Figure skating
The sport made its Olympic debut at London 1908 and reappeared at one more Summer Games edition before becoming a staple of the Olympic Winter Games programme.
Figure skating has become one of the most popular sports on the Olympic Winter Games programme. The ladies’ singles competition at Lillehammer 1994 is one of the 20 most-watched sports events in US television history, while 24 million Britons – nearly half the UK population at the time – tuned in to watch Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean win ice dance gold to the sound of Ravel’s Bolero at Sarajevo 1984.
As strange as it may seem, however, figure skating was originally an Olympic Summer Games sport. Having gained popularity and prominence at the Nordic Games, first held in 1901, it was added to the programme at London 1908, where the competition was held in October, a full three months after the other events had ended.
Some 21 athletes from six countries took part: Great Britain, Germany, Russia, the USA, Sweden and Argentina, which was represented by 47-year-old Horatio Torrome, still the country’s one and only figure-skating Olympian.
They competed in mixed pairs, men’s singles, ladies’ singles and men’s special figures. The first three of these events are still on the Olympic programme, though mixed pairs is now known as pair skating, and ladies’ singles was renamed women’s singles by the International Skating Union in June 2021, following a recommendation from the IOC Gender Equality Review Project. Ice dance was added to the Olympic programme at Innsbruck 1976.
London 1908 was special figures’ one and only appearance on the programme. It required unique skills, such as creating a figure on the ice while skating on one leg. The event was won by Russia’s Nikolai Panin-Kolomenkin.
The men’s singles gold at London 1908 went to the great Ulrich Salchow of Sweden, the winner of ten world and nine European championships. Salchow invented and gave his name to one of figure skating’s core elements. It involves taking off from the back inside edge of one skate, making a full turn in the air, and landing on the back outside edge of the other skate.
Though figure skating did not feature at Stockholm 1912, it made its return for Antwerp 1920, where ice hockey also made its Olympic debut, with both competitions taking place in April, four months before the Opening Ceremony. Figure skating was then moved to the Olympic Winter Games programme at Chamonix 1924 and has remained there ever since.
The London 1908 figure skating competition was held at the Prince’s Skating Club in Montpelier Square, Knightsbridge. The rink opened in November 1896 and in 1909 staged the Women’s Exhibition, held in support of women’s suffrage. It closed eight years later, with the building being used by the Daimler Motor Company before being demolished in the mid-1970s. The site is now occupied by a private garden.