield for combined skating as well as the Challenge Cup for individual skating—describes the skating of National Skating Association member Mr. W. A. V. Waldron, who participated in both events.
The only Waldron in British Ice Skating’s membership records is a Miss B. Waldron. As far as I’ve been able to tell, the Field only knows about this Mr. Waldron. Clearly something has gone wrong. What happened? Why did the Field write Miss B. Waldron out of skating history? And has this happened to other women?
Mr. Waldron made an appearance in a competition at Brighton in 1899, where he was definitely male—he skated as Phyllis Squire’s partner. They lost to Mr. and (the future) Mrs. Syers.
Is it possible that the Field‘sreporter didn’t attend the events, and just assumed the competitor called Waldron in the 1903 and 1904 events was a man, and connected him wtih the one they knew from 1899? The Brighton competition seems to have been a local one, independent of the National Skating Association, though perhaps a forerunner of the official competitions held a few years later.
The next question is, were Miss B. Waldron and Mr. W. A. V. Waldron related?
References
Information from British Ice Skating’s records was kindly provided by Elaine Hooper, BIS’s historian.
