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Debi Thomas was a three-time World medalist - including gold in 1986 - two-time US Nationals champion, and the 1988 Olympic bronze medalist. She was many 'firsts' during her career - the first black woman to win US nationals in singles, the first black person in any sport to medal at the Winter Olympics, and the first black world champion in singles skating - and continued her amateur skating career even when she was a pre-med student at Stanford. While she was disappointed in her Olympic showing, her 'battle of the Carmens' with Katarina Witt is still well-known today.

Bonus: the time she got, as she wanted, something more practical than flowers from the audience - pizza!

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okay but where is the full choreography? (x)

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Zahra LARI (UAE) Asian Winter Games 2017 SP | read her story here

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Maria Kazakova & Georgy Reviya, free dance || 2020 European Championships

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just watched a man ice skate a whole routine to cotton eye joe while wearing denim overalls. ladies, i may be in love.

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Darlene Parent (née Gilbert) skating in pointe shoe skates. 1950s or 60s? This video gives me several different conflicting thoughts:

“Wow! That’s so pretty! She looks like a ballerina on a music box.” “Those must be so difficult to balance in. How does she skate in them?” “It must take a lot of strength to skate in those for very long.” “Her poor feet!”

It’s hard to find much more information about this video, but apparently the skates were her own invention, and she had an ironsmith make the blades and reinforce the shoes. She practiced ballet for many years and skated with the Ice Theatre of New York; I don’t know if the skates were made for a show or for kicks or what. She later became a skating coach and is apparently still teaching.

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Nathan Chen + backflip

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do as our parents say

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HE KNOWS

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Olivia McIsaac dress appreciation

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an ode to these dance-y steps because me @ the isu: is it really a finnstep without them?

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Two Hungarian woman skaters rocking the black pantsuit look, a couple of decades apart.

Left: Krisztina Czakó, The Addams Family music, GP France 1996. Right: Ivett Tóth, AC/DC medley, Olympics 2018.

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Have you ever watched pairs skating and thought, ‘Well, that’s not terrifying enough’? Or thought that synchro was heading in the right direction but just had too many people and not enough danger? Maybe you would have liked synchro pairs fours skating!

There’s not much info out there about this former event; the Wikipedia page is four sentences long. As far as I can tell, in the more recent past, it was mostly performed in Canada by pairs skaters and was an event at Canadian Nationals for many years, until it was discontinued in 1997. Elements included side-by-side lifts, side-by-side throw jumps, side-by-side death spirals, as well as double death spirals, four-person spins, and the whole team jumping at once. (A little more information if you’re curious: skateguard1.blogspot.com/2015/01/threes-company-fours-crowd-skatings.html)

Personally, while I think some of the elements are really cool (look at that double death spiral and the spins!), I would not be suprised if the main reason it was discontinued was the danger - imagine any one of those jumps or lifts going awry, and you have great conditions for a pileup.

(Video sources: 1988 Worlds Gala, Hough & Ladret & Benning & Johnston; 1989 Skate Canada Fours Competition, Menzies & Wheeler & MacNeil & Watson)

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Kévin Aymoz, Horns | 2018 Skate Canada

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Ivett always has such fun short programs