Figure skating - Simple English Wikipedia

# Figure skating

### From Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia written in simple English for easy reading.

Figure skating (ice dancing) couple
Figure skating woman

Figure skating is both an art and a sport, in which people skate around on ice, doing jumps and spins. It is done at the Winter Olympics, and it has its own world championships.

In figure skating, sometimes women or men skate alone, or they skate in couples. Couples dancing includes pairs and ice dancing. Pairs skating has jumps, and sometimes the man lifts the woman in the air. These things are not done in ice dancing. Another kind of figure skating is synchronized skating, done in groups.

The first ever figure skating club was started in 1742 in Edinburgh, Scotland. World Championships began in 1896 (the first in St. Petersburg, Russia).

Some well-known figure skaters:

Women:

- Madge Syers (Britain)
- Charlotte Oelschlagel (Germany)
- Sonja Henie (Norway)
- Carol Heiss (United States)
- Katarina Witt (East Germany)
- Oksana Baiul (Ukraine)
- Lu Chen (China)
- Michelle Kwan (United States)
- Irina Slutskaya (Russia)

Men:

- Jackson Haines (United States)
- Ulrich Salchow (Sweden)
- Karl Schafer (Austria)
- Richard Button (United States)
- Toller Cranston (Canada)
- Scott Hamilton (United States)
- Brian Boitano (United States)
- Kurt Browning (Canada)
- Elvis Stojko (Canada)
- Alexei Yagudin (Russia)
- Evgeny Plushenko (Russia)

Pairs:

- Emilie Rotter & Laszlo Szolas (Hungary)
- Maxi Herber & Ernst Baier (Germany)
- Barbara Wagner & Robert Paul (Canada)
- Ludmila Belousova & Oleg Protopopov (USSR)
- Irina Rodnina & Alexei Ulyanov (USSR)
- Irina Rodnina & Alexander Zaitsev (USSR)
- Ekaterina Gordeeva & Sergei Grinkov (USSR)
- Xue Shen & Hongbo Zhao (China)
- Tatiana Totmianina & Maxim Marinin (Russia)
- Dorota Zagórska & Mariusz Siudek (Poland)

Ice dance:

- Jean Westwood & Lawrence Demmy (Britain)
- Eva Romanova & Pavel Roman (Czechoslovakia)
- Diane Towler & Bernard Ford (Britain)
- Lyudmila Pakhomova & Alexander Gorshkov (USSR)
- Jayne Torvill & Christopher Dean (Britain)
- Natalia Bestemianova & Andrei Bukin (USSR)
- Isabelle & Paul Duchesnay (France/Canada)
- Marina Klimova & Sergei Ponomarenko (Russia)
- Oksana Grishuk & Evgeny Platov (Russia)
- Tatiana Navka & Roman Kostomarov (Russia)

## [edit] Sources

- Figure Skating: A Celebration, by Beverly Smith

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Category: Sports

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