Figure Skating: A Celebration

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

This is more than a big-budget picture book. The Globe and Mail’s
Beverley Smith has covered the skating scene since the early 1980s and
presents a wealth of information in these lavishly illustrated pages.
Her book is filled with commentary from such spokespersons as Toller
Cranston, coaches Peter Dunfield and Ellen Burka, and choreographer
Sandra Bezic, who provides an inside look at the development of Kurt
Browning’s famed “Casablanca” routine. Smith’s nitty-gritty
coverage ranges from costume selection to training conditions to amateur
vs. professional competition; and while the book bills itself as a
celebration, it does not ignore the devastation wrought by injury and
burnout.

Elvis Stojko’s foreword, which emphasizes the importance of mental
preparation to the 1994/95 world champion, is followed by sections on
the history of competitive skating, the figure skater’s career path,
judging, pairs skating, men’s singles, ice dancing, and women’s
singles. The technical and artistic evolution of the sport is conveyed
through profiles of such seminal figures from the past as coaches
Gustave Lussi and Sheldon Galbraith and skaters Jackson Haines (inventor
of the spiral, sit spin, and spread-eagle), Sonja Henie (the prima donna
with Nazi ties who introduced to women’s skating dance choreography
and mass appeal), and master spinner Ronnie Robertson (who “could
revolve 240 times a minute, spinning so fast and with such centrifugal
force that, if he held his arms out, traces of blood would ooze from the
pores of his fingertips”).

Those who bemoan the state of contemporary judging will be fascinated
by this book’s account of the astonishing corruption that reigned in
the 1950s and 1960s in the absence of TV cameras. Smith offers lucid
descriptions of each of the elements and succeeds in demystifying the
judging process. Her analysis of Stojko’s controversial second-place
finish at the 1994 Olympics is more substantial than any this reviewer
has yet encountered.

The contemporary field of skaters is well covered, although there are a
few imbalances. Much attention is given to Oksana Baiul’s commercial
success, but very little to her actual skating; in contrast, Surya
Bonaly’s technique (or lack thereof) is scrutinized in depth. But this
is a minor quibble about a book that has class enough to ignore the
Harding-Kerrigan soap opera save to acknowledge the tremendous boost in
popularity it gave to an already burgeoning sport.