How are ice dancing and figure skating different?

How are ice dancing and figure skating different?

Even before the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014, U.S. Figure Skating's national governing body (USFS) was hoping for a comeback and to draw people's attention to a sport that - despite its glittering costumes, graceful routines and seemingly effortless jumps and spins - has become known for scandals, controversies and losing competitions.

Figure skating has a long, sometimes controversial history as one of the most watched Olympic sports. (Who doesn't remember the Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan scandal? Me, Tonya, anyone?) And the drama continues: In 2014, the USFS awarded Ashley Wagner third place on the U.S. Olympic figure skating team, despite a disappointing fourth-place finish. place instead of giving it to Mirai Nagasu, who finished third (the official Sochi women's team included Gracie Gold, Polina Edmunds and Wagner). Although there is no official rule that says the skating association must base the list of Olympic teams solely on the results of the Nationals, it is true that the Nationals usually determine who goes to the Olympics. The USFS has violated this rule only a few times in history, a famous example being in 1994 when the USFS gave Kerrigan a spot on the Olympic team over Michelle Kwan, who placed second at the 1994 National Championships, even though Kerrigan did not compete at Nationals at all that year due to her (now infamous) injury.In 2018, the USFS selected Nagasu over Wagner for the 2018 Pyeongchang team, sparking a whole new round of promotion for the sport.

Ice dancing is not without controversy. At the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, French judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne admitted that she had been “bought out.” Le Gougne voted for Russian pair skaters Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze rather than Canadians Jamie Salé and David Pelletierin in exchange for a first vote for the French in the ice dancing competition. Ultimately, their vote was overruled, and the Russian and Canadian pair skaters shared the gold medal that year. But the incident left many people with a bad taste about the validity of ice dancing as an Olympic sport.

Figure skating vs. ice dancing

There are some fundamental differences between ice dancing and figure skating, even though they are in the same figure skating “envelope.” The most notable difference is thisIce dancingis considered a ballroom dance on ice, so the emphasis is on a graceful and entertaining routine that could easily be performed on the floor. Ice dancers must dance to music that has a consistent beat or rhythm, and it is the only discipline in which competitors can use music with singing. Ice dancing always takes place in pairs; jumps and throws are not permitted.figure skatingfocuses more on jumps, lifts, death spirals and spins. There are both pairs and individual competitions for men and women. While figure skaters are judged on the connecting footwork between all of these elements, ice dancers are judged more on the precision of their footwork.

The U.S. track record for both sports is pretty solid: In men's figure skating, the last U.S. medal was a gold medal from the 2010 Vancouver Games, won by Evan Lysacek. In the mid-2000s, the U.S. dominated women's figure skating, with the likes of Kristi Yamaguchi, Tara Lipinski and Sarah Hughes gracing the ice and taking home gold — but the U.S. women haven't taken home a medal since Sasha Cohen's silver medal at the 2006 Turin Games. As for ice dancing, sister and brother pair Maia and Alex Shibutani (also known as “Shib Sibs”) won a bronze medal for the United States in Pyeongchang. The pair of Meryl Davis and Charlie White won a silver medal at the 2010 Vancouver Games and took home gold in Sochi in 2014. The U.S. hasn't had a pairs figure skating team on the podium since 1988, but captured the bronze medal at both the 2014 and 2018 Olympics for the full team competition (which includes both figure skating and ice dancing athletes).