Ice Skating In The Olympics
By: Nalani G.
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Imagine you’re in an ice rink, gliding gracefully across the ice, and spinning with elegance and strength. Your skates hit the ice with every glide. Ice skating is a sport also known as figure skating. It involves traveling on ice with thin metal blades to support you. Figure skating involves a lot of balance, skill, and technique. With this, figure skating is a complicated sport physically, and as elegance, precision, and strength come together, it’s considered one of the most popular sports in the Winter Olympics. Though it is complex, skating is a very beautiful and graceful sport, especially in the Olympics.
Figure skating first began in the Summer Olympic Games in 1908, including Ice dance in 1976. For the Winter Olympics, figure skating joined in 1924. It has been a very popular sport in the Olympic Games, including on television, like gymnastics, and is one of the oldest sports to be a part of the Winter Olympics. Though difficult as it is, it’s very entertaining to watch, whether in person or at home. Figure skating demonstrates balance and control, needing to be precise and careful, with beautifully choreographed routines to music of the skater’s choice.
Madeline Schizas of Oakville, Ont., scores 64.97 in the women's short program during the figure skating team event at the Milano-Cortina Winter Games. Canada finishes the day in fifth place.
Figure skating includes five different events: team event, men’s single skating, women’s single skating, pair skating, and ice dance. The maximum number of olympic entries are 20 pairs, 24 ice dancing couples, 30 women, and 30 men. For the team skate, there are only 10 entries allowed.
Ilia Malinin skates in the Championship Men Free Skate during the 2025 Prevagen U.S. Figure Skating Championships at Intrust Bank Arena on January 26, 2025 in Wichita, Kansas.
For ice dance, athletes must include technical elements, like rhythm dance, but also need to perform a free dance afterwards. Next, in the men’s, women’s, and pair’s competitions, there are two events, including the shortened program and the free program. The shortened program has technical and mandatory elements, only lasting around two minutes and forty seconds, while the free program has a little more freedom and lasts around 4 minutes, but both include music chosen by the athlete. All individual skaters have to complete a certain number of jumps and spins to earn full points (highest points awarded for jumps), but most importantly with good form. Lastly, for team skating, figure skaters have two rounds: a chance to qualify, and the finals to determine the top teams. After each event in team skating, the total points are tallied up, and the team with the most points is the winner.
Like some other sports, you must qualify to move on in figure skating. In order to qualify for the Olympic Games in figure skating, teams are brought together by their individual National Olympic Committees, and will be promoted by their individual skill to be chosen to attend the Olympic Games. In order to determine the scores for each skater, there is a panel of nine judges, who decide on the quality and skill of the performance. There’s also a panel of two technical judges, who decide on the level of performance that is shown by the skater. Once all of the scores in total are in, the judges can finally determine who came out at the top!
Just like any other performing events, deductions are calculated. These deductions come from pauses, taking too much or too little time on an element, and most commonly, falls. These deductions, usually ranging from 1.0 to 3.0 points, are taken from the total segment score.
Figure skating is one of the most popular sports in the Winter Olympics, and continues to be a graceful and beautiful sport. Just watching a figure skater can make you want to join them on the ice and perform just like them, as they turn the ice into their dance floor. This year (2026), 20 year old Alysa Liu is performing at the Winter Olympic Games as a top figure skater for team USA. Performing like Alysa Liu means not putting your full focus on the gold medal, but having fun with the sport and sharing what you can do with the crowd. Figure skating is more than just gliding around on ice. It’s a sport, a dance, a talent, and an art.
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