"Figure skating - how can an event where you smile, dance and don bizarre, sparkling costumes be considered a sport?"
- Despite the attempt to look effortless, figure skating mixes art and a huge amount of athleticism with high-speed jumps, steps and spins, although in the end, like gymnastics and boxing, it's a subjective sport with marks awarded by judges.
"How many events are there in figure skating?"
- Figure skating comprises four disciplines - men and women (referred to as ladies), pairs and ice dancing.
"Where does it get its name from?"
- Figure skating was named for the art form which involved executing set patterns, or the figure eight, on the ice which were then measured by judges. This tedious business was scrapped in 1990 as a result of more demanding TV interests.
Now there are two sections - the short programme (techncial) which lasts two-and-a-half-minutes and the long programme (freeskate) of four minutes for the women and four-and-a-half for men.
Ice dancing has three routines - the compulsory dance, original dance and free dance.
"What is the difference between ice dancing and pairs skating?"
- Both look similar but are very different. Ice dancing is ballroom dancing on ice while in pairs the man lifts the woman over his head and they perform acrobatic moves. Spins are done in both but pairs also involves diffciult solo jumps and spins done in unison.
"Axels, lutz, toe loops - what are the differences between the jumps?"
- The difference is very small with the number of turns within the jump that changes the difficulty.
The two types of jumps are edge jumps - axel, salchow and loop - and toe-assisted jumps - the toe loop, flip and lutz.
An edge jump is when the takeoff is from the edge of the blade while a toe-assisted leap is when the skater digs the serrated front edge of the blade into the ice to help propel himself off the ice.
"Isn't there always voting controversy in figure skating?"
- The 2006 Turin Games saw the introduction of a new system aimed at eliminating vote rigging after the 2002 Olympics pairs gold had to be shared when it emerged there had been collusion between the French and Russian judges.
The old maximum 6.0 mark was dumped and a cumulatve points system introduced where each programmed is given a technical score and a programme components score.
