Category: Freestyle

The flying Mercury

Bev1 Comment

This fanciful move goes all the way back to the eighteenth century. In the first book on skating (or at least, the earliest one that survives), Robert Jones described it like this:

…to perform the attitude of a flying Mercury, is nothing more than the spiral line, except that the arms are not employed in the same manner; the figure [right] represents the attitude on the right leg, and almost at the conclusion of the stroke; but at the beginning the body must lean forwards pretty much, with the right hand pointing to the ice, and slowly raised with the body, till you are quite upright; when you would finish the stroke, bring down the left leg, and throw it suddenly up before you, at the same time bearing on the right heel; by which means you may spin round two or three times, in order to conclude the spiral line, which should always be formed when in the attitude of Mercury.

R. Jones and W. E. Cormack, A Treatise on Skating, 63.

Readers who learned about Classical mythology may recall that Mercury (or Hermes, his Greek counterpart) had a pair of winged sandals that enabled him to fly from place to place. In fact, the first recorded use of scritscos, the ancestor of Schlittschuh—the German word for ice skate—is a gloss to Mercury’s talaria (winged sandals) in an early tenth-century manuscript in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, Auct. F. 1. 16 (Gallée, 162).

This connection has come down through the centuries in German etymology. Goethe, who described himself as a “leidenschaftliche Schlittschuhfahrer” (passionate skater) in his autobiography, thought that skating is not about sliding on little runners, but rather, “like the Homeric gods, strid[ing] over the sea become a floor on winged shoes” (Fowler, 81).

The dust jacket of Sonja Henie’s book (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1940). From my collection.

The connection between skating and flying has endured: Sonja Henie, the three-time Olympic champion who learned to ski before she learned to skate, called her autobiography Wings on My Feet.

…skiing was like flying, and this flying made me winter-drunk, an affliction I have never got over. Later I changed my type of flying, from wooden runners to steel blades, but the state of intoxication remained the same.

S. Henie, Wings on My Feet, 6.

References

G. H. Fowler. 2018. On the Outside Edge: Being Diversions in the History of Skating. Edited by B. A. Thurber. Evanston, IL: Skating History Press.

J. H. Gallée, ed. 1894. Old-Saxon Texts. Leiden: Brill.

J. W. von Goethe, Aus meinem Leben. In E. Trunz, ed., 1948. Goethes Werke: Hamburger Ausgabe in 14 Bänden, volume 9. Hamburg: C. Wegner. My translation.

R. Jones and W. E. Cormack. 2017. A Treatise on Skating. Edited by B. A. Thurber. Evanston, IL: Skating History Press.

S. Henie. 1940. Wings on My Feet. New York: Prentice-Hall.

Layback & cross-foot spins

Bev

I wrote about the cross-foot spin in a previous post. This post is about how its neglect led to different requirements for male and female skaters.

The cross-foot spin became a short program requirement for men parallel to the layback spin requirement for women in 1975. It also began to parallel the layback spin in the test structure and remained on the Junior Free Skate Test through the 2006–07 season. In May 2007, at Governing Council, the requirement was changed to a “[s]pin in one position.” The rationale given for this change was “[t]o make the junior free skate test requirements consistent with the junior well-balanced program requirements.”

Today, the layback spin first appears on the Juvenile Free Skate Test, the fourth of eight tests in the series. Ladies must perform a layback, sideways leaning, or attitude spin. Men must perform a camel spin—the spin everyone must do on the previous test! The layback spin reappears on the Novice Free Skate Test, where everyone has the opportunity to perform it—all skaters get to choose to do a layback, camel, or sit spin; other tests are even more open about which spins are allowed. The cross-foot spin is not explicitly mentioned in USFS’s test requirements, but the openness of the requirements at higher levels means it is permissible for anyone to perform.

The outcome of these rule changes is that women must learn one more spin than men. And they must do it early.

 

Takeoff edges

Bev

One feature that differentiates jumps in figure skating is the takeoff edge. Jumps can start on any edge, but nearly all finish on the backward outside edge. The flip, for example, begins on a backward inside edge. In contrast, the Lutz takeoff is on a backward outside edge. These two jumps are otherwise identical: a skater rotating counterclockwise in the air begins both on the left foot, applies the right toe pick for leverage, rotates in the air, and lands on the right backward outside edge.

The difference between them is the takeoff edge. Many skaters have trouble taking off from the backward outside edge on a Lutz because it travels counter to the direction of rotation in the air. As a result, some cheating goes on: skaters tend to drop over to the backward inside edge on the takeoff and do flips instead. This is called “Flutzing” and is a serious problem, even among high-level skaters. Some skaters tend to do the opposite, pulling their flip takeoffs onto the outside edge. To encourage skaters to take off from the correct edges, judges crack down on both errors at low levels.

The importance of differentiating between these two jumps makes it very odd that two other jumps with the same difference are not differentiated between. These are the toe loop and the toe Walley. In a toe loop, our counterclockwise skater begins on a right backward outside edge, applies the left toe pick, rotates in the air, and lands on a right backward outside edge. In a toe Walley, the process is the same, except the first edge is a right backward inside edge—counter to the direction of in-air rotation.

Unlike flip and Lutz, these two jumps have fallen together. Skaters talk about doing a “double toe” without mentioning which double toe (loop or Walley). This generalization is also reflected in competitions: Under “Technical Requirements,” the USFS Rulebook notes that the two jumps are not considered different:

“Because the triple toe loop and the triple toe Walley jumps are very similar in nature and equal in value, the skater may execute only one or the other of them but not both.” (146)
Why is the takeoff edge important in one case but not the other?

The cross-foot spin

Bev

The cross-foot spin is a figure skating move that was once quite popular but is rarely performed today. Laurence Owen performed one at the end of her 1961 National Championship-winning free skate (jump ahead to 4:30 if you just want to see the final spin combination):

While I was looking for a video, I found lots of videos labeled “cross-foot spin” that actually depict scratch spins. The skater typically crosses the free foot over the skating leg and lowers it to the skating foot to gain speed (by decreasing the moment of inertia) during a scratch spin. So yes, by the end of the spin, the skater’s feet are crossed, but that’s not a cross-foot spin. In a real cross-foot spin, both feet are on the ice. The skater begins with a (usually back) scratch spin, then lowers the free leg all the way to the ice.

The cross-foot spin is sufficiently old that its origin is unclear, but it seems likely that it became a recognized skating move during the nineteenth century, when free skating was rapidly developing as a significant part of figure skating. Vandervell and Witham (1880:289) quote a description of it from Swift and Clark (1868), which Foster (1874) considers one of the most important skating
books:

“The cross-foot spin is done by starting off on a `one-foot spin,’ and crossing the balance-foot over and placing it upon the ice on the other side, the toes to be as near together as possible.”

When it is done done well, the cross-foot spin is extremely fast. Maribel Vinson (1940:192) describes it as “far and away one of the most effective of all the spins, but its effectiveness is paid for by the difficulty of perfecting it. The balance for a long fast cross-foot is tricky, and only a very few skaters in the world have been absolutely consistent in its performance. Sonja Henie, in her competitive days, had the fastest I remember seeing among girl skaters, and Roy Shipstad’s is outstanding in any company; Audrey Peppe has a very fine one, too.”

Gary Beacom (2006:65) describes the cross-foot spin as “the most fun you can have on a pair of blades—if you do it correctly, that is. Finding a perfect centre and then sucking every part of the body into it as the spin crescendos into a very fast, very long, and very quiet whirl is a feeling of absolute harmony.”

In decades following Laurence Owen’s triumph, the requirements for free skating tests and competitions became more specific. In 1961, there were no specific requirements for free skating, other than it be finished within a prescribed time limit (USFSA, 1960:9–35), leaving competitors free to select their favorite moves. By the 1980s, the cross-foot spin had fallen out of favor (Ogilvie 1985:289).

The cross-foot spin is rarely performed today, but not entirely forgotten: it remains an option for Ice Skating Institute skaters, who must perform their choice of a “Cross-Foot Spin, Layback Spin or Sit-Change-Sit Spin” on the Freestyle 6 test. There is also hope that it may be revived in international competitive skating. The latest edition of the U.S. Figure Skating Rulebook, which follows the regulations of the International Skating Union, includes the cross-foot spin under the rubric of upright  spins (page 233). As skaters look for more creative and difficult moves to perform in order to maximize their scores under the new system, they may find that the cross-foot spin is as fun and effective as their predecessors thought it was.

References

Gary Beacom. 2006. Gary Beacom’s Vade Mecum. Victoria, BC: Trafford Publishing.

Fred. W. Foster. 1874. “Skating literature.” Notes and Queries, 2(5):107–08.

Robert S. Ogilvie. 1985. Competitive Figure Skating: A Parent’s Guide. New York: Harper & Row.

Frank Swift and Marvin R. Clark. 1868. The Skater’s Text-Book. New York: John A. Gray & Green.

USFSA. 1960. The Twentieth Annual USFSA Rulebook: 1961 Edition. Boston: United States Figure Skating Association.

Henry Eugene Vandervell & T. Maxwell Witham. 1880. A System of Figure Skating: Being the Theory and Practice of the Art as Developed in England, with a Glance at its Origin and History. 3rd ed. London: Horace Cox.

Maribel Y. Vinson. 1940. Advanced Figure Skating. York, PA: Whittlesey House.