Figure skating was first contested at the Olympic Games at the 1908 Summer Olympics in London, England. Since 1924, the sport has been a part of the Winter Olympic Games. The disciplines of men's singles, women's singles, and pair skating have been contested since the 1908 Olympics. Ice dance joined as a medal sport in 1976 and a team event debuted at the 2014 Winter Olympics. Special figures were only contested at the 1908 Olympics.
The Winter Games have been televised since the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. The ISU Judging System has been used since 2004, following a judging scandal during the pair skating event at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah. In 2022, during the Beijing Winter Games, a doping scandal prompted the International Skating Union (ISU), the organization that oversees figure skating, to raise the age limit for participation in the Olympics.
The ISU and the International Olympic Committee work together to determine the qualifying criteria for figure skaters who compete at the Winter Olympics. The ISU states the following: "All athletes must respect and comply with the provisions of the Olympic Charter currently in force". The ISU Judging System is used to determine the placement of competitors and medal winners.
History
Early history Figure skating was first contested as an Olympic sport at the 1908 Summer Olympics, in London, England, with four disciplines: men, ladies, pair skating, and special figures. According to figure skating historian James R. Hines, the inclusion of figure skating as an Olympic sport was due to the efforts and influence of the British figure skating community and the availability of indoor artificial ice in England. Hines also states that "Olympic skating began in part because of a natural disaster". The 1908 Games, the fourth modern Olympics, were originally to be held in Rome, but the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 1906 and Italy's rebuilding efforts prohibited it from hosting the Olympics. William Grenfell, the British member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), was approached with an offer to host the Olympics in England. H. E. Vandervell, who was called "the father of British figure skating", was also involved in the proposal to include figure skating at the London Olympics. The British Olympic Association, after consulting with and receiving positive responses from the governing bodies of several sports in England, accepted the invitation and was appointed to plan and manage the Games. A month after the appointment, they discussed the possibility of including figure skating and indoor speed skating (now called short track), but only figure skating was included. Special figures were also included for the only time in Olympic history.
Hines considers the inclusion of pair skating in both the 1908 World Championships and 1908 Olympic Games "surprising", adding, "The rapidly increasing number of talented women skaters who wanted to compete must have had a direct influence and thus offers the best explanation of both ladies' and pairs competitions at about the same time". Scholar Ellyn Kestnbaum called figure skating "one of the first organized sports to include female participants on a nominally equal footing with males and one of the first to offer women the opportunity to participate in the Olympics". Kat Eschner of Smithsonian Magazine, in her discussion of women's participation in figure skating, states that "figure skating is the oldest women's Olympic sport. It was one of the first sports with a category for women competitors and the only women's winter Olympic sport until 1936".
Ulrich Salchow of Sweden and Madge Syers of Great Britain were the first Olympic champions in men's and women's single skating, respectively. The first Olympic champions in pair skating were Anna Hübler and Heinrich Burger of Germany. The first and only Olympic champion in special figures was Nikolai Panin of Russia.
Figure skating was not included in the 1912 Games in Stockholm, probably due to a lack of ice, and the 1916 Olympics, which were supposed to be held in Berlin, was cancelled because of World War I. The 1920 Games in Antwerp, the first Olympics after World War I, included figure skating, but the International Skating Union (ISU), the organization that oversees figure skating, chose not to "participate in either the planning or the conduct of the games", as a protest against including defeated nations. The ISU, however, did not try to prevent athletes from competing. The Antwerp Figure Skating Club oversaw figure skating events at the Olympics instead of the ISU, and ISU rules were followed. It was the last time figure skating was contested before the Winter Games were held separately. Special figures were not included at Antwerp.
The 1924 Paris Olympic Games were the first to separate the Summer Games and the Winter Games, which were held at Chamonix in southeastern France. In 1925, the IOC voted to rename the Chamonix events the Winter Olympic Games. Separate Winter Games have been held every four years, except in 1940 and 1944, when they were cancelled due to World War II. Participation in figure skating at the Olympics increased between the World Wars, from 23 in 1920 to 42 in 1936. The champions at the five Winter Games during this period were "some of the finest skaters in the history of the sport": Gillis Grafstrom of Sweden, who won three times; Sonja Henie of Norway, who won three times; Karl Schäfer of Austria, who won twice; and pair skaters Andrée Brunet and Pierre Brunet of France, who won twice.
Later years According to Hines, "Like gymnastics in the Olympic Summer Games, figure skating in the Olympic Winter Games is the most popular sport for television audiences". The 1936 Olympics in Berlin were the first Games to be broadcast on television, though only to local audiences. The 1956 Winter Olympics in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, were the first internationally televised Olympic Games, as well as the last time figure skating was contested outdoors. The 1960 Squaw Valley Winter Games were the first to have all figure skating events televised. In 1967, the ISU voted to hold the World Figure Skating Championships, European Figure Skating Championships, and the Olympic Winter Games indoors on covered ice rinks.
Ice dance was added as an Olympic discipline in 1976; Lyudmila Pakhomova and Alexandr Gorshkov from the Soviet Union were the first gold medalists. Synchronized skating has never been a part of the Olympics, although there has been discussion regarding its inclusion. The Summer and Winter Games were held in the same year until 1992, when the IOC decided to alternate the Summer and Winter Games in a two-year rotation; the Winter Games were moved forward by two years, so the 1994 Winter Games were held in Lillehammer, Norway. In 1992, the ISU also chose to permit "a one-time reinstatement of ineligible skaters to full eligibility", which meant that professional skaters could compete at the European Championships, World Championships, and the Olympics in 1994. The 1992 Winter Games were the first Olympics where compulsory figures were not included, after the ISU chose to remove them from competition in 1990.
The women's figure skating competition drew media attention in 1994 in the aftermath of the assault of Nancy Kerrigan, planned by the ex-husband of opponent Tonya Harding in January 1994, during the U.S. Figure Skating Championships. Both skaters competed at the Olympics; Kerrigan narrowly came in second place, behind Oksana Baiul of Ukraine, and Harding finished in eighth place. The 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, was the first time the Summer and Olympics were held in different cities.
At the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, a judging scandal led to the change of the scoring system in figure skating, from the 6.0 System, developed in the early days of the sport, to the ISU Judging System. Kestnbaum states, "After the scandal at the 2002 Olympics, when the admission by the French judge in the pairs competition that she had been pressured by the French federation president to favor the top Russian team over the Canadian co-favorites provided confirmation of judging improprieties in front of a worldwide audience, the ISU took drastic action". The first time the new scoring system was used at the Olympics was at the 2006 Turin Winter Games.
The 2014 Sochi Games were the first time the team event was contested at the Olympics. Ten nations, each featuring a male and female single skater, a pair skating team, and an ice dance team, competed over three days. The five teams with the highest scores in the short program or rhythm dance went on to compete in the free skate or free dance programs. The change in ice dance from three components to two in 2010, when the ISU voted to eliminate the compulsory dance and the original dance, and replace them with the short dance, "opened the way for the team event to be introduced in the Olympic programme". The Russian team was the first team to win gold in the team event. In 2022, during the Beijing Winter Games, a doping scandal prompted the ISU to raise the age limit for participation in the Olympics.
There have been several notable Olympic skaters in the post-WWII era and the 21st century. Dick Button from the United States, who executed the first double Axel jump at the Olympics in 1948, where he earned a gold medal at age 16, and the first triple jump (the loop jump) in competition at the 1952 Olympics, went on to be a figure skating commentator for 40 years. American skater Peggy Fleming, who won a gold medal at the 1968 Olympics, signaled a return to American success in the sport of women's figure skating following the 1961 Sabena plane crash that killed the entire U.S. figure skating team, was also a commentator after her retirement from competitive skating, alongside Button. Pairs skaters Ludmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov were the first Soviet skaters to win gold medals in pair skating from the Soviet Union at the 1964 Games; Russian pair skaters won gold medals in all twelve Olympics between 1964 and 2006. The Soviets also dominated in ice dance during most of the 1970s, winning every Worlds and Olympics between 1970 and 1978. At the 1984 Winter Games in Sarajevo, Soviet domination of ice dancing was broken Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean from Great Britain; their free dance to Ravel's Boléro has been called "probably the most well known single program in the history of ice dance". In 1998, American skater Tara Lipinski, who, like Button and Fleming, went on to become a commentator, alongside her friend and fellow Olympian Johnny Weir, became the youngest Olympic gold medalist in figure skating history at age 15. She was the sixth American woman to win an Olympic gold medal in figure skating. She broke the record set by Sonia Henie at the 1928 Winter Olympics, which had stood for 70 years. In 2018, at the Olympics in Pyeongchang, Canadian ice dancers Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir became the most decorated figure skaters in Olympic history after winning the gold medal there, winning three Olympic gold medals and two silver medals at the Olympics.
Qualifying There are five figure skating events at the Winter Olympics: one men's event (men's single skating), one women's event (women's single skating), and three mixed events, which consist of pair skating, ice dance, and the team event. Athletes are sent to the Olympics by their individual National Olympic Committees (NOCs), which "promote the development of their respective national athletes and select which ones will attend the Olympic Games" and nominate host cities selected by the IOC.
The ISU states the following: "All athletes must respect and comply with the provisions of the Olympic Charter currently in force". These provisions include, but are not limited to: