What was your first exposure to figure skating?

[gkelly]

I'm curious how different posters here were first introduced to the sport.

*Skating at a rink
*Skating on natural ice
*Watching on TV
*Watching online
*In a movie
*Live competition
*Live show
*Print news media
*Book
*Other

I don't know that I can make a poll here, so please reply in the thread.

Feel free to elaborate on your experience, including sharing when and where your first encounter with the sport took place if you feel comfortable doing so.

 

[el henry]

I will be the first, but not the last, to say Wide World of Sports, on a black and white television. Where Janet Lynn still shone, color or no.

Also @gkelly, polls themselves are too intensive for the GS server. From the guidelines:

Polls can be server intensive and tend to clutter the board, so they will be used minimally by the GS Forum staff only. Members can cast votes but not create polls.

But I will be interested in how many others learned of skating the same way, or a different way

 

[Mathman]

*Live show for me.

The Ice Capades came to town, with a show that had some acts specifically for children. (I was in the third grade). I wrote up a review for a school writing assignment. The highlight was a giant skating dog (two skaters in a dog suit.)

 

[4everchan]

*Skating at a rink : very young, exterior rink close to my home
*Skating on natural ice : natural, on a pond? a river? never though it was normal to do so on the river nearby... but we my father would make us an ice pad in our yard
*Watching on TV : definitely Olympics 1988, battle of the Brians and Elizabeth Manley
*Watching online : probably a few years ago... japan open to see chiddy
*In a movie : not sure
*Live competition : ACI a few years ago in Pierrefonds...
*Live show : I went to starts on Ice Canadian Olympics edition
*Print news media : i remember a shocking article where Isabelle Brasseur had fallen down in the short and it was written : la chute (the fall) ... they finished 3rd and were disappointed : albertville 1992.
*Book : none
*Other : first "trip" for skating Canadian Nationals to see chiddy in one of his last competitions... i had always admired and loved his skating.. but live he is unbelievable... so much better than anyone else i have ever seen.

I don't know that I can make a poll here, so please reply in the thread.

Feel free to elaborate on your experience, including sharing when and where your first encounter with the sport took place if you feel comfortable doing so.[/QUOTE]

 

[mrrice]

It was definitely watching Peggy Fleming win the Olympics way back in 1968. I was so young that I remember being sent to bed right after she skated which was about 8pm....I think.

Live event that really wowed me was Skate America in 1991.....Highlighted by Tonya Harding and Todd Eldredge.

Favorite live event ( As you all know ) was Worlds in 1999...….Thank you Maria Buryrskaya for making a dream come true and giving me a life long memory.

Worlds 2001...….Seeing gorgeous Jennifer Robinson and Hi 5-ing Plushy.

There have been many events since and without a doubt my favorite post 2000's experience was seeing the legend Patrick Chan skate live.

 

[Giu]

2006 Olympic Games on tv, thanks to Carolina Kostner

 

[YuBluByMe]

It was a tradition in my family to watch the Olympics every four years. Summer Olympics was more important (particularly track and field) but we also always watched the figure skating event in the Winter Olympics. The 1988 Winter Olympics is what made me a figure skating fan for life:

My parents argued all the way up to the day on which Brian was going to win. My mom was rooting for Orser, but my dad was going for Boitano. I always agreed with whatever my dad said so he would troll moms by asking me, “Who’s going to win the Olympics???”
Me: “Brian Boyno (that’s how I prounounced his name) is gonna take the gold, dad!”
Dad: “See? I told you! Even your child knows!”

I have very fond memories of the bickering and Boitano’s impossible 3Lz right on the music in his free skate. That’s something I remembered even before watching the skate for only the second time on YouTube more than two decades later.

Boitano got me interested in figure skating, but he’s not who made me a full-blown fan. My parents used to always say stuff like, “Nah, that German girl’s gonna take it, but Debbie Thomas is gonna be up there!” I didn’t even know black figure skaters existed so I was a huge fan. I watched her free skate a million times and memorized it. I was going to be the next Thomas. The rest is history.

I'm curious how different posters here were first introduced to the sport.

*Skating at a rink: In my pursuit in becoming the next Debie Thomas, I donned a pair of skates after about six months of practice. I did a little stag hop into a..... well, it’ll probably be 1S>> on a protocol today and my butt said hello to the ice. “Oh hell naw,” said I and I never wore skates again. But that’s okay because I ended up being top 5 in the nation in the 200m sprint many years later. Everyone was recommending running or basketball for me anyway.

*First Live competition: JNats in the early 00s. I can’t remember the exact year or even who won (wasn’t Takahashi) but it was in Nagoya. I’ve always been amused that the first (and only) Nationals I ever attended was for a country not my own.

 

[Weathergal]

My first experiences with skating were ice skating on natural ice and watching Dorothy Hamill in the 1976 Olympics.

We used to go skating when the local dam was frozen over. It was a HUGE area to skate on, and many people went there. It was free, but you definitely didn't want to skate close to the spillway area as that part wasn't frozen! I didn't have the opportunity to skate in an ice skating rink until i took figure skating for gym credits my freshman year in college. I was by no means a great skater but got around pretty well. But at first, I couldn't believe how much slipperier the smooth ice of the rink was LOL No bumpy ice, no sticks, etc. Many happy memories of skating on the frozen dam with my family. My mom, brother, and I would all skate. My dad didn't skate, but he would put on his work boots and join us. His "jobs" were shoveling snow off the ice and taking pictures. He would clear large expanses of ice so people could enjoy different parts of the ice, and we could play hockey. I wasn't that good at either but certainly had fun. Even though I was a bit of a tomboy and enjoyed playing hockey, the girlie part of me really wanted white ice skates, preferably with pom-poms on them. But I have a male cousin close in age, and I always got his black skate hand-me-downs. I was thrilled when in my late teens, I outgrew all the pairs I got from him and was able to finally have white skates.

 

[Good Vibes Only]

When I was younger, I used to ice skate but I did not like doing it. I was too cold for me and it was messing up my technique for roller skating, so I stopped. I never really got back into ice skating until the 2016 offseason. I was really bored one day, so I decided to watch ice skating. I remembered watching a really good Russian ladies skater during the 2014 Olympics and I wanted to watch her again. So I searched “good ladies ice skaters from Russia”. I found out that the skater that I was thinking of was Julia, but then Elena Radionova also showed up on my google search. So, I watched Elena’s performance at the 2016 worlds and the rest was history. I loved Elena because of her ability to emote and connect to the audience. Since then, I have watched every other season and have found many more skaters that I like as well.

 

[TallyT]

British parents here, so my oldest and fuzziest memory is of course Torvill and Dean's Bolero.

 

[iluvtodd]

My mom took us to the Ice Follies/Ice Capades when we were kids.

We watched ABC's Wide World of Sports & looked forward to watching it particularly when figure skating was shown.

I skated for the first time as a teenager. I loved the feelling of being on the ice so much that I asked my parents for a pair of ice skates for my birthday. I still have those skates & they still fit.

We would always watch the Summer & Winter Olympics on TV. My first memory of watching the Winter Olympics goes back to 1968, when Peggy Fleming won the OGM. Shortly after Dorothy Hamill won the OGM in 1976, I got her wedge cut, which I really loved, & kept it for several years (until the hair stylist convinced me to go for a perm). I regret that we didn't follow fs between 1984-1988. I had NO idea of what a rivalry was brewing betwwen Brian B. & Brian O.! The Calgary Olympics did it for us while watching "The Battle of the Brians" & Midori Ito. From that point on, we started watching everything we could!

We've attended Disney on Ice since 1983, & it's still a late December tradition for us (that's when it comes to Philly, just in time for our December b'days).

 

[Mathman]

But that’s okay because I ended up being top 5 in the nation in the 200m sprint many years later.

 

[Bookseller]

I definitely watched whatever was broadcast of the 1960 Olympics. And before that, it was Sonja Henie films. And that weird Snow White thing that Carol Heiss was in. All were seen on black and white TV. I always watched figure skating at the Olympics once it was on.

 

[Ic3Rabbit]

1984 Olympics. Remember watching Scott Hamilton, Brian Orser, Katarina Witt, Roz Sumners skate on TV, and thought it was so cool with the jumps and spins (I was a small child), then what sealed the deal was seeing Torvill and Dean skate Bolero: I was hooked and told my parents I wanted to do that. I will never be able to shake the vision of them on their knees at the beginning of that dance, just wonderful and hypnotizing.

 

[Blueshirt]

I put one blade onto the ice at a pond near my grandparents’ house when I was 7, and promptly fell on my face. I wasn’t familiar with figure skating yet, but it’s just as well.

Soon after, I watched Dorothy Hamill at the Olympics and became a skating fan. The World Professional Championships always was better advertised on TV than the World Championships, but so many of those great skaters from the 1980s are still among my favorites.

Maya Usova and Alexander Zhulin’s performances at the 1991 Worlds inspired me to find shows like Champions on Ice and Stars on Ice, and a colleague who adored Katarina Witt introduced me to the marvelous publication American Skating World.

The first competition I attended was the 1996 World Championships, and seeing the Michelle Kwan-Chen Lu showdown live remains a cherished moment for me. Later on, Mrs. Blueshirt and I attended a few World Pros. This season we finally traveled for her first ISU event, Skate America.

 

[eterislouisvuitton]

I did skating for a little while when I was very little, I guess I was quite good at it and one of my friends became very competitive locally. I moved and the rink was far away from my house so I stuck with gymnastics. I watched figure skating briefly at Sochi, and at Pyeongchang. I was getting a little bored of watching only gymnastics, so I googled some names that i remembered from the year before, Alina Zagitova, Evgenia Medvedeva, etc. That was around the time of RusNat 2019. I read about Alexandr aTrusova and her quads, adn I was very intrigued by this little jumping prowess changing the sport at just fourteen years old. So I kept watching, and here I am

 

[jvpiter]

I started out doing artistic roller blading as a very young child in the late 90s. I absolutely loved it and followed both figure skating (on ice) on television during major competitions (mainly the Olympics), and artistic roller blading at home, where I also took part in some competitions. Unfortunately I quit after a few years, because the programmes my coach created made me uncomfortable for being too “sexy”.

For the next years I completely forgot about the sport. I watched some of the 2014 Olympics, but my interest only really piqued in 2018 with Pyeongchang. Since then I fell back in love with the sport, follow with closely and even plan on starting skating as an adult soon.


Enviado do meu iPhone usando o Tapatalk

 

[karne]

Ah, Vancouver. When I opened the sports pages of the newspaper and the sports sections of the news paid attention to figure skating...for all the wrong reasons.

- Dominina/Shabalin's racist abomination. Much has been said and written on this point but of course it got a lot of attention here and all of it bad.
- Cheltzie Lee being threatened by the IOC to not be allowed to compete if she wore a wristband in memory of the skaters killed in the Sydney Harbour boat crash. In context with the above, this led to a huge sour taste for a lot of Aussies. (Those Russians are allowed to skate a racist abomination of a program, but our little Cheltzie can't wear a simple wristband?!)
- Johnny Weir being threatened by PETA because he had a scrap of fur on his costume.

And yet somehow all of this served only to pique my curiosity about the sport

 

[hanyuufan5]

1988 Olympics. My dad was a fan for who knows how long. My earliest memory of anything, ever is Viktor Petrenko's Don Quixote. I was waaaaay younger than most people would believe. Hooked instantly.

 

[rain]

On TV, the couple of times a year competitions were broadcast back in the 1980s (and we only got 3 TV channels). My mom watched it, so I grew up on Liz Manley, Brian Orser, Katarina Witt, Scott Hamilton, Debbie Thomas and co. My mom also loved the Protopopovs, though they only did exhibitions by then. I loved it.

We really are lucky now with how much skating is available for us to watch, one way or another, even though we're well past the golden age of having it every weekend on broadcast television.

And I love seeing skating competitions live. If you ever get the chance, you should go. It gives you a whole new appreciation for the sport. The genius of someone like Patrick Chan just cannot be adequately conveyed on screen, though of course he has gained many fans who've only seen him on television. I always wanted to tell those who complained about his component marks that they would get it if they could see him live — they would understand how much he stands out, even in an elite field, lol.