What kind of technique and control is lacking without school figures, when it comes to jumping? How did figures help develop it?
Did figures require special ice to train and compete?
First thing that comes to my mind is the control and balance needed in holding an outside edge and deepening it before picking in for the Lutz takeoff.
Right, so to my question about ice.
allaboutwork.org
That's a good question. I don't believe it really did. I wonder if flutzing became a thing once triple Lutzes became almost compulsory for women skaters to be competitive as they were training triple Flips as well.
Lip didn't exist among men during figures era, when they were doing 3F?
Maybe we should plan a FSU activity where we take random skaters from the figures era, and observe how they performed double and triple lutzes/flips. A question like this could be answered with observation and data gathering as opposed to conjecture and guess-working.
This is my point, I don't see the need to base my understanding on the village lore that goes on in skating forums usually. People are free to assume it's arrogance or my own lack of education or whatever else as they've done elsewhere, but here just as an example is Scott Hamilton's Lip:
I read Denise Biellmans autobiography very recently, who was skating as an amateur when figures still existed.
She hated figures with a passion, tried to avoid training them from a young age on and was really pretty bad at them, getting bad marks, but she was a much stronger jumper than most of her competitors and due to that moved up in the rankings in the other parts of the competition. She also was the first female skater who landed a triple lutz. So I somehow doubt that there is that much of a correlation between figures and jumps or figures and the other competition parts.
Here one can see her take-off edges for 3flip and 3lutz when she was 12:
I read Denise Biellmans autobiography very recently, who was skating as an amateur when figures still existed.
She hated figures with a passion, tried to avoid training them from a young age on and was really pretty bad at them, getting bad marks, but she was a much stronger jumper than most of her competitors and due to that moved up in the rankings in the other parts of the competition. She also was the first female skater who landed a triple lutz. So I somehow doubt that there is that much of a correlation between figures and jumps or figures and the other competition parts.
Here one can see her take-off edges for 3flip and 3lutz when she was 12:
And, of course, Janet Lynn.
'Not to diminish Trixi or Janet, what I love is how two of the greatest exponents of the sport, Lynn in free skating, and Schuba in figures, existed and competed within the same Olympiad, and are still remembered 50 years later for it.
Janet Lynn, sure, but I really doubt anyone remembers Trixi Schuba apart from skating diehards of yore.
Indeed.
To haul it back into the general vicinity of the original topic, Gabriella Papadakis just posted an instagram story of two female skaters (I presume ice dancers) working on an overhead lift and doing quite nicely at it for what looked to be fairly early in the process.
