What is figure skating?

Let’s break down the basics.

The Skates

To understand skating, first you gotta understand the blades. Every element a skater does, from a jump to a stop, is driven by what part of the blade they’re skating on. Every blade has three edges: inside, outside and flat (which is really just being on an inside and outside at once).

Another important part of figure skating blades are the toe picks which are used on the takeoffs of some jumps.

The Disciplines

There are four main disciplines in figure skating: Men’s, ladies’, pair’s and ice dance. In men’s and ladies’ events, skaters compete individually. They rack up points with elements (jumps, spins and footwork).

In pair’s skating, a man and a woman compete as a team. They jump and spin and do footwork, but there’s some variation in the elements because they’re done as a team.

Ice dance is like pairs’ skating meets ballroom dance. Ice dancers don’t jump, are never more than a few arms lengths apart and have to be on beat.

The Programs

At each competition a skater will have two programs — short and free — which are performed on different days.

The short program comes first in competition and is roughly 2:50 minutes long. The free skate — colloquially known as the long program — is 4:00 minutes long for ladies’ and ice dance, and is 4:30 minutes long for men’s and pairs’.

Each program has certain required elements (jumps, spins and footwork), but we’ll talk about those in a separate explainer.

The Season

The main figure skating season is comprised of the Grand Prix Series, national championships, Europeans, Four Continents, the Olympics (only every four years obviously), and Worlds.

The Grand Prix Series is a series of six international competitions — hosted by Russia, Canada, China, Japan, France and the U.S. — followed by the Grand Prix Final. The series takes place from mid-October to the first week of December. Top skaters are assigned between one and two Grand Prix events and if they perform well at those events they’re invited to the Final.

National championships are hosted by individual nations and only include skaters from those individual countries.

Then, nations send their top skaters to compete at Europeans and Four Continents. Europeans is open to skaters from Europe and Russia while Four Continents is for everybody else.

A typical season will end in late March with the World Championships. Again, nations will send their top skaters to compete. The winner is the world champion.

Worlds is only out-done by the biggest event in figure skating: the Winter Olympics. Individual countries qualify Olympic spots at the previous year’s World Championships or a September event called Nebelhorn Trophy and then typically choose which skaters fill those spots after nationals.

The Scoring

Since 2006, figure skating has been scored under the International Skating Union (ISU) Judging System. The system breaks scores into two parts: Technical and presentation.

In technical scores, each element has a set base-value. Judges will add or take away points from that base value according to how well the element is performed.

In presentation scores, skaters get points for their skating skills, transitions between elements, performance, choreography and interpretation of the music.

Skaters lose points for falling, costume malfunctions, time violations and props.

The technical and presentation scores for each program are added together to get a skater’s program score. Once both programs are completed, the short total is added to the free total and the skaters are ranked based on that overall score.

We’ll get into the nuts and bolts of actual point totals in a separate scoring explainer very soon, I promise. For now, you’ve got the basics down, so get out there and watch some skating.