March 12th: Ice Skating

On this date in 1984, British ice dancing team, Torvill and Dean became the first skaters to receive 9 perfect 6.0s in world championships. Plus the Winter Paralympics is on. 10 facts about the sport of ice skating.

1. People first took to the ice, not for sport, but as a means of getting around. The first people to do it were probably the people of Finland, about 3,000 years ago. The skates they used were made from animal bones. They may also have used wooden poles to propel themselves forward. Wooden and metal blades came much later.
2. People in Britain were introduced to skating as a leisure activity by King James II, who was exiled to the Netherlands for a while in the 17th century, and brought the idea back with him. It was the Brits who first came up with the idea of an ice skating club. The first ice skating club in the world was formed in Edinburgh in the 1740s. It was only open to people who could skate already, for would be members had to pass a skating test before they could be admitted. They had to be able to perform a complete circle on either foot and jump over a row of hats placed on the ice. The Edinburgh Skating Club was the only one in the world for quite some time - the next one wasn't founded until 1830, in London.
3. The first book about ice skating was written by a British artillery lieutenant called Robert Jones and was published in 1772. The book was written for man only - women didn't skate in 1772. The book separated skating into two disciplines - speed skating and figure skating. In skating's early days, figure skating tended to be what the aristocracy did, while racing on skates was enjoyed by the working classes, in particular, farm workers.
4. Queen Victoria got to know her future husband, Prince Albert, through a series of ice skating trips.
5. Now for some science stuff. A skate can glide over ice because of a layer of ice molecules on the surface which aren't as tightly bound as the molecules in the main body of the ice. These molecules are in a semi-liquid state, providing lubrication. At about −250 °F (−157 °C) the slippery layer is one molecule thick; as the temperature increases the slippery layer becomes thicker. It was theorised that the blade of a skate exerted pressure on the ice, causing friction, which melted a thin layer, causing lubrication. This, however, didn't explain how skating could work at very low temperatures, and why ice is slippery even when you're standing still.
6. Figure skating was the first winter sport to be included in the Olympic Games. It debuted during the London Olympic Games in 1908. That was the summer games - the Winter Olympics didn't exist for another 16 years.
7. The name “figure skating” comes from the compulsory part of the competition in which skaters are required to trace perfect figures on the ice, including figure 8s. Some rules of the competition: the musical accompaniment must not include vocals; competitors cannot use props of any kind - these are only allowed in skating exhibitions; and judges can deduct points if several of them agree that a skater's costume it too provocative or garish.
8. We've all heard of ice hockey, but hockey isn't the only sport to be played on ice. Most of them have been tried for novelty value, or never really caught on - like ice tennis, ice baseball, ice billiards and ice football. Ice golf was first envisaged by Rudyard Kipling while he was writing The Jungle Book; and there is a World Ice Golf Championship which has been held in Greenland since 1997.
9. Figure skates differ from hockey skates because figure skates have serrated edge on the tip of their blades, called a "toe pick". The function of the toe pick is to grip the ice and enable to skater to jump.
10. While it's possible to suffer injury from falls or colliding with barriers in ice rinks, probably the biggest danger when skating on frozen lakes or canals is falling through the ice. This can lead to drowning or hypothermia, and it's pretty tricky getting out of the hole you've fallen into. It was for this reason that during the 18th and 19th centuries, the Royal Humane Society in London recruited 'Icemen', for the sole purpose of rescuing anybody unfortunate enough to fall through thin ice. They had a contraption called a drag, which the victim could cling to while the iceman pulled them out to safety. At first, a financial reward of five guineas (worth about £350 today) was given to icemen for each rescue. They had to stop that in the end, because the system was often abused by people who would get their friends to pose as a victim and split the reward between them.

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