The early 70s ladies group- the figures specialists vs the free skaters | Golden Skate

The early 70s ladies group- the figures specialists vs the free skaters

pangtongfan

Match Penalty
Joined
Jun 16, 2010
The early 70s ladies group- the figures specialists vs the free skaters

I would think the Trixi Schuba, Janet Lynn, and Karen Magnussen era in the early 70s was perhaps the most interesting and conflicting ones ever. And this is the era that really woke the public up to the raging debate over compulsory figures vs free skating. Since you had the amazing free skaters like Janet Lynn, Gaby Seyfert before she retired after the 1970 Worlds, and Sonja Morgenstern, who all struggled relatively speaking in figures. Then you had the amazing figures specialists like Trixi Schuba and Julie Lynn Holmes who werent that strong in free skating. And you had the ones who were a mix of being good in both like Karen Magnussen and Zsuzsa Almassy.

It was the contrast of this group at a time figure skating was taking off in popularity to the mainstream public for the first time and TV coverage had increased, that led to the start of the devaluing of figures for the first and eventually to their controversial (to some) extinction. This would have been a fascinating era of skating to follow.
 
Top