Science: Why Skaters Don't Fall More Often

[jrethorst]

"Go Figure: Why Olympic Ice Skaters Don't Fall Flat on Their Faces" from Scientific American magazine:

"Although it may seem Olympic figure skaters have befriended the ice gods and coaxed the laws of physics to work in their favor, what they have really done is rewire their brains to suppress their reflexes."

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/go-figure-why-olympic-ice-skaters-dont-fall-flat-on-their-faces/

John R.

 

[Mathman]

Very interesting. It's amazing what the human body can train itself to do.

I think the author might have a chosen a different title if she had seen yesterdays men's short program, though.

 

[Barb]

Very interesting. It's amazing what the human body can train itself to do.

I think the author might have a chosen a different title if she had seen yesterdays men's short program, though.

I know. When I saw the title I thought it was a cruel joke.

 

[noskates]

Shot that theory all to hell, didn't it?

 

[CaroLiza_fan]

The BBC did a investigation into this a couple of years ago for two of their children's programmes - "Ice Stars" (S.1. Ep. 9) and "Operation Ouch" (S.4. Ep. 9).

The test subjects were two ladies singles skaters who were regulars on "Ice Stars", Kloe Rozgonyi and Alexia Walker-McGrath. And the conclusions were the same as in this article.

I wrote a review of the episode of "Ice Stars" that the feature appeared in here:

https://www.goldenskate.com/forum/s...ing-again-UK&p=1237344&viewfull=1#post1237344

I didn't write a review of the "Operation Ouch" episode, because the part about the skaters turned out to be a cut down version of what had previously been shown in "Ice Stars".

Of course, with it being children's programmes, there wasn't the same scientific detail as in this article. But, the principles of the article were definitely recognisable to somebody like me who had watched the BBC programmes.

A very interesting topic!

CaroLiza_fan