Pair Skating

Pair skating is a figure skating discipline. International Skating Union (ISU) regulations describe pair teams as consisting of "one lady and one man." The sport is distinguished from ice dancing and single skating by elements unique to pair skating, including overhead lifts, twist lifts, death spirals, and throw jumps. The teams also perform the elements of single skating in unison. Pair skating requires requires similar technique and timing on all elements of the performance, as well as practice and trust between the partners. The aim is to create an impression of "two skating as one". Serious skating accidents are most common in the pair discipline.

In February 1908, pair skating first appeared at the World Championships, with three teams from Germany, the United Kingdom, and Russia competing in Saint Petersburg. Its Olympic debut was in October 1908, with three teams competing in London, one from Germany and two from the U.K. Pair skating has evolved significantly since its early beginnings. Some elements common in the modern-day sport were not introduced until decades later.

Famous quotes containing the words pair and/or skating:

“Not the less does nature continue to fill the heart of youth with suggestions of his enthusiasm, and there are now men,—if indeed I can speak in the plural number,—more exactly, I will say, I have just been conversing with one man, to whom no weight of adverse experience will make it for a moment appear impossible, that thousands of human beings might exercise towards each other the grandest and simplest of sentiments, as well as a knot of friends, or a pair of lovers.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

“Good writing is a kind of skating which carries off the performer where he would not go, and is only right admirable when to all its beauty and speed a subserviency to the will, like that of walking, is added.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)