Book Review - Skate: 100 Years of Figure Skating.

[ONskater74]

I borrowed a book from the library the other day, and thought I;d share my thoughts. It was published in 1996. Written by Steve Milton, a writer familiar to figure skating generally, at least in Canada, it presents an extremely rosy and optimistic perspective on the sport (by 2000 everyone will be doing quads...  )

The photography is excellent, by Barbara McCutcheon. Overall the book tends to focus on the then-surging popularity of pro skating. I am really amused at the gushing enthusiasm the author shows towards the TV ratings of the time. 17 years between then and now really paints an altered picture.

Perhaps the most disturbing theme, one which recurs throughout the book, is the authors theory/assumption that the elimination of compulsory figures was the key to making skating a popular and successful sport and bringing it into the mainstream. His theory holds that before the elimination of figures the "good" free skaters (in his view the ones worth watching on TV) were chained and held back from their "rightful" place on the podium. In other words figures were a means used by nefarious officials and judges to weed out those who did poorly at figures and so prevent them from medalling, and so forth. The diatribe against figures comes and goes like an underlying musical theme all through the book. Obviously the skaters he interviewed for the book were bitter at the time. The conclusion one draws from the book is that the elimination of figures is the only thing that had saved skating from obscurity and oblivion.

Beside that, the stories are worth reading. The inclusion of then-stars-now-forgotten is an interesting slice of history. 17 years is a long time in the youthful world of amateur skating - people who were born in 1996 are now heading to the Olympics and Worlds...

In summary, as a coffee table book and as a light, if skewed and warped, history of the sport as of almost two decades ago it deserves a cautious reading with a pinch of salt. I think that a sober meditation on the trend in skating in the intervening years at the amateur level would pose some questions and mild rebukes to the unbridled optimism and naivete the writer indulges in.  The listing towards the end in an appendix of the "firsts" and so on is worth the read alone. Oh, and is Karen Preston on page 76 like really hot, or what?