Pair skating
Pair skating is a figure skating discipline defined by the International Skating Union as "the skating of two persons in unison who perform their movements in such harmony with each other as to give the impression of genuine Pair Skating as compared with independent Single Skating". The ISU also states that a pairs team consists of "one Woman and one Man". Pair skating, along with men's and women's single skating, has been an Olympic discipline since figure skating, the oldest Winter Olympic sport, was introduced at the 1908 Summer Olympics in London. The ISU World Figure Skating Championships introduced pair skating in 1908.
Like the other disciplines, pair skating competitions consist of two segments, the short program and the free skating program. There are seven required elements in the short program, which lasts two minutes and 40 seconds for both junior and senior pair teams. Free skating for pairs "consists of a well balanced program composed and skated to music of the pair's own choice for a specified period of time". It also should contain "especially typical Pair Skating moves" such as pair spins, lifts, partner assisted jumps, spirals, and other linking movements. Its duration, like the other disciplines, is four minutes for senior teams, and three and one-half minutes for junior teams. Pair skating required elements include lifts, twist lifts, throw jumps, jumps, spin combinations, death spirals, step sequences, and choreographic sequences. The elements performed by pairs teams must be "linked together by connecting steps of a different nature" and by other comparable movements and with a variety of holds and positions. Pair skaters must only execute the prescribed elements; if they do not, the extra or unprescribed elements will not be counted in their score. Violations in pair skating include falls, time, music, and clothing.
Pair skating is the most dangerous discipline in figure skating; it has been compared to playing in the National Football League. Pair skaters have more injuries than skaters in other disciplines, and women pair skaters have more injuries than male pair skaters.
History
Beginnings
The International Skating Union defines pair skating as "the skating of two persons in unison who perform their movements in such harmony with each other as to give the impression of genuine Pair Skating as compared with independent Single Skating". The ISU also states that a pair team consists of "one Woman and one Man"S&P/ID 2024, p. 116 and that "attention should be paid to the selection of an appropriate partner".The roots of pairs skating, like ice dance, is in the "combined skating" developed in the 19th century by skating clubs and organizations and by recreational social skating between couples and friends, who would skate waltzes, marches, and other social dances together. According to writer Ellyn Kestnbaum, the rising popularity of skating during the 19th century led to the development of figure skating techniques, especially the "various forms of hand-in-hand skating that would become the basis of pair skating". Kestnbaum believes that there is no technical reason why pair skating moves could not be performed by opposite sexes because the moves emphasize the symmetry and similarity of the two bodies making them. Kestnbaum also states that men developed the original concepts of combined skating because most advanced skating was done by adult males. When women became more involved in the sport, they were allowed to compete in "similar pairs" competitions in the U.S.
Figure skating historian James R. Hines reports that factors, such as hand-in-hand skating and "the crazelike fascination with ice dancing" in the mid-1890s, contributed to the development of pair skating. Madge Syers, the first female figure skater to compete and win internationally, states that from the beginning of the introduction of pair skating in international competitions, it was a popular sport for audiences to watch, and that "if the pair are well matched and clever performers, it is undoubtedly the most attractive to watch". When women began to compete in figure skating in the early 1900s, married couples developed routines together and provided female partners with the opportunities to demonstrate parity with their male partners by executing the same moves. Syers states that Viennese skaters were responsible for pair skating's popularity at the beginning of the 20th century and credited the Austrians for adding dance moves to pair skating.
At first, pair skating consisted of executing basic figures and side-by-side free-skating moves, such as long, flowing spirals done backwards or forwards, and connected with dance steps while couples held one or two hands. Jumps and pirouettes were not required, and were done by only experienced pair skaters. German pair skater Heinrich Burger, in his article in Irving Brokaw's The Art of Skating, states that he and his partner, Anna Hübler, inserted figures skated by single skaters into "our several dances according to the music" until the figures became more complicated and developed into a different appearance; as Burger puts it, "the fundamental character of the figure, however, has remained the same". Also in the 1890s, combined and hand-in-hand skating moved skating away from "the static confines of basic figures to continuous movement around a rink". Hines insists that the popularity of skating waltzes, which depended upon the speed and flow across the ice of couples in dance positions and not just on holding hands with a partner, "dealt a death knell to hand-in-hand skating".
Early years
Pair skating, along with men's and women's single skating, has been an Olympic discipline since figure skating, the oldest Winter Olympic sport, was introduced at the 1908 Summer Olympics in London. The ISU World Figure Skating Championships introduced pair skating, along with women's singles, also in 1908. Hübler and Burger were the first Olympic gold medalists in pair skating in 1908; they also won the 1908 and 1910 World Championships. In 1936, Maxi Herber and Ernst Baier won the gold medal at the Olympics and went on to win the World Championships from 1936 to 1939. The first pair skating national competitions in Canada occurred in 1905, and the first time pair skating was included during a U.S. Championships was in 1914, but there are only a few descriptions of pair skating in North America before World War I.Side-by-side skating, also called shadow skating, in which partners executed the same movements and steps in unison, was emphasized in the early 1920s. Pair skating became more athletic in the 1930s; partners executed "a balanced blend of shadow skating coupled with increasingly spectacular pair moves, including spins, death-spirals, and lifts". Hines credits German pair skaters Maxi Herber and Ernst Baier and French team Andrée Brunet and Pierre Brunet with developing athletic elements and programs that included pair spins, side-by-side spins, lifts, throw jumps, side-by-side jumps, and side-by-side footwork sequences. By the 1930s, pair skating had advanced; Hines states, "It was not yet viewed equally with singles skating, at least from a technically standpoint, but it had grown to be a much-appreciated discipline". Hines also reports that many single skaters during the era also competed in pair skating.
Soviet and Russian domination in pair skating began in the 1950s and continued throughout the rest of the 1900s. Only five non-Soviet or Russian teams won the World Championships after 1965, until 2010. Soviet pair teams won gold medals in seven consecutive Olympics, from 1964 in Innsbruck to 1988 in Calgary. Kestnbaum credits the Soviets for emphasizing ballet, theater, and folk dance in all disciplines of figure skating, noting the influence of Soviet pair team and married couple Liudmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov. The Protopopovs, as they were called, won gold medals at the 1964 and 1968 Olympics, as well as the 1968 World Championships, "raised by several degrees the level of translating classical dance to the ice". Hines reports that the Protopopovs represented a new style of pair skating developed during the 1960s. He states, "A more flowing style presented by the Russians was replacing an older, more disconnected style". The Protopopovs, like single skaters Sonja Henie in the 1930s and Dick Button in the 1940s, while winning multiple Olympic medals, "altered dramatically the direction of figure skating", and marked the beginning of the Soviet domination of pair skating for the rest of the 20th century. Irina Rodnina, with her partner Alexei Ulanov and later Alexander Zaitsev, also from the Soviet Union, dominated pair skating throughout the 1970s and "led the trend of female pair skaters as risk-taking athletes". With Ulanov, Rodnina won World and European titles for four years in a row and an Olympic gold medal in 1972. Rodnina and her second partner, Zaitsev, won the 1973 European Championships and were "never seriously challenged" between 1974 and 1978, winning gold medals at the 1976 Olympics and at every World and European Championships during that period. They also won gold medals at the 1980 European Championships and at the Olympics that same year. Hines states, about Rodnina and her partners, that they "transformed pair skating through expanded and inspired athleticism".
Later years
Pair skating, which has never included a compulsory phase like the other figure skating disciplines, did not require a short program until the early 1960s, when the ISU "instituted a short program of required moves" as the first part of pair competitions. The change was due "to a few controversial decisions in the 1950s and the discipline's increasing technical complexities". In 1964, at the European Championships in Grenoble, France, and the 1964 World Championships in Dortmund, West Germany, and during the Olympics in 1968, a two-and-a-half-minute-long technical program was added, later called the short program, which constituted one-third of a team's scores. The arrangement of the specific moves, also unlike compulsory figures for single skaters and the compulsory dance for ice dancers, was up to each pair team. The short programs introduced in single men and women competitions in 1973 were modeled after the pair skating short program, and the structure of competitions in both single and pair competitions have been identical since the elimination of compulsory figures in 1990.A judging scandal at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, "ushered in sweeping reforms in the scoring system" of figure skating competitions. The scandal, which centered around Canadian pair team Jamie Sale and David Pelletier and Russian pair team Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze, brought about the end of the 6.0 scoring system and the implementation of the ISU Judging System, starting in 2004.
According to Caroline Silby, a consultant with U.S. Figure Skating, pair teams, as well as ice dance teams, have the added challenge of strengthening partnerships and ensuring that teams stay together for several years. Silby states, "Conflict between partners that is consistent and unresolved can often lead to the early demise or break-up of a team". Challenges for both pairs and dancers, which can make conflict resolution and communication difficult, include: the fewer number of available boys for girls to find partnerships; different priorities regarding commitment and scheduling; differences in partners' ages and developmental stages; differences in family situations; the common necessity of one or both partners moving to train at a new facility; and different skill levels when the partnership is formed. Silby estimates that due to the lack of effective communication among pair teams, there is a "six-fold increase in the risk of national-level figure skating teams splitting". Teams with strong skills in communication and conflict resolution, however, tend to produce "highest-placing finishers at national championship events".