From World Champion To Army Captain: The Henry Graham Sharp Story

Sometimes small projects quickly turn into bigger ones. For instance, go to throw out those tomatoes that are past their prime and all of a sudden you are cleaning the entire fridge. That's kind of how this particular blog about Henry Graham Sharp came about. I was researching this particular skater for a completely different blog altogether and turned to one of my most trusted sources, BIS historian Elaine Hooper for archival information. As always, Elaine proved to be an absolute treasure trove and provided me so much that I said to myself that this particular skater deserves their very own feature... and here we are!

Photo courtesy BIS Archives, Daphne Walker

Born December 19, 1917, the skater who would go on to win the 1939 World title would actually start his career as an ice dancer. With Vita Supple, he won Great Britain's first Inter Rink Ice Dance Competition in 1933 not long after he started skating. He then turned to (or focused on) singles skating. When Graham Sharp finished second at the 1936 British Championships, he had only been skating for a relatively short time. Until this point, unless a skater had trained abroad in Switzerland it was unheard of for them to be successful in competition, even at home.

Graham quickly found success internationally as well, winning the silver medal at both the European and World Championships in 1936, 1937 and 1938. Much of his success was owed to his exceptional competence in the compulsory figures. In 1938, author T.D. Richardson wrote of the 1939 World Champion: "Graham Sharp is by far the best male School Skater of the day. He has an ease and accuracy that is a joy to those with real knowledge and appreciation of the fine points of the School Figures."

Elaine Hooper explained, "The [Sharp] family came from Bournemouth, a wealthy area of the country, which is about thirty miles from where I was brought up in Southampton. His father owned a motor car showroom called Westover Motors and he had [an] ice rink built over the showroom in order that Graham and his sister - I think her name was Hazel but am not sure - could learn to skate. The rink remained open until the late 1980's but Westover Motors still exists as a business. I believe Major Sharp engaged the Canadian Phil Taylor (father of Megan Taylor) to teach them."

While Graham was skating, he also worked at Westover Motors with his father. When the Westover Ice Rink his father had built proved quite popular, Graham opted to travel to Southampton every morning from September to December of 1938 so that he could practice his free skating program in an empty rink in preparation for the 1939 European and World Championships. In his spare time, he played lawn tennis, golf and spent considerable time at the cinema.

Graham Sharp. Photos courtesy "The Skater" magazine (left) and "Ice Skating" magazine (right).

Lucrative offers to turn professional also presented themselves to Graham in 1938. He was offered a seven year contract in Hollywood as well as two thousand pounds (which at the time would have bought four houses, so it was a LOT of money) to join ice shows. He turned down these offers as his main goal at the time was to become the World Champion.

Left: Cartoon of Graham Sharp from the February 1938 issue of "The Skating Times". Right: Graham Sharp. Photo courtesy "Skating World" magazine.

1939 proved to be an eventful year for Graham. After winning the European Championships in Davos, Switzerland, Graham travelled to Budapest, Hungary in February of that year for the World Championships. His main competition came from his teammate Freddie Tomlins, who had finished second to Graham at both the British and European Championships. Graham would finally achieve his goal of becoming World Champion, outskating Tomlins, Germany's Horst Faber and nine others.

T.D. Richardson and Graham Sharp

Ironically, it wasn't so much his skating as what we wore that gained media attention at the time. Graham (by many considered quite a good looking man) wore a red silk shirt, a brightly coloured tie and loosely fitting trousers. He drew criticism from a regular columnist in The Skating Times: "The introduction of fancy dress in championship skating has little to recommend it and might, in the long run prove harmful". Graham fought back and issued a reply to the columnist in the next month's issue of the newsletter: "I don't in the least bit mind criticism but I should like to say that I wore the same modern skating outfit in the Berlin Worlds last year because I felt better in it. I asked the ISU and NSA officials first and now several of the Continental skaters have copied me."

War was declared in September of 1939 and in October Graham received 'the call'. In November, he married his long time girlfriend Hazel Mason of Bournemouth. By April 1940, he was a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Army Service Corps serving in France. He later served in Belgium, North Africa and Dunkirk, where he sustained an injury.

 Top: Geoff Yates, Graham Sharp and Freddie Tomlins. Photo courtesy Elaine Hooper, BIS Archive. Bottom: Graham competing at the 1946 British Championships at Wembley.

Graham wasn't the only British men's skater of the time to serve in the War. British medallist Geoffrey Yates served as a Major in the marines and was in the D-Day landings. Yates survived the War and went on to become an international level judge and referee. Freddie Tomlins (who was also a successful speed skater) was a rear gunner in the air force and was tragically shot down by a Nazi submarine and killed  over the English Channel on June 20, 1943 at age twenty three. Graham was fortunate enough to survive his service in World War II and was later demobbed as Captain.

Photos courtesy "The Skater" magazine (left) and "Skate" magazine (right)

Graham returned to skating after the War (then a father of two) and handily won his seventh and eighth British titles in 1946 and 1948. He represented Great Britain at the 1948 Winter Olympic Games and World Championships in Switzerland, placing seventh and sixth. At the Olympics, he had the honour of being England's flagbearer.

Graham Sharp at the 1948 Winter Olympic Games. Photo courtesy "Skating World" magazine.

Graham then turned to judging the sport, alongside his former competitor Geoffrey Yates. He also served on the council of Britain's National Skating Association. He lived abroad for a time, coaching in Hershey, Pennsylvania, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Wichita, Kansas. He returned to England and settled in Hampshire in 1976. He passed away on December 2, 1995.

Cyril Beastall, Hazel and Graham Sharp (top), Graham Sharp (bottom). Photos courtesy "Skating World" magazine.

An interesting part of the legacy of Graham's story comes from the rink that his father Major Sharp built in his motor car showroom. Elaine Hooper relayed, "Bournemouth was and is a holiday destination and Graham's father Major Sharp took full advantage of this by having an annual summer ice revue to attract the holiday makers. This was followed by an annual grand reopening of the rink. Ice shows became very popular in Britain and The Skating Times of January 1938 stated that 'full credit should go to Major F.G. Sharp of Bournemouth who originated professional ice revues here'. Many years later when the Cousins family from Bristol holidayed in Bournemouth with their two sons, the younger one, nine year old Robin asked if he could have a go at skating in the ice rink. The rest is history." History it is!

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 the 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.

The Ipswich Woman

One of the things I love most about blogging about figure skating history is piecing together the stories of skaters from decades past... many of whom aren't here to share their stories. That's what made writing today's blog ultimately frustrating. This isn't a story that really CAN be pieced together with any certainty because it's not one from decades ago... more like centuries!

I was at the Killam Library at Dalhousie University recently, which boasts an impressive collection of books about sports history and happened to glance down at a lower shelf. One book in particular caught my eye. It was called "The English At Play In The Middle Ages" and turns out to have been written by Teresa McLean in 1981. I humoured my curiosity to check the index for any references to skating. Lo and behold, I wasn't disappointed. After referring to the well-documented references of skating by the Canterbury monk Fitzstephen, McLean noted that "the excavations at College Street, Ipswich, in 1899 unearthed the sad little find of a woman skater's skeleton, complete with skates, in the mud of the former river course."

Anyone with a periphery knowledge of archaeology has no doubt heard of The Ipswich Man, the skeleton of a man of North African descent who would have lived in approximately the year 1190 and was found buried in England. He's long been a riddle to archaeologists and historians alike and has been the subject of numerous scholarly essays, documentaries and books. But what of this female skater? Was her story any less of a riddle?

Pioneering female archaeologist and historian Nina Frances Layard's 1899 report "Recent Discoveries On The Site Of The Carmelite Convent Of Ipswich, And The Old River Quay" offers wonderful insight into the story of the skeleton that McLean referred to in her 1981 book. Layard explains that there was a dig site on College Street in St. Peter's where some older houses had been removed to make way for newer ones. When the foundations were dug, an old river bed from a quarry was exposed. She wrote that "here the workman came upon the skull and other bones of a female skeleton, and lying among them I noticed two bones of very different appearance, which showed signs of having been roughly shaped, though for what purpose it was hard to conjecture. By the kind help of Dr. Laver and Mr. Spalding, Curator of Colchester Museum, I have since been able to identify them as bone skates. Such primitive implements were in use in England in Henry II's time, and even considerably later and an interesting account of them is given by Fitz Stephen in his 'History of London.' They are also found in Holland, Scandinavia and Sweden and are still in use in Iceland. Specimens have been dredged up from the bottom of the Thames, and are, I believe, to be seen in the Guildhall Museum... The sites from which these interesting relics of the past were obtained are now both built over. A high red brick structure already covers that part of the convent area which for too brief a space was laid open to the eye of the antiquary, and above the bed of the old river quay, where some unfortunate ancient skater dropped his skates, large business premises have arisen, shutting out forever that temporary glimpse of old Ipswich."

Layard's first hand account of the excavation seems to infer that the bones found with the female skeleton might have been dropped by another skater in the river, which certainly contrasts with the image McLean poses of an unlucky female skater perhaps falling through the ice. Old maps of the area reference a convent of The Carmelite nuns in the area. Who was the woman in the river? We simply do not and will not know. What we DO know is that she will be forever linked with skating history.

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 the 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. 

Retracing History: The Fall And Rise Of Compulsory Figures

2015 World Figure Championship. The photo exposes different types and layers of the beautiful figure tracings on the riveting black ice. Photo courtesy Deborah Hickey Photography. Used with permission.

As figure skating audiences grew in the sixties and seventies with the rise of television, the tenuous relationship between compulsory figures and free skating became more and more evident. Commentators struggled to find sufficient words to explain why brilliant free skaters like Janet Lynn, Toller Cranston and Denise Biellmann weren't winning Olympic titles and skaters, coaches and judges alike became more vocal about their concern about the role figures were taking in making and breaking careers. In the March 17, 1980 issue of The Globe And Mail, ISU President Jacques Favart proclaimed that "the compulsory figures must die. They are a waste of time and prevent skaters from being still more creative." Although Favart passed away only months later, he got his wish.

In a June 1988 ISU meeting, after two hours of intense debate, delegates voted twenty seven to four to phase out figures from international competition starting July 1, 1990. Representatives from Canada, Great Britain, New Zealand and the United States voted against their abolition and less than a year later, delegates even tried to revisit the decision at an urgent meeting at the 1989 World Figure Skating Championships in Paris to put the kibosh on them even sooner. Figures were last contested at the Canadian Championships in Sudbury, Ontario in 1990. Norm Proft and Margot Bion were the winners, beating brilliant free skaters like Kurt Browning, Elvis Stojko and Josée Chouinard. When all was said and done, neither Proft or Bion stood on the medal podium at the end of the day. The same could be said for Richard Zander of West Germany, who won the figures at the 1990 World Championships and ended the event in seventh. If officials wanted statistics to support their argument to oust the school figures, they had them.

The final figures skated at the World Championships were performed just across the harbour from me at the Dartmouth Sportsplex; an ice surface I've won competitions on myself. Twenty four year old David Liu, representing Chinese Taipei, was the final men's skater to perform a figure at Worlds. A crowd of one thousand applauded the introduction and marks of each and every skater for the final three figures and after Liu performed his paragraph loop, ISU referee Sonia Bianchetti-Garbato shook his hand, patted him on the back and the judging panel celebrated with two bottles of champagne. Liu's words? "For someone who dislikes figures so much, I'm excited by it." On March 6, 1990, Yugoslavia's Zeljka Cizmesija became the final person to skate a figure at a World Championships. She left her her patch with a smile on her face and flowers were placed on the paragraph loop. Cizmesija received a bouquet of roses, a box of chocolates and perhaps the only standing ovation of her career.

At the time, skaters had mixed feelings about their demise. In the March 8, 1990 issue of The Vancouver Sun, Kurt Browning said, "Wouldn't you know it, they're killing the figures just when I'm getting good at them." In the February 9, 1990 Chicago Tribune, Christopher Bowman quipped "for me, it makes no difference they're gone. I've done everything you can do with the figures except make an omelette out of them."

In the June 9, 1988 edition of The New York Times, Dr. Hugh Graham, president of the USFSA at the time, noted that abolishing figures would reduce skaters expenses by fifty percent, cutting coaching and ice time and allowing skaters to focus their attention on setting a new standard in free skating. However, prophetically the same article noted that "opponents of the move argued that compulsory figures were needed to teach skaters basic skills. They warned that abolishing them would turn skating into jumping contests and might cause more injuries." The ever eloquent Olympic Silver Medallist Debbi Wilkes argued in a November 1996 editorial (around the time figures were replaced with 'Skills' in the CFSA) that "the real traditionalists have hung on to figures with the idea that they were important training tools even for jumping, much like the scales are crucial for learning the piano. So why are jumpers so poor at figures? The two skills seem to be in competition with one another, figures on the one hand needing quiet, controlled movement, and jumps on the other, demanding sudden bursts of energy. For anyone who needs the instant excitement of free skating, figures are definitely not the way to go! You have to be mathematical to love figures. You have to like doing housework and making things neat and tidy. You have to love seeing how close you can bring one tracing to another. You have to love drawing that picture. Now if any of that tickles one of your spots, you get the idea about what it takes to make a great figure. If not, forget it! We'll never understand one another. It seems figures have just outlived their usefulness. Even though they weren't artistic in nature, subjective judging often made their results suspect .... and they sure didn't make for great television... To me the 'Skills' are an exciting addition to the fun of learning good edges and strong control, but unless I'm missing the point, there's a huge hole. What's going to make a skater learn how to jump and LAND? If old fashioned figures couldn't get the job done, I just don't see how the 'Skills' are going to do it either." Here's the thing. As someone who was skating at the exact time this transition was being made, I can tell you that Debbi Wilkes was right on the money in her last statement.

To anyone who hasn't joined the party in the last ten or so years, it's pretty apparent that what a generation or two might have been able to take from an early education in figures has been missing in the overall skating quality of today. I'm not saying everyone, so simmer down sweetie. Look at skaters like Patrick Chan, Jeffrey Buttle, Stéphane Lambiel and Jeremy Abbott; there are absolutely skaters out there with droolworthy edge, flow and ebb on the ice and we'd be ignorant to think otherwise... but they are the exception and not the rule. Part of it is the product of the IJS system, but I hardly think it's any huge coincidence that compulsory figures are enjoying a huge resurgence in popularity now. The timing is a little bit too coincidental. Enter my favourite idea in years: the 2015 World Figure Championship and Figure Festival in Lake Placid, the brainchild of Peak Edge Performance, skating goddess Janet Lynn and a team of incredibly passionately people determined to rewrite history.

I spoke with two time U.S. medallist and Olympian Karen Courtland Kelly of Peak Edge Performance at length about the demise of figures in ISU competition and their revival in Lake Placid. Courtland Kelly expressed that "in a sense, the sport was not managed correctly. There was such a great bias if a judge was looking at a person's country, where they're from, their name, their weight, their waistline, their hairline... every kind of bias a person can have. That was never addressed. The other thing was that when television came in, the sport was misunderstood and mismanaged. It was not made understandable to the general public. Figures were interpreted by the public as this backroom, wheeling and dealing thing but the real problem - the judging bias - was never addressed. This lead to this sense of misunderstanding from the public being quite accurate. If you think about skating around the time of the first satellite broadcasts, television was already making a larger audience question the legitimacy of the sport. If you fast forward to 1988, the ISU had an agenda and didn't feel they needed figures anymore. The skating world at the time at that time didn't know how to fix that bias and make the discipline beautiful for television. Originally, when people grew up skating on ponds, you could see the tracings your skate made. There was originally an entertainment or fascination aspect to that. When they brought in television and the NHL, they had to have the audience be able to see the hockey puck. They had to paint the ice white so you could see the black hockey puck. In most town and city rinks, the ice was not white before that but they painted the ice white mainly because of hockey. This had a huge effect on figures. For the audience at the World Figure Championship to be able to sit there and actually see the difference between tracings because the ice is showing the difference, the bias is taken out. The judges don't know who the skaters are, their names or what they look like and can just look at the tracings on the ice and judge with a clear head."

In the nineties, when patch was aggressively phased out in North America, the USFSA and CFSA's substitutes for figures were well promoted and largely questioned. Revisiting the points touched on earlier in this blog, Courtland Kelly explained that "when they brought in the Moves (or Skills as you call them in Canada), skaters didn't learn the entire circle any longer. They only skated part of the circle and never got to see the beautiful symmetry of the patterns they were tracing. It is like never writing your mathematical equations down. Now you might have the odd genius who doesn't have to write it down and can do it all in their head, but even a genius will take a pen and a paper and write down in a book because it helps them see the bigger picture. Figures IS mathematical; you are skating a diagram on the ice. Those Skills are all fine and dandy, but skaters are missing the bigger picture and that's where there is a large disconnect." When I interviewed Olympic Gold Medallist Robin Cousins, he perhaps summed up the bigger disconnect best when he said, "I hate when you ask a skater to do a left inside counter and they look blankly until you show them and they say 'oh, I know that step!' Obviously you don't! They do things because they can and not because they know how. Teach them HOW and more importantly... WHY!" Coming back to the argument made by then USFSA President Dr. Hugh Graham in 1988 about the wondrous money saving measures that ditching figures would have for the sport, Courtland Kelly pointed out that "if you look at the argument that taking out figures was from financial end, right now it's been proven otherwise. People are taking more lessons and not necessarily getting more done. Cutting costs might have done something in the short term but in hindsight, I don't think it's helped skater's alignment and overall quality of skating."

We talked next about the motivating factors for creating this event and the logistics of getting it off the ground. Courtland Kelly explained that "back in 2005, we did a documentary called 'Figure Eights: The Life Force Of Figure Skating' in Lake Placid. Every figure was skated in the school figure catalogue from the preliminary to eighth test to really document and save the knowledge ever since figures were abolished and eliminated. It didn't come out right away because it took us about four years to edit the piece and develop individual diagrams of the figures. We really did it for the love of it. My husband and I both wanted to be part of the solution to save something that was really becoming extinct. Let's face it. Life is short. We will leave this world and once that happens with certain people, that knowledge is all going to be forever gone and we can't get it back. Over the last ten years, Peak Edge Performance, the company who created the World Figure Championship, has been diligently working on how we could take the information in that documentary and find out what the ultimate solution to putting figures back in the limelight would be. Between Jojo Starbuck and Janet [Lynn] and so many amazing people, a lot of people have shared this vision. In this same period, Janet wrote that beautiful book and we ended up exchanging them and started a discussion about the championship, talkng about the location, the dynamics, the logistics of the black ice and the rules of the championship itself; how this could even be possible. This all came into place by a lot of people's grace and work. The goals were to impress and promote knowledge about the discipline and to do it in the most beautiful, visionary way to help people understand the enjoyment of this discipline. We tried to address those biases and problems the discipline has faced in the past in this most beautiful way with this black ice canvas and a different system of judging. We wanted to show how fascinating and riveting figures really are and we believe we did. The public could see one tracing next to another and whether the symmetry of the circles was there and how correct the shape was with their own eyes from all the way up in the stands! The motivation was to show this tremendous beauty in a light it had never been seen in."

But of course there were politics, right?! That'd make it things nice and juicy and give us all a reason gleefully bask in the scandal of it all! If 'drama' is what you're after, I'm afraid you're fresh out of luck, there sweetie. When Jacques Favart stated that "compulsory figures must die", you must remember that he indeed DID get his wish. The ISU's General Regulations, Section B. Eligibility (ISU Rule 102, Section 2) state that "skating or officiating without the prior express authorization of the respective Member, in any capacity in a Skating competition, exhibition or tour in any of the sport disciplines of the ISU" would constitute a skater under the auspices of the ISU losing their eligibility. Furthermore, ISU Rule 300 (Disciplines and content of Single & Pair Skating and Ice Dance) offers no mention of school figures. Therefore, according to the ISU's own rules, eligible skaters are free to play hockey, take part in a curling bonspiel, a game of baseball on ice or a compulsory figure event without any prejudice. There hasn't been any back and forth, no scratching, hair pulling or name calling. Courtland Kelly explained that "there has been no communication from the ISU to Peak Edge Performance. The ISU abolished the discipline twenty five years ago. There's no justification to make someone ineligible for a discipline you don't recognize. A very interesting bit of information is on page 88 of the US Figure Skating rulebook under 'Inactive and Retired': 'The U. S. Figure Skating Museum is the custodian for a large number of lovely and valuable trophies, many of which have been retired or become inactive for various reasons. Some of those reasons being: the elimination of figure events; elimination of specific events(s) from the designated competition; a rule requiring that trophies be awarded only for results of the actual judging of an event... It was felt that it would be a fitting tribute to the donors, clubs and winners of these trophies to once again list them in this publication: U.S. Championship Ladies Figure Champion: The Owen Memorial Trophy donated by F. Ritter Shumway and the Skating Club of Boston in memory of Mrs. Maribel V. Owen, Maribel Y. And Laurence R. Owen. Presented in 1991.' U.S. Figure Skating's own museum explains that U.S. Figure Skating eliminated figures and the championship trophy has been retired due to that elimination."

We talked about the overwhelming success of the first ever World Figure Championship and Festival, held on August 28 and 29, 2015 in Lake Placid, New York at the 1932 Olympic Arena: "We tried to make the competition as beautiful and joyful as we could for everyone, because that's really what it's about. Janet's skating and everyone's skating is really about the love to skate, the love to be on the ice. The judging panel was just so special and the fact that they were able to be all together. I mean, Trixi Schuba, Janet Lynn... the talent and knowledge of EVERYONE on that panel was just incredible. The fact that they could come together and be such a big part of the inaugural World Figure Championship we hope was very special. Dick Button came and wrote a beautiful piece that went into the souvenir program. Doug Wilson was also a big part of the championship with his Memorable Moments Of Greatness presentation and left everyone with the understanding of how television changed figure skating forever. Everyone loved the artistic connections brought in with Tommy Litz's art show (which was a huge success) and the Ludmila and Oleg Protopopov's video presentation as well.  The discipline of figures has not been practiced at a world championship level in twenty five years. The fact that these beautiful skaters were so gifted that they could focus and train and skate these championship figures was amazing. To compete and be inducted into the Hall Of Fame, you had to perform SIXTEEN different figures of incredible difficulty over the two days and that's no small feat. What was incredibly special to us was that everyone was just so appreciated; their talent, everyone's gifts and graces were recognized."

Distinguished panelists ranking the 2015 World Figure Championships Figure tracings (left to right): Linda Carbonetto Villella, Julie Lynn Holmes-Newman, Slavka Kohout Button (sitting - behind chair safety and assistant referee Lisa Warner), Janet Lynn, Tommy Litz, Trixi Schuba, Jojo Starbuck. Photo courtesy Deborah Hickey Photography. Used with permission.

Having talked about the past and present of figures, Karen Courtland Kelly and I pondered the future of the discipline. She explained that at "the World Figure Championship, a new Hall Of Fame was inducted called the World Figure Hall Of Fame. We also made the announcement of the formation of the World Figure Sport Organization. This organization is going to organize, develop and promote Figures, with the pinnacle being the World Figure Championship, which will go on every year, hopefully long after we are all here for years to come. We want people to fall in love with the beautiful tracings and patterns they can skate on the ice and get to experience the thrill of skating figures on the canvas they were meant to be skated on." Other future goal of the World Figure Sport Organization include reintroducing Special Figures and making scribes and figure appropriate blades more widely available.

As you can imagine, I have a soft spot in my heart for anyone who 'gets' the importance of skating history and I don't know about you, but I love this all to death and pieces. Who doesn't love a fabulous comeback? I think what's so exciting about the formal revival of figures with this competition is that the organizers got it right and absolutely understood and ADDRESSED the fundamental problems that led to the extinction of compulsory figures in the first place. The organizers, participants and judges of this event breathed new life into rockers and paragraph loops and revived the past and guess what? They did it with a positive attitude and vision that we don't see nearly enough of. These are the kinds of events that need our support and I hope you consider attending and showing your support at the 2016 competition. I sure am!

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 the 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.

A Slippery Slope: Figure Skating's Contribution To Skiing

Here's a "did you know?" moment if there ever was one. Skating and skiing may not just share the spotlight every four years when the Olympic Winter Games roll into a city (not so) near you. They've been kissing cousins for a while. The skiing world actually has the contributions of two figure skaters and those they inspired to thank for the development of what is now a decimated skiing form called Ski Ballet... which suffered the same fate as figure skating's compulsory figures when the International Ski Federation ceased holding competitions in the discipline in 2000. 

Picture it... March 1998. You're curled up in a alpine lodge by a fireplace warming up with a hot chocolate and reading Skiing Heritage Journal... and you stumble upon this: "In 1929, just as alpine technique was threatening to be dominated by a monolithic Alberg System, predictably aha! there came a strong reaction by an Austrian amateur skater named Fritz Reuel. He produced some crazy-looking turns on the wrong, or inside, ski; he even had the gall to write a book called The New Possibilities In Skiing. The book showcased skating turns - made on the inside ski. Reuel urged skating down the slope was even better than stemming down the slope. Reuel got a publicity break when his inside ski turn was given some exposure in the 1930 Arnold Fanck ski film, White Ecstacy. In the film, which was widely popular, there is a sequence showing ski clown Walter Riml trying to learn how to ski with Reuel's book in hand. Riml does a skating turn, a bit shakily at first, then several more with great fluidity - a sequence which remains the first 'freestyle turn' filmed... The skating turn was later named the Reuel, correctly pronounced but incorrectly spelled the 'Royal.' It is still the basic freestyle turn. By now it has a longer, useful life in a less altered form than any other turn of the 1920s." Avon Hilton explained in the September 1993 Skiing Heritage Journal that the Reuel was "a turn on the inside ski. You pushed off with the outside ski and then held it up in the air. You had to link the turns because to do just one of them didn't amount to much. It was not really what you could call a technique, but people who tried it generally did it where no one could see them because they usually fell at first." In addition to being a skater and skiier, Dr. Fritz Reuel was also a professor of physical education. His Reuel - or Royal - became a popularly accepted transition and the basis of a freestyle ski stunt called the 360 degree Royal Spin.

According to John Fry's book "The Story Of Modern Skiing", Reuel's figure skating inspired turns inspired Doug Pfeiffer to begin teaching classes in what he called "monkey business" or "exotic skiing" in 1956 at Snow Summit in California's San Bernardino Mountains. He'd apparently learned of all things - the mambo - in Squaw Valley and translated the turns in the dance to the ski hill. He wrote the world's first English language book on freestyle skiing and demonstrated moves with names quite similar to well known skating moves - the Flying Kick Turn, the Crossover Kick, The Flying Sitz and the Backscratcher. He also introduced, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia, "spinners, tip rolls and crossovers". 

Pfeiffer's teachings resonated with Phil Gerard, who like Reuel had a background in figure skating. Gerard was a choreographer, professional ice show skater and  even a Broadway dancer in shows with Sammy Davis Jr. Gerard, like Reuel and Pfeiffer, introduced more skating inspired moves that could be performed on short skis and choreographed dances on skis - in effect inventing what is known as ski ballet. Fry's book describes Gerard as "gaunt, intense, with profuse jet-black hair framing an ashen face, he occasionally appeared wasted from a prior evening's surfeit of drugs and alcohol. But he was athletic and immensely talented. He was not alone in advancing the idea the idea of performing to music, as figure skaters do. He coached blond, charismatic Suzy Chaffee, who, more than anyone, brought ski ballet to the public limelight." Ski Ballet would go on to be demonstrated as a sport at both the 1988 Calgary and 1992 Albertville Olympics, but was ultimately dropped like a hot potato by the IOC and I said before, ultimately dropped entirely in 2000 after waning significantly in popularity after being rejected by the good folks at the Olympics. 

Today skiing and skating share another important commonality: the snowplow stop. It's one of the first things you learn in CanSkate and ironically one of the first manoeuvres you learn in a beginner ski class as well... only the more modernly used name in skiing for a snowplow stop is a wedge. People make a lot of comparisons between both the basics of skating and skiing much as they do about roller skates or blades and skates but I don't about you, but put me on a pair of skis or roller skates and I have about as much grace as a bull in a china stop. I'll stick with my edges and toe picks, thank you very much, and I have even more respect for anyone to can make a connection between the two. On second thought, the hot chocolate in the alpine lodge sounds more my speed these days... maybe with a little Irish Cream in there, you know, to jazz things up a little! Cheers to you, Fritz Reuel and Phil Gerard!

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 the 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.

Zsófia Méray-Horváth And The Coffee That Should Have Been Irish

Before we get to the meat and potatoes of today's history lesson, I want to be fair and say that this topic isn't exactly one that hasn't been explored before on the blog. Back in March of 2014, the skater in question was briefly featured in the first of "The Other World Champions" series. Today we're going to go much more in depth than a little biographical stub... and be really easy on this blogger who had to sift through multiple foreign language source materials with a fine tooth comb, a Google translator and a cup of coffee that was not Irish and definitely should have been.

Photo courtesy Sveriges Centralförening för Idrottens Främjande Archive

Our story begins in of all places the municipality of Arad in Transylvania (then part of Hungary) four years before the first entry in the journal of Jonathan Harker in Bram Stoker's epic horror novel "Dracula". On December 30, 1889, Zsófia Méray-Horváth was born. Before we get into who she was and her many contributions to skating, I want to first try to explain some confusion surrounding her genealogy and name. In the sixteenth century, a Croatian man from the Horváth family married a woman from the Méray family in Kassa, which is located in the present day Czech Republic but was then a thriving Hungarian city. The names were combined and over two centuries went through many slight variations. However, Zsófia's father Károly opted to revive the combined Méray-Horváth last name. When she started entering international figure skating competitions, the name Zsófia was Germanized to Öpika, the preposition 'von' got added somewhere along the way and Zsófia Méray-Horváth became known in skating circles by the names Öpika von Méray-Horváth, Öpika von Méray and Öpika Méray-Horváth. You have to wonder what she would have liked us to call her, but out of respect for her birth name today I'm going to use Zsófia Méray-Horváth.

Now that we have all of that confusion cleared up, let's start by talking about her youth and how she got involved in figure skating. Zsófia's father Károly was a prominent - and I mean prominent - sociologist, engineer, editor and writer who was at one point Vice President of the Society of Social Sciences (Társadalomtudományi Társaság) of Hungary. Although obviously a busy man, Károly was by accounts a doting father to his daughter and three sons.

Photo courtesy Sveriges Centralförening för Idrottens Främjande Archive

Zsófia started skating - as most skaters did back in those days - outside on ponds in Transylvania and was quickly recognized as someone with clear talent. At the invitation of Mihály Károlyi, Hungary's future Prime Minister. the family did what many skating families still do to this day - packed up and moved! In Budapest, Zsófia became the star skater at the Budapesti Korcsolyázó Egylet (the Budapest Skating Club) and for the first time received real instruction in the sport.

Following in the footsteps of her aristocratic clubmate Lili Kronberger - who was the second female skater to win the World title in 1908 (a feat she repeated in 1909 and 1910), Zsófia travelled to Vienna, Austria in 1911 to compete in her first international competition, the World Championships. She finished second behind Kronberger that year. By the following year, Lili Kronberger had retired from competition and following the advice of Károly, Zsófia's younger brother Lóránd - a motorcycle enthusiast - became an engineering apprentice at Shell in Galicia. Zsófia travelled to Davos, Switzerland as Hungary's only ladies competitor and claimed the gold medal in a field of seven ladies. 

With continued support from Mihály Károlyi, the Budapesti Korcsolyázó Egylet and her family, Zsófia made the trip to Stockholm, Sweden to defend her World title and did so with a considerable lead on her closest challengers, Phyllis Johnson of Great Britain and Sweden's Svea Norén. In an equally convincing fashion, she won her third and final World title in St. Moritz, Switzerland in January 1914 with an almost twenty point lead ahead of Austria's Angela Hanka. Even though she was probably one of the most conservatively dressed of the ladies skaters of that era, Zsófia was criticized in a 1914 issue of "The Sketch: A Journal of Art and Actuality" for her mere 'indecency' in taking part in a sporting event as a (GASP) woman! Give me a break.

At only twenty three, the future seemed bright. When World War I broke out, Berlin's Deutsches Stadion had already been completed in anticipation of the 1916 Summer Olympics. Figure skating was again planned to be included on the roster for a Winter Sports Week held in conjunction with the Summer Games and in 1914, work continued in preparation for the Games. Many thought that the war would not last that long or grow to the scale it did at the onset. As the three time and defending World Champion, Zsófia was the odds on favourite to be the second ladies Olympic Gold Medallist in figure skating.

Things didn't work out that way. The World Championships were cancelled from 1915 to 1921 as were the planned 1916 Summer Games. Lóránd left Shell and enlisted in the military. Károly invested all of the family's money into state loans that turned out to be unsafe. The Méray-Horváth family lost every last fillér. In order to support the family and literally put food on the table, Lóránd and his brother Endre opened a small shop called Paraffins that made candles and soaps and barely scraped by. Zsófia married and became known as Madame Scelnar and got a job teaching foreign languages.

Gillis Grafström and Zsófia Méray-Horváth

After an extremely rough several years, between Zsófia's teaching job and the brothers shop, the family slowly got back on its feet. Lóránd and Endre later started manufacturing motorbikes and - much like Norwegian skater Johan Peter Lefstad, carved out quite a name for themselves in the process. However, the Wall Street crisis and Great Depression's global impact soon put the burgeoning company out of business and the once comfortable family again fell into poverty. Following World War II, when Hungary was under Communist rule, members of Zsófia's family - including her mother, brother Lóránd and his wife - were put in forced labour camps but survived.

Whether the three time World Champion suffered the same fate during this time period is unknown as is much of her later life. Called "a very spirited woman" in the 1920 Fritz Gurlitt Verlag book "Sport Brevier", the Transylvanian born skater never returned to the ice and died in Hungary on April 5, 1977. The story of her later life remains an unsolved skating history mystery but her pioneering contribution to developing women's figure skating remains a golden moment in a career cut far too short.

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 the 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.

Aye, Aye, Captain: On The S.S. Skater With A Skater

Photo courtesy Musée McCord Museum. Reproduced for educational purposes under license permission.

Born in Montreal, Quebec on February 25, 1831, John Miner moved with his family to Detroit, Michigan in 1834. His interest in all things nautical began as a boy when he was a carpenter's apprentice and by age fourteen, he was already out on the lakes. At age twenty, he married Julia Busha and built his first ship, a sloop called Sweeper. Together, Julia and John had three children. In succession, John built, owned or commanded a long list of ships from schooners to steamers: the Michigan Flower, Storm, Whittlesey, J.B. Chapin, Kate Hinchman, John Miner, Victory, Star, Concord, William Goodnow, Magnet, Benton, Mary Mills, George Worthington, Henry Howard, Morton, Empire and the John S. Richards.

He was an esteemed captain and builder of ships for fifty years, never losing a single ship or a man in his employ while at sea. A March 2014 article from the Detroit Historical Society noted that "Miner's reputation as a true gentleman has been well noted throughout the historic record. A man of fair business dealings in every sense, he was known for his infrequent use of alcohol, tobacco, and other social vices." No Caribbean rum for this straight edged captain, apparently. I won't hold it against him. The final ship he designed and built was called a passenger propeller called the Skater, undoubtedly named after this captain's passion for (you guessed it) figure skating.

Left: Captain John Miner in action. Right: A pair of Captain John Miner's stilt skates, which are in the possession of the Detroit Historical Society

The Detroit Historical Society's article gives some wonderful insight into the good captain's passion for skating: "While building and sailing ships was a lucrative occupation for Miner, his true passion in life rested in the winter recreational sport of ice skating. Miner was known to spend as much time as possible on the ice as soon as the winter cold froze area ponds and lakes. He was apparently quite a marvel at speed, acrobatics, and agility. Miner submitted a patent in 1897 for an innovative skate runner designed to greatly increase speed. Having won numerous prizes and medals, his biggest self-accomplishment was a solo performance before England's Queen Victoria. One of Miner's more fanciful and entertaining feats was the use of his 'stilt-skates' which elevated him an astonishing two feet off the ice while performing unbelievable manoeuvres." Miner's 'racing blade' design (more suitable for speed than figure skating) was officially patented on Valentine's Day, 1899.

Close-up of a pair of Captain John Miner's stilt skates. Photo courtesy Musée McCord Museum. Reproduced for educational purposes under license permission.

An article from the book "History on Ice and Roller Skating - 1916" published by Julian T. Fitzgerald, offers some further explanation of the captain's skating career: "This great skater was the father of stilt skating, having made and used the first pair of stilt skates in America. He won the speed and figure skating championships of Michigan 1861, he competed in the first National figure skating Championship at Pittsburgh, Pa. 1871, against (E.T.) Goodrich, (Callie) Curtis and (Johnnie) Engler." At some point along the way, the captain also developed a taste for roller skating, as it would have of course been much more common back in those days for skaters to learn to perform proficiently both on rollers and ice skates. Even within the last month of his life at seventy eight years of age, he was still roller skating regularly at Wayne Rink in Detroit. An honorary Protopopov or Richard Dwyer if there ever was one! Captain John Miner passed away on July 10, 1909 of an asthmatic/bronchial condition and is buried in Detroit's Mount Elliott Cemetery. Whether you're out on a ferry or a yacht, the next time you find yourself out at sea, raise a glass to the good skating captain... but since he didn't drink, if he asks it's just soda.

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 the 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.

The 1939 New Zealand Figure Skating Championships

In 1987, the New Zealand Ice Skating Association celebrated its fiftieth jubilee with a wonderful historical document written and published by Rhona Whitehouse. In it, I was fortunate enough to read a deliciously obscure yet fascinating account of the country's very FIRST National Championships which were held in July of 1939 at the Manorburn Dam in Alexandra "on a magnificent icefield covering sixty acres and extending two miles and a-half." A description of the scene taken from the July 23, 1939 edition of the Otago Daily Times sets the scene quite descriptively: "A more picturesque setting could hardly be imagined. From the rocky crags forming a natural grandstand, the spectators looked across a basin of sun-drenched ice, on which, between events, about 1,000 skaters wove an animated pattern full of colour, the skates flashing in the sun. On the brown slopes above were grouped the 300 cars, trucks and other vehicles which, with the help of taxis, brought most of the participants to the scene, the remainder arriving on bicycles or on foot. It was a perfect day, and the refreshment booths did a roaring trade in hot pieces and saveloys." Keep in mind, of course, that as New Zealand is in the southern hemisphere, the seasons would of course be inversed and June through August would serve as the country's winter. Winters would be a hell of a lot more seasonable than we would be used to here in Canada. We're talking a high of sixteen and a low of seven Celsius so pretty balmy compared to what I am used to here in the winters to say the least. The weather was noted as particularly mild even for the locale and time of year so the ice on the flooded field was not as thick as usual. The Otago Daily Times noted that "uncertainty as to when the ice would be bearing prevented a larger entry from the north, but there was a high standard of performance. The Central Otago skaters were too good for the visitors."

Competitions were held for both men and women in both speed and figure skating. In the seven entry men's figure skating event, the victor was A.W. Robertson of Oturehua, who fended off a formidable challenge from B. Hjelstrom to take the title. G.J. Rivers of Alexandra finished third. The ladies champion was Sadie Cameron of Alexandra, who outskated Miss N. O'Kane, Miss N. Hall and Mrs. J. Gilkison of Dunedin to take the gold. Whitehouse noted that "very few skaters could do free skating and the figures required for the championship were elementary. They were Forward Outside Eight, Forward Inside Eight and Change of Edge starting on either foot." The results were indeed based only on school figures... so if Trixi Schuba had a time machine and an aunt in New Zealand she could have gone back and mopped the field with the competition without question. What made Sadie Cameron and A.W. Robertson's wins so impressive was that both skaters were self-taught. Robertson had no coaching whatsoever and learned to figure skate on dams and ponds. Cameron was twenty five when she entered the 1939 National Championships and learned to skate on "rickety ice." According to Whitehouse, the "only tuition she had was from an elderly Swedish gentleman who told her to 'lane ophir' (lean over). She said skaters had no idea about legs, body or shoulder position." Even though the figures both Robertson and Cameron skated to win their National titles were novice, by today's standards it is pretty incredible to think of a skater winning a National Championship of any sort without ever being coached, isn't it?

The onset of World War II in 1939 meant that these National Championships of New Zealand would prove to be the last until 1946 but the very humble beginnings of skating in a country you don't always associate with winter sports serve as a reminder that every story starts somewhere and builds from the ground up.

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.

The Adolphus Hotel: An Unlikely Southern Skating Mecca

In 2012, the Adolphus Hotel in downtown Dallas, Texas celebrated its one hundredth birthday. The hotel opened two years before World War I and has played host to some pretty famous guests over the years, most notably Queen Elizabeth II, The King Of Norway, Edith Piaf, Amelia Earhart, Babe Ruth, the Vanderbilt's, Oscar de la Renta, Estée Lauder and Julia Child. The hotel also played an unlikely and incredibly important part in figure skating history.

From 1936 to 1965, the hotel had a rolling retractable tank ice skating rink installed in its Century Room. The Century Room was a multi use space that was many things to many people: a Hawaiian restaurant, nightclub, ballroom with live music by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra and skating venue... and make no mistake, it was the place to be and be seen in the Texas city in its day.

When ice show producer Art Victor came to the U.S. from Europe in the thirties, his first job was the production of the College Inn Ice Revue at Chicago's Sherman Hotel, which was wildly successful and proved that skating shows at hotels absolutely worked. From there, Victor went to Hollywood to produce a show at the Tropical Ice Gardens before turning his attention to the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas. A January 1943 article from Billboard Magazine explained that "when the hotel installed its rink, many assured the manager, H. Fuller Stevens, that he would have to close after eight weeks. They are still amazed at the business the hotel is doing with its all-year ice policy. Victor knows skating and how to get the best out of the available talent. When his skaters tell him that the steps he wants them to do are impossible, he put on his skates and shows them. Many skating stars have been discovered and developed by him." Under Victor's direction, the shows established the concept of bringing in permanent casts for the hotel shows to save on transportation and rehearsal expenses and new productions were put together every four weeks. One of the most popular during Victor's time at the helm was Dorothy Lewis' Ice Time show.

Things changed at the Adolphus. In the summer of 1943, U.S. Olympic speed skating turned figure skating star Dorothy Franey Langkop was offered a six week run with her skating show at the hotel after performances in the Iceolite Revue with Sammy Jarvis at the Book-Cadillac Hotel in Detroit, St. Louis Park Plaza Hotel and shows in Chicago, Mexico City, Kansas City and at Rockefeller Center in New York established her as a bona fide skating attraction. Franey choreographed, directed, produced and starred in her Dot Franey Ice Revue which opened in The Century Room in October of that year was held over for the next fourteen years. She created new shows for the hotel every six weeks. In its heyday, the Adolphus Hotel ice shows were so hugely popular with the society women of the south that reservations for her lunchtime shows had to made two weeks in advance. The shows featured ice comedians, adagio pairs acts, ensemble pieces and of course Franey, who skated on speed skates, figure skates and stilt skates in the shows. For the record, Dot Franey was kind of a big deal.

A huge part of the appeal of the Adolphus Hotel skating shows was the fact that they offered audiences the whole dining/entertainment/dancing experience. As the rink was retractable, after audiences were finished eating, drinking and being entertained, they could get down on the dance floor when the rink was rolled back. As well, skating was much more of a novelty in the southern U.S. at the time than in the north and as Linda and Steve Bauer noted in their book "Recipes From Historic Texas", "most Southwest citizens had never seen skating on ice."

Although the shows waned in popularity in the early sixties and the ice was removed, The Adolphus Hotel is still very much in operation today. The Century Room is now called The French Room and serves as a fine dining establishment. The Adolphus may have traded in its lutzes for lamb shanks and langoustines but this unlikely Southern skating mecca of yesteryear's contribution to skating history is indisputable.

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 the 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.