Skaters who revolutionized/made an impact in Figure Skating

melissa_ire said:

Her moves have been copied endlessly since.

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Can I ask what moves? Nicole Bobek was the one who started the trend of near split spirals that was then imitated by Kwan and Cohen. Kwan was winning championships while reviving the Charlotte after it hadn't been used in decades long before Cohen, the Biellman spin was being done on both feet by Irina Slutskaya (and is of course associated with Denise).
So besides this general idea of Cohen popularizing flexibility it's really only the I-spin's ubiquitousness that maybe can be attributed to her. Cohen probably embodied the modern peak of a flexible baby ballerina, but she didn't innovate it, it was a culmination of a lot of skaters before her.

GF2445 said:

Ice Dance
Tessa and Scott & Meryl and Charlie have taken Ice Dance to new heights. They made ice dance so exciting and they helped raised the standard of dance by making those below them chase after them.

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I think that their most important credit is making IJS-Ice Dance decent to watch, before them it was frankly horrible

FSGMT said:

I think that their most important credit is making IJS-Ice Dance decent to watch, before them it was frankly horrible

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Well, personally it's making ice dance in general decent to watch from a sport standpoint. I never got the "sport" of ice dance, and it was all about the theatrics and expression. Now there is concrete difficulty and discernable ways to separate the teams beyond more subtle things like edge work and speed. Lesser teams (like C/B) can still rack up difficulty and contend with more popular teams, and that's a good thing. It's good that the standings aren't as predictable. I bet I/K would have been placed 3rd at Worlds after the SD under 6.0 to save their gold.

What is considered "revolutionary?"
To me, there are three categories of excellent skaters
1. Really good skaters, the best of their era--but more or less did the standard things.
2. Really good skaters who did more than the standard things--but nobody or few others could do them, didn't really influence anyone else
3. Really good skaters who actually did something nobody else did and now everyone tries to copy them
4. Skaters who enacted some sort of rule change.

I would say that most skaters are in group 1
Tara Lipinski, with her triple loop/triple loop would be in group 2. Also any female who does an axel (with the exception maybe of Mao Asada, who I didn't know had a rule in the short program altered because of her)
Michelle Kwan I would put in group 3, because she introduced or reintroduced the soft, tasteful skating style we see today, compared to the more brassy "showgirl" style of the 80's and 90's.
Someone like Elaine Zayak and Janet Lynn would be in group 4.

This is an interesting topic. I've scanned all the posts so far, and there's one name that hasn't been mentioned:

Robin Cousins.

Now, personally, I prefer the classical style of John Curry, but no doubt Cousins revolutionized the sport by introducing modern dance movements and styling.

While it could be argued that Toller Cranston opened the door in this regard, Robin Cousins kicked it off the hinges.

pangtongfan said:

I would say Torvill & Dean definititely revolutionized dance. They were the first to really create the theme based programs and pull them off so effectively, yet still mantain the highest technical level with it.

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The first to create the theme based program were Moiseeva-Minenkov with the Westside Story FD in 1977-78