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 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. and
Alexandr Gorshkov (1979) of the
Soviet Union, the first Olympic gold medalists in Ice dance|alt=Lyudmilla Pachomowa and Alexandr Gorshkov (1979) of the Soviet Union
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". In 2022, during the
Beijing Winter Games, a doping scandal prompted the ISU to raise the age limit for participation in the Olympics. 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 ==