Champions on Ice

Champions on Ice
Author: Christine Brennan
Publisher: M&S
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2002
Genre: Champions on Ice
ISBN: 9780771016486

This book celebrates 25 years of the touring skating show Champions on Ice, with an up-close look at the 2002 Olympic Tour, featuring Salt Lake City gold medallists Sarah Hughes, Alexei Yagudin, and Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat, and many others. Christine Brennan of USA Today has travelled with the tour and spent time with skating’s superstars behind the scenes to learn what makes them special and what makes them tick. She follows the tour to present a “day-in-the-life” view, from wake-up call to tuck-in at night, from quiet moments to clowning around, to a packed arena and showtime on ice. In addition to this year’s tour, Brennan brings moments alive from every year, presenting a “Who’s Who” of modern figure skating. The story of Champions on Ice mirrors the development of figure skating itself, and Brennan brings this to life when she describes fan passions, the art and craft of selecting the right music for a routine, the changing role of coaches and choreographers, and the impact of the “Russian invasion” that changed the face of North American figure skating in the early 1990s. Also profiled is Tom Collins, the impresario who created Champions on Ice when he put together the first tour of Olympic-level skaters in the mid-1970s. Today, his 2002 Olympic Tour will play 93 dates from coast to coast, with a further winter tour booked for early 2003. Collins attributes his success to creating a comfortable family environment for his talented skaters, and it is this sense of fun and the sheer joy of skating that comes through on every page of Champions on Ice.

Figure Skating in the Formative Years

Figure Skating in the Formative Years
Author: James R Hines
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2015-03-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0252097041

Once a winter pastime for socializing and courtship, skating evolved into the wildly popular competitive sport of figure skating, one of the few athletic arenas where female athletes hold a public profile--and earning power--equal to that of men. Renowned sports historian James R. Hines chronicles figure skating's rise from its earliest days through its head-turning debut at the 1908 Olympics and its breakthrough as entertainment in the 1930s. Hines credits figure skating's explosive expansion to an ever-increasing number of women who had become proficient skaters and wanted to compete, not just in singles but with partners as well. Matters reached a turning point when British skater Madge Syers entered the otherwise-male 1902 World Championship held in London and finished second. Called skating's first feminist, Syers led a wave of women who made significant contributions to figure skating and helped turn it into today's star-making showcase at every Winter Olympics. Packed with stories and hard-to-find details, Figure Skating in the Formative Years tells the early history of a sport loved and followed by fans around the world.

Historical Dictionary of Figure Skating

Historical Dictionary of Figure Skating
Author: James R. Hines
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Total Pages: 422
Release: 2011-04-22
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0810870851

Figure skating is the most popular televised sport at the Olympic Winter Games and is the oldest of the winter sports, having first been contested at the Games of the fourth Olympiad in London in 1908. No other sport creates such a perfect balance between athleticism and artistry, and the athletes—many of them household names like Oksana Baiul, Brian Boitano, Nancy Kerrigan, Evan Lysacek, Katarina Witt, and Kristi Yamaguchi—spend years in training to make it look effortless. The Historical Dictionary of Figure Skating relates the history of the sport through a chronology, an introductory essay, an extensive bibliography, appendixes, and over 800 cross-referenced dictionary entries on hundreds of skaters, past and present, but also on skating countries, governing bodies, skating disciplines, technical elements, skating styles, and many other subjects. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the history of figure skating.

Figure Skating

Figure Skating
Author: Jennifer MacKay
Publisher: Greenhaven Publishing LLC
Total Pages: 106
Release: 2012-06-12
Genre: Young Adult Nonfiction
ISBN: 1420507842

Figure skating, which is the world's most popular winter Olympic sport, is the subject of this volume. Though figure skaters are often known for their theatrical and artistic performances, author Jennifer MacKay outlines for readers the complex physical and biomechanical properties at work in this beautiful and demanding sport. From the development of the indoor ice rink, to the application of Newton's laws of motion, to the psychological challenges faced by many skaters, MacKay explores how these athletes achieve amazing physical accomplishments and perfect their art.

Figure Skating

Figure Skating
Author: Claire Throp
Publisher: Raintree
Total Pages: 48
Release: 2013-11-07
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1406269816

Though it's graceful and beautiful to watch, don't be fooled. Champion-level figure skaters are some of the strongest, most technically skilled athletes anywhere. Learn about this stylish sport and find out how the pros train! Do you think you have what it takes to give it a try?

Triumph on Ice

Triumph on Ice
Author: Jean Riley Senft
Publisher: Greystone Books Ltd
Total Pages: 144
Release: 2011
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1553656571

When Olympic figure skating judge Jean Senft blew the whistle on vote trading at the 1998 Nagano Winter Games, she opened the door to an entirely new way of judging. This system, which was developed and adopted following the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, is driving the sport in new directions. As skaters are pushed to explore ever-more difficult and dramatic ways of scoring points, they are changing the very nature of figure skating. In Triumph on Ice, Senft describes in detail how that new system has lead to this new type of skating, which was so thrillingly on display at the 2010 Olympics. Se.

Artistic Impressions

Artistic Impressions
Author: Mary Louise Adams
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2011-02-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1442695617

In contemporary North America, figure skating ranks among the most 'feminine' of sports and few boys take it up for fear of being labelled effeminate or gay. Yet figure skating was once an exclusively male pastime - women did not skate in significant numbers until the late 1800s, at least a century after the founding of the first skating club. Only in the 1930s did figure skating begin to acquire its feminine image. Artistic Impressions is the first history to trace figure skating's striking transformation from gentlemen's art to 'girls' sport. With a focus on masculinity, Mary Louise Adams examines how skating's evolving gender identity has been reflected on the ice and in the media, looking at rules, technique, and style and at ongoing debates about the place of 'art' in sport. Uncovering the little known history of skating, Artistic Impressions shows how ideas about sport, gender, and sexuality have combined to limit the forms of physical expression available to men.

Alone

Alone
Author: Bill Jones
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 439
Release: 2014-07-31
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1408853442

The previously-untold story of the life and tragic early death of John Curry, one of the most famous ice skaters in history. The book that inspired new film The Ice King, the story of John Curry's life. One winter's night in 1976, over 20 million people in Britain watched John Curry skate to Olympic gold on an ice rink in Austria. Many millions more watched around the world. Overnight he became one of the most famous men on the planet. He was awarded an OBE. He was chosen as BBC Sports Personality of the Year. Curry changed ice skating from marginal sport to high art. And yet the man was a mystery to a world that had been dazzled by his gift. Surely, men's skating was supposed to be Cossack-muscular, not sensual and ambiguous like this? Curry himself was a complex, tortured man. For the first time, Alone untangles the extraordinary web of his toxic, troubled, brilliant and short life. It is a story of childhood nightmares, furious ambition, sporting genius, lifelong rivalries, homophobia, Cold War politics, financial ruin and deep personal tragedy. So much more than a sports biography, Alone reveals the restless, impatient, often dark soul of a man whose words could lacerate, whose skating invariably moved audiences to tears, and who after succumbing to AIDS, as so many of his fellow artists and friends did, died of a heart attack aged just 44.