The U.S. Figure Skating Championships is an annual figure skating competition organized by the United States Figure Skating Association. In addition to determining the national champions, the event was used to determine the U.S. teams for the World Figure Skating Championships and the Four Continents Championships. Medals were awarded in four colors: gold (first), silver (second), bronze (third), and pewter (fourth) in five disciplines – men's singles, ladies' singles, pair skating, ice dancing, and compulsory figures (mixed) – across three levels: senior, junior, and novice. The 1999 Championships took place between February 7–14, 1999 in Salt Lake City, Utah at the Delta Center.
It was the final U.S. Championships that included a competition in figures, which had appeared at every U.S. nationals since it began. For the only time, figures were a mixed event separated only by the three levels, with men and women competing against each other. The final skater to trace a figure at Nationals was Lauren Hill.
Famous quotes containing the words united, states, figure and/or skating:
“I incline to think that the people will not now sustain the policy of upholding a State Government against a rival government, by the use of the forces of the United States. If this leads to the overthrow of the de jure government in a State, the de facto government must be recognized.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Perhaps anxious politicians may prove that only seventeen white men and five negroes were concerned in the late enterprise; but their very anxiety to prove this might suggest to themselves that all is not told. Why do they still dodge the truth? They are so anxious because of a dim consciousness of the fact, which they do not distinctly face, that at least a million of the free inhabitants of the United States would have rejoiced if it had succeeded. They at most only criticise the tactics.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A lonely man is a lonesome thing, a stone, a bone, a stick, a receptacle for Gilbey’s gin, a stooped figure sitting at the edge of a hotel bed, heaving copious sighs like the autumn wind.”
—John Cheever (1912–1982)
“In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)