Artistic roller skating is a sport similar to figure skating but where contestants run on roller skates instead of ice skates. Within artistic roller skating there are several disciplines:
- figures (similar to compulsory or "school" figures on ice)
- freestyle (individuals performing jumps and spins)
- pairs (a subset of freestyle with two people performing jumps, spins, and lifts)
- dance (couple)
- solo dance
- precision (team skating, similar to synchronized skating on ice)
- show teams
Artistic roller skaters use either quad or inline skates, though quad skates are more traditional and significantly more common. Generally quad and inline skaters compete in separate events and not against each other. Inline figure skating has been included in the world championships since 2002 in Wuppertal, Germany.
The sport looks very similar to its counterpart on ice, and although there are some differences, many ice skaters started in roller skating or vice versa. Famous champion ice skaters who once competed in roller skating include Brian Boitano, Tara Lipinski and Marina Kielmann . Roller figure skating is often considered to be more difficult because the ice allows the skater to draw a deep, solid edge to push off from when performing jumps such as a lutz or an axel. Also roller skates are generally heavier than their ice equivalents, making jumping harder.
Famous quotes containing the words artistic, roller and/or skating:
“I think “taste” is a social concept and not an artistic one. I’m willing to show good taste, if I can, in somebody else’s living room, but our reading life is too short for a writer to be in any way polite. Since his words enter into another’s brain in silence and intimacy, he should be as honest and explicit as we are with ourselves.”
—John Updike (b. 1932)
“And thus Snow White became the prince’s bride.
The wicked queen was invited to the wedding feast
and when she arrived there were
red-hot iron shoes,
in the manner of red-hot roller skates,
clamped upon her feet.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“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)