Discover The History Of Figure Skating!
Much Ado About Russia
The Remarkable Story Of Magda Mauroy
Jumping In The Olden Days
A History-Maker From Hyōgo: The Ryuichi Obitani Story
Born September 4, 1908 in Sumiyoshi, Kobe in Japan's Hyōgo Prefecture, Ryuichi Obitani was the eldest son of Densaburo Obitani, an Osaka Stock Exchange trader who served as President of Osaka Securities Trading and Obitani Densaburo Shoten. His grandfather was Bunbei Sakai, a leading fish wholesaler in Osaka.
In his youth, Ryuichi taught himself to skate outdoors on a frozen pond. He had no instructor. He learned the basics of figure skating through trial and error, interpreting diagrams in Shirō Kawakubo's translated editions of English books.
During the winter of 1929/1930, Ryuichi placed fourth in the newly-formed Japan Skating Association's National Championships, held on a manmade pond on the grounds of the Kanaya Hotel in Nikkō. The following winter at the age of twenty-two, he placed second to Kazuyoshi Oimatsu in the Japanese Championships held in Sendai City, earning a spot on the country's first Olympic figure skating team the following year in Lake Placid.
The journey to America was quite an adventure for Ryuichi. Along with his friend and teammate Kazuyoshi Oimatsu and Japan's ski jumpers, speed skaters and cross-country skiers, he travelled aboard the Nippon Yūsen Kabushiki Kaisha ocean liner Hikawa Maru. The ship made its transpacific voyage by way of Hawaii, arriving in Vancouver in December of 1931. Ryuichi then travelled by train through Vermont to Lake Placid, arriving just before Christmas with precious little time to prepare for the Winter Olympic Games.
In the weeks leading up to the 1932 Winter Olympic Games, four-time World Champion Willy Böckl gave Ryuichi a few pointers, but he and Kazuyoshi Oimatsu were largely left up to their own devices. He placed dead last in the Games, nearly thirty points back of the eleventh place finisher. The editors of "Skating" magazine remarked, "Obitani and Oimatsu speak only Japanese and understand very little English. One might find them standing modestly in the background of any group of skaters, trying to add to their store of knowledge. Their interpreter, Mr. Iida, was always greatly interested in what went on and promptly conveyed it all to them. Through him we learned that neither of these skaters had ever witnessed in action their 'betters,' nor acquired their skating knowledge other than from books and photographs; yet their exhibitions were truly good, and under such conditions, remarkable! From these skaters we gathered various facts on skating in Japan, among them that the only artificial ice rink is about one fifth the size of our hockey rinks, that they skate mostly on lakes in the mountains. As yet they have not attempted pair skating but have four or five young girls who are quite promising. There are no figure skating instructors in Japan."
Immediately upon returning to Japan, Ryuichi graduated from the Faculty Of Economics at Keio University. After finishing fourth in his final competition, the 1933 Japanese Championships in Tokyo, he hung up his skates.
After World War II, Ryuichi became active behind the scenes in Japanese figure skating. As a councilor with the Japan Skating Federation, he was in charge of organizing the Japanese Championships during the fifties when Nobuo Sato was competing and in the seventies served as an international judge. When Sapporo played host to the first Winter Olympic Games on Asian soil in 1972, he judged the women's event. At that event, he was the only judge to place Janet Lynn (who won the bronze medal) second. He even gave her higher marks than winner Trixi Schuba on one of the school figures, the counter. His final international judging assignment was the men's event in the first World Championships held in Japan in 1977. In addition to judging, he also did some coaching and served as a director of the Osaka Prefectural Skating Federation. Outside of the sport, he served as a director of Obitani Ryuichi Kitahama 2-chome Sanko Securities Co., Ltd. in Higashi-ku, Osaka. Little is known about his later life aside from the fact he lived in the city of Nishinomiya in his later years. He fell out of contact with the alumni association of Keio University sometime between 1997 and 2002, but his exact date of death is unknown.
Ryuichi had a front row seat to Japanese figure skating history. As a skater, he was one of his country's first Olympic and World competitors. He judged the first Winter Olympic Games and World Championships held on Japanese soil. Sadly, his contributions to the sport have never been formally acknowledged.
Skate Guard is a blog dedicated to preserving the rich, colourful and fascinating history of figure skating. Over ten years, the blog has featured over a thousand free articles covering all aspects of the sport's history, as well as four compelling in-depth features. To read the latest articles, follow the blog on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering a copy of figure skating reference books "The Almanac of Canadian Figure Skating", "Technical Merit: A History of Figure Skating Jumps" and "A Bibliography of Figure Skating": https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.
Pioneers: The First Skaters From Each Country To Compete At The Olympics
Without a doubt, some of the most memorable Olympic firsts have been figure skating ones. In St. Moritz in 1948, Barbara Ann Scott became the first North American woman to win the Olympic title. When Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean struck gold with their iconic "Bolero" in Sarajevo, they earned an unprecedented twelve perfect marks of 6.0. Four years later in Calgary, Debi Thomas became the first skater of colour to win an Olympic medal. In Vancouver in 2010, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir became the first ice dance team in history to win Olympic gold on home ice. Eight years later, they became the first dance duo to win two non-consecutive Olympic titles... and these firsts are just the tip of the iceberg! These milestones - and so, so many others - are part of the very fabric of our sport's rich history, but today I want to explore a part of skating history that has been sadly overlooked... the first skaters in each discipline to represent their country at the Olympics.
A couple of notes about this list:
- Firsts that are open to debate or have caveats are marked with a *, **, etc. with notes below.
- Skaters who withdrew either before or during the past Olympics are not included, but skaters who were eliminated mid-way due to a short program cut-off are. The two pairs teams who slated to make history in Beijing as the first from their respective countries are included presumptively. Wondering who they are? Check out the listings for Spain and Belarus!
ARGENTINA
Horatio Tertuliano Torromé (1908)
ARMENIA
Julia Lebedeva (2002)
Maria Krasiltseva and Alexander Chestnikh (1998)
Ksenia Smetanenko and Samuel Gezalian (1998)
AUSTRALIA
Adrian Swan (1952)
Nancy Burley, Gweneth Molony (1952)
Jacqueline Mason and Mervyn Bower (1960)
Monica MacDonald and Rodney Clarke (1988)
AUSTRIA
Willy Böckl (1924)
Herma Szabo (1924)
Helene Engelmann and Alfred Berger (1924)
Susanne and Peter Handschmann (1980)
AZERBAIJAN
Igor Pashkevich (1998)
Yulia Vorobieva (1998)
Inga Rodionova and Aleksandr Anichenko (1998)
Kristin Fraser and Igor Lukanin (2002)
BELARUS
Alexander Murashko (1994)
Julia Soldatova (2002)
Elena Grigoreva and Sergei Sheiko (1994)
Tatiana Navka and Samuel Gezalian (1994)
BELGIUM
Freddy Mésot (1924)
Yvonne de Ligne (1932)
Georgette Herbos and Georges Wagemans (1920)
BRAZIL
Isadora Williams (2014)
BULGARIA
Boyko Aleksiev (1988)
Petya Gavazova (1988)
Rumiana Spassova and Stanimir Todorov (2006)
Hristina Boyanova and Javor Ivanov (1984)
CANADA
Melville Rogers (1924)
Cecil Smith (1924)
Cecil Smith and Melville Rogers (1924)
Barbara Berezowski and David Porter, Susan Carscallen and Eric Gillies (1976)*
*Joni Graham and Don Phillips participated in the demonstration of ice dancing at the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble.
CHINA
Xu Zhaoxiao (1980)
Zhenghua Bao (1980)
Luan Bo and Yao Bin (1984)
Xi Hongyan and Zhao Xiaolei (1984)
CHINESE TAIPEI
David Liu (1988)
Pauline Chen Lee (1988)
CROATIA
Tomislav Čižmešija (1992)
Željka Čižmešija (1992)
CZECHOSLOVAKIA
Josef Slíva (1924)
Věra Hrubá, Fritzi Metznerová (1936)
Libuše Veselá and Vojtěch Veselý (1928)
Eva Peštová and Jiři Pokorný (1976)
CZECH REPUBLIC
Tomáš Verner (2006)
Lenka Kulovaná, Irena Zemanová (1994)
Radka Kovaříková and René Novotný (1994)
Radmila Chroboková and Milan Brzý, Kateřina Mrázová and Martin Šimeček (1994)
DENMARK
Per Cock-Clausen (1948)
Anisette Torp-Lind (1992)
ESTONIA
Margus Hernits (1994)
Olga Vassiljeva (1992)
Helene Michelson and Eduard Hiiop (1936)
Irina Shtork and Taavi Rand (2010)
FINLAND
Sakari Ilmanen (1920)
Leena Pietilä (1952)
Ludovika and Walter Jakobsson (1920)
Susanna Rahkamo and Petri Kokko (1992)
FRANCE
Pierre Brunet, André Malinet (1924)
Andrée (Joly) Brunet (1924)
Simone and Charles Sabouret (1920)
Nathalie Hervé and Pierre Béchu (1984)
GEORGIA
Vakhtang Murvanidze (2002)
Elene Gedevanishvili (2006)
Allison Reed and Otar Japaridze (2010)
GERMANY*
Paul Franke (1928)
Elsa Rendschmidt (1908)
Anna Hübler and Heinrich Burger (1908)
Jennifer Goolsbee and Hendryk Schamberger (1994)
*These skaters listed represented all represented a unified Germany. The first East German skaters to compete at the Olympics were Jan Hoffmann, Günter Zöller, Sonja Morgenstern, Gaby Seyfert, Irene Müller and Hans-Georg Dallmer and Heidemarie Steiner and Heinz-Ulrich Walther in Grenoble in 1968. An ice dance team never represented East Germany at the Olympics. The first skaters to represent West Germany at the Olympics were Jürgen Eberwein, Peter Krick, Monika Feldmann, Petra Ruhrmann, Eileen Zillmer, Margot Glockshuber and Wolfgang Danne, Gudrun Hauss and Walter Häfner and Marianne Streifler and Herbert Wiesinger in Grenoble in 1968. The first ice dancers were Henriette Fröschl and Christian Steiner in Lake Placid in 1980.
GREAT BRITAIN
Arthur Cumming*, John Keiller Greig, Geoffrey Hall-Say*, Arthur Albert March (1908)
Dorothy Greenhough Smith, Gwendolyn Lycett, Madge Syers (1908)
Phyllis and James Henry Johnson, Madge and Edgar Syers (1908)
Kay Barsdell and Kenneth Foster, Hilary Green and Glyn Watts, Janet Thompson and Warren Maxwell (1976)**
*Arthur Cumming and Geoffrey Hall-Say competed in the Special Figures event at the 1908 Summer Olympic Games.
**Janet Sawbridge and Jon Lane, Yvonne Suddick and Malcolm Cannon and Diane Towler and Bernard Ford participated in the demonstration of ice dancing at the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble.
HOLLAND
Lidy Stoppelman (1952)
HUNGARY
Elemér Terták, Dénes Pataky (1936)
Éva von Botond (1936)
Olga Orgonista and Sándor Szalay, Emília Rotter and László Szollás (1932)
Krisztina Regőczy and András Sallay (1976)*
*Edit Mató and Károly Csanádi participated in the demonstration of ice dancing at the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble.
JAPAN
Ryuichi Obitani, Kazuyoshi Oimatsu (1932)
Etsuko Inada (1936)
Kotoe Nagasawa and Hiroshi Nagakubo (1972)
Noriko Sato and Tadayuki Takahashi (1984)
ISRAEL
Michael Shmerkin (1994)
Aimee Buchanan (2018)*
Andrea Davidovich and Evgeni Krasnopolski (2014)
Galit Chait and Sergei Sakhnovski (1998)
*Aimee Buchanan represented Israel in the team event in the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang. Israel has yet to have an entry in the women's singles event at the Olympics.
ITALY
Carlo Fassi (1948)
Grazia Barcellona (1948)
Anna and Ercole Cattaneo (1936)
Stefania Bertele and Walter Cecconi, Matilde Ciccia and Lamberto Ceserani, Isabella Rizzi and Luigi Freroni (1976)
KAZAKHSTAN
Yuri Litvinov (1998)
Aiza Mambekova, Elizabet Tursynbayeva (2018)
Marina Khalturina and Andrei Krukov (1998)
Elizaveta Stekolnikova and Dmitri Kazarlyga (1994)
KOREA
Lee Kwang-Young (1968)
Kim Hae-Kyung, Lee Hyun-Joo (1968)
Kim Kyu-eun and Alex Kang-chan Kam (2018)
Yang Tae-hwa and Lee Chuen-gun (2002)
LATVIA
Verners Auls (1936)
Alise Dzeguze (1936)
Hildegarde Švarce-Gešela and Eduards Gešels (1936)
LITHUANIA
Margarita Drobiazko and Povilas Vanagas (1992)
LUXEMBOURG
Patrick Schmit (1998)
Fleur Maxwell (2006)
MALAYSIA
Julian Yee Zhi-Jie (2018)
MEXICO
Walbe Olavarrieta-Navarro (1988)
Diana Encinas-Evans (1988)
NORTH KOREA
Ho Kang (1988)
Kim Song-Suk (1988)
Ko Ok Ran and Kim Gwang Ho (1992)
Ryu Gwang Ho and Pak Un Sil (1992)
NORWAY
Andreas Krogh, Martin Stixrud (1920)
Ingrid Guldbransen, Margot Moe (1920)
Alexia and Yngvar Bryn (1920)
POLAND
Grzegorz Filipowski (1984)
Grażyna Dudek (1976)
Janina Poremska and Piotr Sczypa (1968)
Teresa Weyna and Piotr Bojanczyk (1976)
PHILIPPINES
Michael Christian Martinez (2014)
ROMANIA
Roman Turuşanco (1936)
Beatrice Huștiu (1968)
Irina Timcic and Alfred Eisenbeisser (1936)
RUSSIA*
Nikolay Panin-Kolomenkin (1908)**
Maria Butyrskaya, Elena Sokolova, Irina Slutskaya (1998)
Ekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov, Natalia Mishkutenok and Artur Dmitriev, Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov (1994)
Oksana Grishuk and Evgeni Platov, Angelika Krylova and Vladimir Fedorov, Maya Usova and Alexandr Zhulin (1994)
*These skaters listed represented all represented Russia. The first skaters from the Soviet Union to compete at the Olympics were Ludmila (Belousova) and Oleg Protopopov and Nina and Stanislav Zhuk at the 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley. The first singles skaters were Sergei Chetverukhin, Sergei Volkov, Galina Grzhibovskaya and Elena Shcheglova in Grenoble in 1968. The first ice dancers were Natalia Linichuk and Gennadi Karponosov, Irina Moiseeva and Andrei Minenkov and Lyudmila Pakhomova and Aleksandr Gorshkov in Innsbruck in 1976, though Pakhomova and Gorshkov made their first appearance at the Olympics in 1968. They participated in the ice dancing demonstration, as did Irina Grishkova and Viktor Ryzhkin.
**Nikolay Panin-Kolomenkin competed in the Special Figures event at the 1908 Summer Olympic Games. Igor Pashkevich, Oleg Tataurov and Alexei Urmanov were the first to compete in the men's singles, in Lillehammer in 1994.
SERBIA AND MONTENEGRO
Trifun Zivanovic (2006)
SLOVAKIA
Robert Kazimir (1998)
Zuzana (Paurová) Babiaková (2002)
Oľga Beständigová and Jozef Beständig (2002)
Lucie Myslivečková and Lukáš Csölley (2018)
SLOVENIA
Luka Klasinc (1992)
Mojca Kopač (1992)
SOUTH AFRICA
Dino Quattrocecere (1994)
Patricia Eastwood, Marion Sage (1960)
Marcelle Matthews and Gwyn Jones (1960)
SPAIN
Darío Villalba Flores (1956)
Gloria Mas-Gil (1980)
Sara Hurtado and Adrià Díaz (2014)
SWEDEN
Richard Johansson, Ulrich Salchow, Per Thorén (1908)
Elna Montgomery (1908)
Britta Lindmark and Ulf Berendt (1952)
SWITZERLAND
Alfred Mégroz (1920)
Elvira Barbey (1928)
Elvira and Louis Barbey (1928)
Eliane and Daniel Hugentobler (2002)
TURKEY
Tugba Karademir (2006)
Alisa Agafonova and Alper Uçar (2014)
UKRAINE
Viktor Petrenko (1994)
Oksana Baiul, Lyudmila Ivanova, Elena Liashenko (1994)
Elena Belousovskaya and Igor Maliar (1994)
Svitlana Chernikova and Oleksandr Sosnenko, Irina Romanova and Igor Yaroshenko (1994)
UNITED STATES
Irving Brokaw (1908)
Theresa Weld Blanchard (1920)
Theresa Weld Blanchard and Nathaniel Niles (1920)
Judi Genovesi and Kent Weigle, Susan Kelley and Andrew Stroukoff, Colleen O'Connor and James Millns (1976)*
*Judy Schwomeyer and Jim Sladky participated in the demonstration of ice dancing at the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble.
UZBEKISTAN
Roman Skorniakov (1998)
Tatiana Malinina (1998)
Natalia Ponomareva and Evgeni Sviridov (2002)
Dinara Nurdbaeva and Muslim Settarov, Aliki Stergiadu and Juris Razgulajevs (1994)
YUGOSLAVIA
Miljan Begovic (1984)
Sanda Dubravčić (1980)
Skate Guard is a blog dedicated to preserving the rich, colourful and fascinating history of figure skating. Over ten years, the blog has featured over a thousand free articles covering all aspects of the sport's history, as well as four compelling in-depth features. To read the latest articles, follow the blog on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering a copy of figure skating reference books "The Almanac of Canadian Figure Skating", "Technical Merit: A History of Figure Skating Jumps" and "A Bibliography of Figure Skating": https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.