Figure Skating Gear

The Gear to Skate!

Skates of course..

Over the boot, under the boot, or full foot tights...

You'll need a dress...

You'll need a pair of guardes for off the ice...

Cloth guardes..

You'll need a bag to put all of this stuff in..

HERE'S A TIP: Just after leaving the ice, put on your guardes, and then once you get into the dressing room, remove your guardes, wipe your skate blades with a towel, and put a pair of cloth guardes on your blades so they dont rust.

Michelle Kwan

MICHELLE KWAN

Full Name : Michelle Wing Kwan
Nick Name: Shelly
Birthdate: July 7th 1980
Hometown: Torrance, California
Family: Danny (Dad), Estella (Mom), Ron (Brother), Karen (Sister)
Coach: Rafael Arutunian (former: Frank Carroll '92-'02; Scott Williams '02-'03)
Choreographers:
Current season: Tatiana Tarasova
Past seasons: Lori Nichol, Sarah Kawahara, Christopher Dean, Peter Oppegard, Brian Wright, Philip Mills, Nikolai Morozov, Karen Kwan, and Michelle
Agent: Shep Goldberg, Proper Marketing Associates
Home Club: Los Angeles FSC
Training Rink & Town: East West Ice Palace in Artesia, California
Past seasons: Ice Castle's International in Lake Arrowhead, California
Healthsouth in El Segundo, California
College: ULCA and University of Denver

Fun Facts

Michelle always wears a good luck neclace that her grandmother gave her.

Michelle finished 11th grade with a 3.8 GPA and 12th grade with a 3.9 GPA, for a cumulative high school GPA of 3.61.

She had to go behind her coach, Frank Carroll's back in order to move up to the senior level.

Michelle had a pet squirrel when she was younger

Her sister, Karen, also skated competitively at the elite level, finishing 6th at Nationals in '97

When she first lived at Ice Castle, she lived in the cabin called, "Debi Thomas' Teepee."

Pair Skating

Pairs

Pair skating is a figure skating discipline. International Skating Union (ISU) regulations describe pair teams as consisting of "one lady and one man." The teams perform both singles elements in unison and elements such as acrobatic lifts that are unique to pair skating, with the goal of giving an impression of "two skating as one". Pair skating is difficult because achieving this degree of unison requires similar technique and timing on all elements of the performance, as well as practice and trust between the partners. Pair skaters perform all of the same elements as singles skaters, with a few extra elements, such as lifts, that set the discipline apart from simply being two singles skaters skating together.

TRICKS

Throw jump - a move in which the man assists the lady into the air and she lands on her own. Throw jumps can be done with any of the jump takeoffs, done as doubles, triples, or quadruples for elite pair teams. The toe loop and salchow are considered the easiest jumps while the loop and flip are more difficult; the most difficult throw jump is the axel. The most difficult throw jump that has been completed in competition is the throw triple axel jump. It was first performed by Rena Inoue and John Baldwin Jr at the 2006 U.S. Figure Skating Championships. It was first performed in international competition at the 2006 Winter Olympics.

Pair spin- a spin in which the two spin around a common axis while holding each other. The additional balance obtained by holding onto a partner allows pair skaters to obtain spin positions that would be difficult or impossible for a singles skater to achieve.

Death spiral - a move in which the man performs a pivot while swinging the lady around on a deep edge in a position almost horizontal to the ice.

Lift - lifts are categorized by the grip and position used to initially lift the lady over the man's head. For example, in a hip lift, the man lifts the lady with his hand on her hip, and a press lift uses a hand-to-hand grip. The hardest type of lift is considered to be the Axel lasso lift, in which the lady rotates a full turn while she is lifted by the man in a hand-to-hand grip. In normal lifts, the man performs turns on the ice before setting the lady down; a carry lift, by contrast, is a lift without rotation.

Twist lift - a move that begins with the man assisting the lady in an Axel or toe-assisted jump where she rotates and is caught mid-air by the man, who then places her down back on the ice. Double and triple twist lifts are commonly seen at the elite level; the first quadruple twist lift was performed by Marina Cherkasova and Sergei Shakrai at the 1977 European Championship.[citation needed]

Side-by-side elements include: jumps, spins, and step sequences. Keeping in line with "two skating as one", the quality of a side-by-side element is not evaluated by an average of each skater's completion. Instead, skaters should begin a side-by-side element together, maintain unison and close proximity to each other throughout, and finish together. Pairs sometimes shout auditory cues to their partner in order to maintain and adjust their timing throughout a side-by-side element.

Tara Lipinski-Olympic Gold Medlest

TARA LIPINSKI

Tara Kristen Lipinski (born June 10, 1982) is an American figure skater. At the age of 15, she won the Olympic gold medal in figure skating at the 1998 Winter Olympic Games, and remains the youngest individual gold medalist in the history of the Olympic Winter Games.




Early life



Lipinski, an only child, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Patricia (née Brozyniak), a secretary, and Jack Richard Lipinski, an oil executive and lawyer. She spent her earliest years in Washington Township, Gloucester County, New Jersey. The family lived in Sewell, New Jersey until 1991. Lipinski began roller skating at age three and later won a number of competitions. She began figure skating at age six. Her first competition was the 1990 regional championship, where she finished second. At the 1991 United States Roller Skating Championships, she won the primary girls freestyle as a nine-year-old.
In 1991 her father's job required the family to move to Sugar Land, Texas. However, training facilities were not available there. In 1993, Lipinski and her mother moved back to Delaware, where she had trained before. She later moved to Detroit, Michigan to train with Richard Callaghan.




Professional career

On March 9, 1998, Lipinski announced her decision to withdraw from the 1998 World Figure Skating Championships, citing a serious glandular infection that required her to have two molars extracted, constant fatigue, and possible mononucleosis.
On April 7, 1998, Lipinski announced her intention to turn professional in an interview with Katie Couric on the Today Show. She cited a desire to spend more time with her family, to have time for school, and to compete professionally against other Olympic champions. However, rather than spending time at home, Lipinski immediately embarked on full schedule of touring, publicity appearances, and acting engagements that required constant travel.
Following her decision to turn professional, Lipinski was heavily criticized both for the decision itself and for the inept public relations skills of her agent and family. For example, the United States Figure Skating Association (USFSA) was not officially informed of Lipinski's decision to withdraw from the World Championships before the announcement was made to the press. In addition to Lipinski's own conflicting statements, her agent, Mike Burg, told reporters he was worried about Lipinski "tarnishing" her Olympic medal by continuing to compete. Also, in a widely publicized incident, Lipinski's mother said to the press when she found that Michelle Kwan, rather than Lipinski, had been chosen to present a team jacket to President Bill Clinton at a White House reception for Olympic athletes, "Don't you think it's a terrible thing for them to do to poor Tara? It's been like this for poor Tara. It's a terrible thing." Tara herself didn't seem to mind, however.
Not long after she turned professional, Lipinski broke an existing $1.2 million contract to appear in made-for-TV events sponsored by the USFSA.
In August 1998, Lipinski suffered a hip injury in practice. After a string of other injuries, she underwent surgery to repair torn cartilage in her hip in September 2000. Many people have pointed to the repetitive stress of practicing the triple loop combinations Lipinski performed during her competitive days as the primary cause of her hip problems.
In an August 2001 article in Blades on Ice magazine, Lipinski stated that the real reason she turned professional was that she had originally incurred the injury to her hip in the summer of 1997 and that she had skated the entire Olympic season in terrible pain. It was never adequately explained why she never mentioned this injury at the time, or why all of her previous statements (including those on her official web site) regarding her hip problems referred to the original injury as happening in the summer of 1998 rather than in 1997.
After turning professional, Lipinski toured with Stars on Ice for four seasons. It was not entirely a successful arrangement for a number of reasons. First of all, Stars on Ice was always an adult-oriented skating show, but Lipinski's own marketing played up her extreme youth and her appeal to pre-teenagers. Second, Lipinski's injuries not only caused the technical level of her skating to deteriorate, but also caused friction with the producers and other skaters involved with the show who never knew from one day to the next whether she would be fit to skate. Finally, because Lipinski was so young, she felt isolated from the off-ice camaraderie of the other skaters. In a note on her web site dated June 15, 2005, Lipinski said: "It was really hard those last two years of touring for me. Emotionally I was drained and hurt. I have never been treated like that in my whole life."
Lipinski suffered another hip injury in 2002 during a Stars on Ice show in St. Louis, when she fell on her right hip during a jump. "I still thought everything would be fine. I had fallen before and would fall again." The next day, Lipinski tore muscles around her hip, causing the other muscles to take the load and fail.
She participated in rehearsals for a fifth season of the Stars on Ice tour in the fall of 2002, but withdrew from the tour before it began. Although she has not made any official announcement of her retirement from skating, she has not skated since, and has instead concentrated on acting.
Since turning professional, Lipinski has made several television appearances, which have included guest roles on a number of primetime shows (Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, Malcolm in the Middle, Veronica's Closet, Early Edition, 7th Heaven and Still Standing), as well as a cameo in the theatrical film Vanilla Sky. Lipinski also played a brief supporting role on The Young and the Restless in 1999, starred in the TV movie Ice Angel in 2000, and was cast in the independent film The Metro Chase. Additionally, she has been a celebrity guest on VH-1's The List, Fox's Beach Party, several Nickelodeon productions, Girls Behaving Badly, and has appeared on numerous magazine covers as well as every major talk show. In 1999, CBS aired a primetime special, Tara Lipinski: From This Moment On.
Lipinski now spends most of her time in Los Angeles.

Awards & recognition



The year before her Olympic win, the U.S. Olympic Committee named Lipinski the 1997 Female Athlete of the Year. Lipinski is particularly proud of the recognition she has received from fans. In 1999 and 2000 she was voted Best Female Athlete at the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards. In 1999, she won Best Female Athlete at the inaugural Fox Teen Choice Awards. She received similar awards from Teen People and Teen magazine. She has been recognized by the American Academy of Achievement, the Hugh O'Brien Youth Leadership Foundation, and many other organizations. In 2006, Lipinski was inducted into the United States Figure Skating Hall of Fame.

Kurt Browing "Kurt The Best"

KURT BROWNING

Kurt has an autobiography Forcing the Edge, published in hardcover in '91, published in mass-market in '92 with 4 new chapters that cover Albertville and plans for Lillehammer.

Kurt continues to skate on tour (Stars on Ice), in shows (his own: Gotta Skate as well as others), he has been colour commentator for numerous competitions, is frequently interviewed in the media on the subject of skating and choreographs programs for Olympic eligible skaters.

He is a natural public person: friendly, garrulous, self-assured, a little brash, earnest, out-going, and charming. He is also hard working, talented, driven, sensual, attentive to detail, ambitious, and a well trained athelete. All of these combined qualities have made him a four-time world champion and one of the most well-known and loved people in Canada (he also has a not-insignificant following elsewhere 8).

He started figure skating, like many young Canadian men, as a suppliment to hockey. A way to get more ice time, although during the winter he had his own personal ice surface in the backyard, one of the advantages of growing up on a farm in rural Alberta 8).

Being the youngest child by a largish margin meant that when he chose to dedicate himself entirely to figure skating, his parents had the time and resources to support him and dedicate themselves, as the parents of a champion must.

His competitive history has been consistent and stellar, his losses few but memorable. Memorable, no so much for the losses themselves, but for way they demonstrated that he is as graceful in defeat as he is in victory.

In a huge change of pace, Kurt enjoys inline skating when off the ice, and claimed to enjoy coach-potatohood given the rare opportunity. Likely parenthood has absorbed that free time.

With the support of Kellog's Canada, Kurt has established the "Kurt Browning Junior Figure Skating Fund to be awarded each year at Canadians for the purpose of helping with the costs of training for up and coming young skaters.

Basic Stats

• Birth Date: 18/06/1966
• Home Town: Caroline, AB
• Nicknames: "The Kid from Caroline" (there is, in fact, a song about him named this), "Skate God for Life" (so named by Scott Hamilton whom Kurt, himself, calls SGfL)
• Car Plates: 1STQUAD
• Trains: Toronto, ON
• Height: 170 cm (5'7")
• Weight: 64.3 kg (143 lbs)
• Coach: Louis Stong, Michael Jiranek
• Choreographer: Sandra Bezic, Kevin Cottam
• Autobiography: Kurt: Forcing the Edge
  HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
  Suite 2900, 55 Avenue Rd
  Toronto, ON, M5R 3L2
  ISBN 0-00-637885-4
  
• Spouse: Sonia Rodriguez. On 21/04/95, Kurt proposed at SOI in Toronto which was being taped for broadcast by the CBC. That segment is available for downloading in .avi format (1.8M) and Quicktime (.mov, 2M).
  They were married on June 30, 1996.
• Children: Gabriel Browning-Rodriguez (born 12/07/2003)
• Older brother: Wade
• Older sister Dena
• Father: Dewey (given name Arnold)
• Mother: Neva
• Paternal grandparents: Jack Browning and Gladys Stewart
• Maternal grandparents: Fred and Bernice Hart
• Paternal great-grandfather Jasper Browning