Boot and Blade

One of the most frequent questions I get here at Boot and Blade is whether I have, or know where to find, diagrams of compulsory figures. It’s remarkable to me that there are so very few instances of compulsory figures on the web. I suppose the answer is simple: the rise of the web coincided with the decline of figures. And so the once favored discipline has left behind few artifacts to remind us what the differences are between a rocker and counter, or a bracket and a back loop.

Thanks to JJ87 for sending along a link to Combined Figure Skating, a historic book by Montagu S. F. Monier-Williams, published in 1883. The book has been scanned and indexed in Google Book Search and is available for download here.

For those interested in compulsory figures and their unique designs and techniques, this volume is a wonderful snapshot of the sport at the turn of the last century.

Posted on July 21st, 2008 under Skating History. Tags: compulsory figures, figure diagrams, figure skating, Google Books. RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback.