Country Changes In Figure Skating
Country changing is a phenomenon in the figure skating world in which skaters change the country they represent in competition. There are many different reasons why competitors switch countries, but it mostly comes down to maximizing the possibility of being able to compete at the World Figure Skating Championships and the Winter Olympic Games. A skater who cannot do that representing their home country often looks for another one. Because spots to Worlds and the Olympics are allotted by country, not by skater, a skater can hope to transfer to a new country and have a better chance of becoming national champion, being sent to Worlds, and qualifying for a spot in the Olympics.
Read more about Country Changes In Figure Skating: Singles, Pairs and Ice Dancing, Notable Examples, ISU Rules
Famous quotes containing the words country, figure and/or skating:
“It is a curious emotion, this certain homesickness I have in mind. With Americans, it is a national trait, as native to us as the rollercoaster or the jukebox. It is no simple longing for the home town or country of our birth. The emotion is Janus-faced: we are torn between a nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known.”
—Carson McCullers (1917–1967)
“But, alas, to make me
A fixèd figure for the time of scorn
To point his slow unmoving finger at!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)