Skate: 100 Years of Figure Skating

Sarah Robertson is an associate editor of the Canadian Book Review
Annual.

This lavishly illustrated and somewhat eccentrically organized book
opens with an overview of the dramatic changes, both aesthetic and
commercial, that have transformed the sport of figure skating in the
1990s. Successive chapters deal with skating history (the book’s
subtitle is explained by the fact that the first World Figure Skating
Championship was held in 1896); the mechanics and problems of judging
(highlighting this chapter is a lucid analysis of why Elvis was robbed
at the 1992 Olympics); the dichotomy between athleticism and artistry in
men’s and women’s singles; pairs and ice dancing; the Top Ten
competitive performances of all time; professional skating; the
emergence of precision, or team, skating; the depiction of skating in
the movies; and the future of a sport that many fear has become
dangerously overexposed. Concluding the volume are statistical
appendices, a skating chronology, and a glossary.

The book’s full-color photographs, though splendid, often bear no
relation to the accompanying text. The text itself, a disproportionate
amount of which is devoted to precision skating and to skating on
celluloid, is bland and seemingly allergic to controversy. (Some pungent
interjections by Toller Cranston would have worked wonders.) Eating
disorders in the skating world merit only a passing reference and Sonja
Henie’s Nazi connections not even that. A more thorough analysis of
figure skating, particularly of its darker side, can be found in two
1994 publications—Beverley Smith’s Figure Skating and Debbie
Wilkes’s Ice Time. Skate provides novice fans with a respectable
introduction to the sport, but only its photographs will truly engage
the longtime enthusiast.