The Only Fritz This Blog Is On Is The Fritz Dietl

When someone literally dedicates their entire life to figure skating, I think they deserve a standing ovation even if it is a posthumous one. Born July 31, 1911 in Vienna, Austria, Fritz Dietl got his start in the sport at the relatively 'late' age of twelve, something I can definitely relate to. He didn't do it in an ice rink in Chester, Nova Scotia though but rather in one of the most majestic and historic settings of them all: the frozen Danube River, where skaters had been taking to the ice in the winters for centuries.

After getting a degree in economics at the insistence of his father and playing tennis professionally, Dietl joined the International Artists Organization, finding work throughout the thirties in ice shows in Austria, Germany, Great Britain, South Africa and Switzerland. He relocated to the United States in 1939, accepting an offer from Arthur M. Wirtz to perform in Sonja Henie's shows. He used his engineering background to design twenty four inch stilts designed specifically to work with skates and performed his novelty act in America for six years. In a 1998 interview with Dianne Powell he reminisced, "I remember when Sonja told me I had to take my camel spin out of my program. She said I made her look stupid because I did a better one on stilts than she did without. I said, 'Sonja, if you get off your high horse it'll take me 10 minutes and I'll give you a camel spin assist.' I explained it. She was a talented skater. She said, 'for that you can keep your camel spin in your program.'"

Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine

After his professional skating career ended, Dietl taught at the Skating Club Of New York for a time. In 1958, he purchased Webber's Garage in Westwood, New Jersey and converted it into a skating rink where he would act as owner, manager, skating director and even Zamboni driver. At the time, it was the only skating rink in the area. The Fritz Dietl Ice Rink still thrives today!

Dietl was a charter member of the ISI (Ice Skating Institute) and also the coach of two time U.S. Champion Scotty Allen. Allen won the silver medal in the junior men's event at the 1961 U.S. Championships and was thus included in a group of young skaters that would have the amazing learning experience of being sent by the USFSA to observe the best in the world at the 1961 World Championships.

Amazingly, it would be the Fritz Dietl Ice Rink that saved both Dietl and Allen's lives and kept them off the ill-fated Sabena flight that crashed in Brussels, Belgium that year. Patricia Shelley Bushman's book "Indelible Tracings" explained that "Scott Allen and his coach, Fritz Dietl, had tickets for the Sabena flight. The eleven-year-old would have been the third young spectator, along with eleven-year-old Jimmy Scholdan, and thirteen-year-old Dickie LeMaire... Three days before the plane took off, the compressors broke. He had to wait for parts to come in and fix the problem before he could go. Dietl was the chaperone so they both delayed their trip." The difference a day can make is quite the understatement! Under Dietl's guidance, Allen became one of America's top men's skaters in the era of rebuilding after the 1961 plane crash, winning the Olympic bronze medal in the 1964, World silver medal in 1965 and three medals at the North American Championships.

In addition to his rink and students, Dietl spent countless hours mentoring professional skaters and working with the International Professional Skaters Guild, judging skating at the regional level for the USFSA and serving on both the ISI and PSA boards. He received Lifetime Achievement Awards from both organizations. In 1991, Westwood, New Jersey even made July 29 Fritz Dietl Day.

In a 2003 article from the ISI Edge newsletter, Jim Lange reflected on Dietl: "I think his life speaks volumes in what he has done for the industry and for all the generations he taught, all the young skaters who have gone on to teach others. He had a smile that lit up a room. He was always gracious, a very good listener, always very sincere." 1984 Olympic Gold Medallist Scott Hamilton also reflected on Dietl in his book "The Great Eight": "I was in a pro competition in South Africa and was having a great time after the event was over. Fritz pulled me aside to give me a life lesson that would change my perspective forever. He said, 'Do you want a long career?' 'Of course,' I said. 'Then always be number two,' he said. 'Always put someone above you. Never put yourself first.' Now this is a man who performed with the greatest diva in the history of pro skating. Sonja Henie was a huge star and always put herself first and made a fortune doing just that. But here was a man telling me to put others first. Seeing that I was captured by his advice, he continued, 'Number ones come and go, but a number two can last forever.' It was an amazing nugget of wisdom. There is an Olympics every four years with new stars and new excitement. How am I going to survive that in a long career? I decided that he was probably right and started my long journey as a self-proclaimed 'number two.'"

Sadly, Dietl passed away on March 29, 2003 from complications of heart trauma, leaving behind his beloved wife Carola and sons Ernst and Gregory. His star pupil Scotty Allen recalled, "Fritz would often say, 'The only limitations that you have are the ones that are self-imposed. It's all in your mind, not your body. You can achieve almost any objective you set yourself to.'"

I'm going to take Dietl's advice. My objective for this blog is to create a well researched, diverse and eclectic figure skating library of skating history for people who are just as passionate about the sport as I am. Sure, I'm not spending most of my time picking apart skater's coaching choices and underrotations but I believe that what I'm doing with this blog is every bit as valuable and worthy of its own audience... and I'm done with limitations. With your help, this blog will never be on the Fritz. It's going to keep on growing.

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 1981 World Junior Figure Skating Championships

This week in Debrecen, Hungary, skaters from Israel, the Czech Republic, Japan and America won gold medals at the 2016 World Junior Figure Skating Championships. Today on Skate Guard, we will set the time machine for thirty six years ago, when the best young skaters in the world converged on the Thompson Arena at the University Of Western Ontario in London, Ontario for the 1981 World Junior Figure Skating Championships. It was the second World Junior Championships held that year and the first time in history that the event would ever be held on North American soil. Let's explore some of the stories that made this event particularly memorable!

THE PAIRS COMPETITION

In the short program, Lori Baier of Mitchell, Ontario and Lloyd Eisler of Seaforth, Ontario finished third behind defending World Junior Champions Larisa Selezneva and Oleg Makarov and their Soviet teammates Marina Nikituk and Rashid Kadyrkaev. Although Selezneva and Makarov pretty much had a lock on gold (and DID win with a spectacular free skate), when Kadyrkaev injured himself in a practice session the day of the free skate, a door was opened for Baier and Eisler. They skated right through it with a flawless free skate that featured two back to back throw double Axel's early in the program. They moved up to second place ahead of Nikituk and Kadyrkaev with 3.2 points to the Soviet's 3.8.  In a Globe And Mail interview, Eisler said, "Tonight is the best we've ever skated. That's all that really matters. It is especially important to skate well in front of the home crowd. After we did the two throw double Axels, it felt really good and I knew we were on our way."

THE ICE DANCE COMPETITION

The ice dancers had a terrible go of things in London right off the bat in 1980. Defending sixteen year old champion Elena Batanova arrived from Moscow with her partner Alexei Soloviev... and a suitcase full of men's shirts and slacks. The compulsory dances were delayed by thirty five minutes due to a blinding snowstorm and many skaters arrived late, taking shuttle buses from the hotel which was usually only fifteen minutes away. Despite having to borrow costumes, Batanova and Soloviev skated to a convincing lead in the two compulsory dances skated - the European Waltz and Paso Doble - ahead of teammates Natalia Annenko and Vadim Karkatchev. Canadian siblings Karyn and Rod Garossino of the Calalta Figure Skating Club finished a strong third despite some peculiarly generous judging of the Soviet teams by the Eastern bloc judges. The Soviet judge gave Batanova and Soloviev a 5.3; all other marks were in the 4's. Despite slightly faltering in their OSP, a Middle Eastern belly dance themed program that would have been quite ahead of its time for a original set pattern dance, Batanova and Soloviev maintained their lead ahead of Annenko and Karkatchev and the Garossino's. In good ice dance judging fashion, the results of the twelve couples offered very little movement. You know how that story goes. The Garossino's, who worked with Sandra Bezic on their choreography for this event, captured the bronze medal overall behind their Soviet competitors. Lynn Copley-Graves, in her book "Figure Skating History: The Evolution Of Dance On Ice", shed light on the free dance: "[Batanova and Soloviev] moved lightly in the free, with not much speed or edge, but with the musical interpretation and choreography so characteristic of Soviet ice dancers. For example, Alexei caressed Elena's boot and she clung to his neck and swung her legs from side to side. Elena, Alexei, and the second-placed Soviets... entertained with mime movements. The enthusiasm of these two couples drew in the crowd. Karyn and Rod Garossino, 15 and 17, coached by Michael Jiranek and Roy Bradshaw, looked elegant while skating their first free dance in competition and were surprised to receive a medal. Under the new marking system, the free dance carried more weight, allowing the third Soviet couple, Tatiana Gladkova and Igor Shpilband, to overtake Sophie Schmidt and Eric Desplats from France. Sophie and Eric would have had a large enough lead to hold fifth under the old system."

THE MEN'S COMPETITION

Fourteen year old Swiss Champion Oliver Höner, the winner of the school figures in the previous World Junior Championships in Megève, France (held in January 1980), once again claimed an early lead in the competition's first phase with a four/three split from the judging panel. In second with first place marks from the West German and American judges was a young Paul Wylie; in third with a first place nod from the Austrian judge was Scott Williams. Soviet skater Yuri Bureiko was in fourth and Japan's Masaru Ogawa fifth. Although Neil Giroday of the North Shore Winter Club had won the junior men's event at the Canadian Championships held earlier that year, strangely the CFSA decided not to send a single men's entry to the international competition held in their own country although they had two spots. An interesting note regarding the figures events in London that year would have to be the fact that the ISU tested an adaptation of its scoring system adopted on December 1, 1980. In essence, a 0.6 factor was given to the winner of figures, a 1.2 mark was given to the second place finisher, 1.8 to the third and so on. This mark was added to a 0.4 factor for the short program and a 1.0 for the free skate to give a skater a total of 2.0 points if they won all three rounds of competition. Then ISU honorary vice president John Shoemaker explained the changes in a December 11, 1980 interview in The Globe And Mail: "The new system reflects a desire to give good free skaters a more realistic chance to win, This is an attempt to have the results actually reflect the 30 per cent mark (for figures), 20 per cent (for the short program) and 50 per cent (free skating). In the past, the figures' weight could work out to as much as 70 per cent." In the short program, Paul Wylie skated clean, landing a double Axel/double loop combination to snatch the lead. Scott Williams moved up to second and Yuri Bureiko to third. Höner dropped all the way down to sixth. In the final phase of the competition, Wylie was again brilliant, landing two triple toe-loops and several double axels. His only mistake was a popped triple Salchow attempt. Bureiko won the silver, coming out incredibly strong but fading later in his program. Scott Williams, who was struggling with a back injury, dropped to third and had to be helped to the dressing room after his performance although he did recover sufficiently to accept his medal.

THE WOMEN'S COMPETITION

In the school figures, sixteen year old Andrea Rohm of Vienna (a student of 1968 Olympic Gold Medallist Wolfgang Schwarz) dominated the the rocker, change bracket and back outside loop, receiving marks of 3.5 and 3.6; the highest given during the event. Following in the standings were West Germany's Cornelia Tesch in second, American Maria Causey in third, Marina Serova of the Soviet Union in fourth, Canada's Diane Ogibowski in fifth and West Germany's Eva Drometer in sixth. Canada's second entry, Charlene Wong of Pierrefonds, Quebec was thirteenth. Sparing any modesty, Schwarz told reporters that Rohm was "following in the tradition of excellent Austrian school figure skaters such as myself, Emmerich Danzer, Trixi Schuba and [Regine Heitzer]." After the short program, Serova and Tesch were tied with the overall lead after placing first and fourth in their efforts. An article in the December 13, 1980 Globe And Mail explains that "they were followed by Maria Causey of the United States, Tiffany Chin of the United States, and Ogibowski. Andrea Rohm of Austria, the leader after the compulsory figures, faltered badly after the short program, missing two of the seven required elements and managed only a 15th-place finish; that dropped her to sixth over all and probably out of medal contention. The other Canadian entry, Charlene Wong of Pierrefonds, Que., performed flawlessly, finishing sixth in the short and moving up to ninth over all. Ogibowski, the current Canadian novice champion, elected to do her combination jump, a difficult double Axel-double loop near the end of her program. Ogibowski overrotated the double Axel and fell on the double-loop attempt. Wong, whose goal is to finish in the top five over all, did the same combination, but made it the second element. 'The double Axel has always been one of my strongest jumps, so it was natural to put it into the combination. The reason that I do it near the beginning is because I like to get one jump in first to warm up.' Her only mistake was a shaky landing on a double Lutz. Serova, who won the short program with a faultless performance, was fourth after the figures. Chin, a tiny 70-pounder from San Diego, Calif., made the biggest move, vaulting from eighth to fourth over all on the strength of a second-place performance in the short program."

In a remarkable come from behind win, American Tiffany Chin took the gold medal in the women's event, ahead of Serova and a second Soviet skater who made up some serious ground in the free skate, young Alexei Mishin student Anna Antonova. The December 15, 1980 issue of The Globe And Mail explained how it all went down: "Chin, a 4-foot-8, 70-pounder from San Diego, Calif., completed her rise from eight after the compulsory figures with an almost flawless free-skating performance. Her only fluff came on an attempted triple Salchow jump - a move not included in her program, but inserted on a whim when everything was going so well during her three-minute performance. Neither Chin nor her coach, Frank Carroll, had set any goals of winning a medal. 'I knew that I had a terribly talented child who could win if she were to skate well,' Carroll said. There are very few her age in the world so talented. I have learned, though, never to expect anything, so we didn't set any goals." Carroll, who coached Linda Fratianne to world titles in 1977 and 1979, has coached Chin for three of the four years she has been skating. Ogibowski miscued twice during her free skating, falling on a triple Salchow during the slow part of her program and on a double Axel near the end. She said afterward that she probably will make some changes in her training techniques, especially her compulsory figures. Ironically, she placed fifth in the figures, a surprise because they are considered her weakness. 'I'm not too disappointed with my showing here, but there will be some changes when I get back home. My figures need more time and I've never had a short program before. I have thought a lot about moving to Toronto, Calgary or Vancouver for more ice time and training, but I get lots of ice time in Minnedosa. As long as I train properly and don't goof off, I'll be able to improve.' Despite the excellent showing by Chin, Midori Ito, an 11-year-old and, at 3 feet 11, the smallest skater in the competition, stole the show. Ito, from Nagoya, Japan, jumped from 20th after the figures to eighth [overall] with a dazzling display in the free skating. Ito drew top marks from the judges to win that portion of the competition and a standing ovation from the crowd."

It would seem few international competitions from the eighties would be complete without a story of Midori Ito rallying an impressive comeback in the free skate. It's interesting to note that thirty six years later, yet another young woman from Japan - Marin Honda of Osaka - stole the show at the very same competition. As Shirley Bassey once fabulously sang, "it's all just a little bit of history repeating".

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.

Isabella Butler: Figure Skating's Best Kept Secret

On a balmy August afternoon in 1906, Isabella Mae (Allen) Butler sat in the lobby of the Hotel Jermyn in Scranton, Pennsylvania cradling her baby. "At first I would shut my eyes, hold my breath and half swoon with fear. Now, would you believe it, I am conscious of every moment and every foot of the loop," she told a reporter from "The Scranton Republican". Although Butler was an incredibly skilled skater, she wasn't telling this reporter about the loops she carved on the ice. She was referring to "The Dip Of Death".

Imagine a turn of the century automobile careening down a curved roller coaster track, doing a full loop in the air over a forty foot chasm and flying onto another track. That was Butler's job in Barnum and Bailey's Circus in 1906 and 1907. The stunt was reportedly based on an act called "L'Auto-Bolide" that was spotted by an agent in Paris, France. It was brought over to America as The Dip Of Death by one Mademoiselle Mauricia De Tiers. Her successor Isabella, the young mother from Boston, performed it twice daily for two years, holding a fan in one hand and driving with the other. She told reporters, "It is disagreeable - the sensation, I mean. It only lasts four seconds, but I experience a painful sensation in the moment I am going over the curve, upside down, just before the leap in the air. I feel as if I were choking and I suffer quite a severe pain in the head which does not disappear entirely during the evening. But I have no fear. I don't know what it means. I have great faith in the skill of the engineer who constructed the apparatus, and I have the satisfaction of knowing that if the machine ever does fall I shall not be maimed or disfigured for life. I shall simply be skilled outright, for no one could live after that car fell."

If that's not crazy enough for you, how would you feel if I told you we were just getting started? After studying medicine at Vassar College in New York, Isabella married Tom Butler, a divorced champion stunt bicycle rider originally from Halifax, Nova Scotia. It was through Tom's circus connections that she got the Barnum job. After two years of performing The Loop Of Death, she yearned to pursue her real passion: figure skating. 

The daughter of Hattie (Baskerville) and George Henry Allen, Isabella grew up in Chicago. She learned the basics of the ice skating at the age of seven on a frozen pond in Garfield Park from Alderman John E. Scully and started pursuing the sport seriously at the St. Nicholas Rink in New York in 1903. In 1906 - the same year Madge Syers won the first ISU Championship For Ladies - she sent in an application to compete in the Championships Of America at the urging of friends. It was the first time a woman had expressed an interest in competing against the 'gentlemen', and the International Skating Union Of America flatly denied her request. A year and a half later, she teamed up with Eddie Bassett, who'd won a fancy skating competition at the St. Nicholas Rink in March of 1907.

Butler and Bassett became a hugely popular Vaudeville figure skating act that took America by storm for the better part of a decade. Tom Butler travelled with the duo, making artificial ice for their stage performances and closely guarding the secret to how he did it to reporters and curious audience members alike.

Boston born circus star and impresario Stanley W. Wathon promoted Butler and Bassett, falsely billing them as the "World's Champion Skaters" to draw in patrons. The ruse worked. Patrons flocked en masse to the Fifty Eighth Street Theatre in New York City to see what all the fuss was about. "The New York Clipper", on March 14, 1908 recalled their act thusly: "A tank of real ice, about eight or ten feet in length by half of that in width is set in the centre of the stage, and on this the team perform their skating novelties. The act opens with some neat evolutions by both Miss Butler and Mr. Bassett and then each takes an individual try at it, with capital results. They do some remarkable feats, particularly when the small space in which they are compelled to work is taken into consideration. Miss Butler aroused plenty of enthusiasm and Mr. Bassett's skating around four lighted candles brought forth hearty applause. The entire act is worthy of the highest praise, and is something new for Vaudeville. It ran about twelve minutes, in three... He introduces a marvellous human top spin, in which he claims to spin at the rate of several hundred revolutions a minute." Following their Big Apple debut, Butler and Bassett took their icy stage act on the road to Chase's Theatre in Washington, D.C., The Grand Theatre in Pittsburgh and Bennett's Theatre in Montreal between May 1908 and January 1909.

Over a decade before the nineteenth amendment guaranteed American women the right to vote, Isabella Butler was personally responsible for teaching New York women to figure skate. These 'skating suffragettes' were largely members of the city's upper crust. On April 21, 1909, The Bridgeport Evening Farmer reported on her classes and skating thusly: "Desiring to interest her sex in the sport she yielded to the entreaties of Mrs. Irving Brokaw and Mrs. Ernest Iselin and had a class at the St. Nicholas Rink which did more to create the interest in ice skating among the women of New York than anything else had done for several years. Miss Butler expressed a desire to enter the world's skating contest last year but the cruel men debarred her because of her sex. She has challenged all of the prominent women skaters of this country and Canada to contests but they have not seen fit to risk defeat." Considering the laws surrounding amateurism in competitive figure skating in those days, one might construe the latter statement about Butler wishing to compete as a bit of 'enthusiastic journalism' or another Wathon story told to draw in patrons, but we weren't there. Who knows what her intentions truly were? At any rate, it's fascinating history.

Bassett and Butler continued to perform their act in theatres from Chicago and Memphis to San Francisco and Sacramento. When they weren't on the road, they practiced on the ice separately: Bassett at the Crystal Ice Rink in St. Louis and Butler at The Elysium Rink in Cleveland. In 1912, Isabella spent a winter teaching skating at the Connaught Club in Victoria, British Columbia.

Isabella also skated singles and pairs with none other than Norval Baptie, whose story we looked at on the blog back in July of 2014. The Duluth Herald, reporting on her performance in a show with Baptie at the Duluth Curling Rink in Minnesota in February of 1911 noted, "Her form is faultless, and form counts most in figure skating, and she executes the most difficult figures with the greatest of ease. Miss Butler goes through the entire repertoire of fancy figure skating, showing remarkable control and wonderful ease in every move she makes. Her work last evening was greeted with a round of applause that must indeed have pleased her." By 1915, Butler and Bassett were skating alongside Gladys Lamb and Norval Baptie in the "Castles In The Air" shows at The Ice Palace above the Forty Fourth Street Theatre in New York City, executing complex figure eights and novel spins while diners guzzled back cocktails between six and nine over supper. The next winter, she was in Los Angeles on a five month contract ice skating at the Hotel Alexandria with her sister Grace and Irish born Australian skating pioneer Dunbar Poole.

Roman Mars aptly mused on the podcast 99% Invisible that "it's totally unfair. Hydrox cookies came out four years before the introduction of Oreos, but Hydrox could never shake the image that it was a cheap knock-off, an also-ran. As a consumer product, it's completely out of your hands if you're deemed a mighty Transformer, or a loathsome Gobot. Sometimes it doesn't make any sense at all."

The documented history of figure skating has for years worked very much the same way. Madge Syers in, Mabel Davidson out. Sonja Henie in, Belita out...  Isabella Butler out. A university educated mother who jumped "The Dip Of Death" with Barnum And Bailey, toured America skating on artificial ice and taught women to skate before they could vote... forgotten. Sometimes it doesn't make any sense at all.

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.

How Henie Handled Hedda Hopper

Academy Award winning actor Spencer Tracy kicked her in the derriere at a West Hollywood nightclub. "Citizen Kane" star Joseph Cotten pulled her chair out from under her at a charity benefit.
Femme fatale Joan Bennett sent her a skunk with a note that read, "Won't you be my valentine? Nobody else will. I stink and so do you." At one time, hat loving actress and gossip columnist Hedda Hopper was one of the most despised people in Hollywood.

Keeping tabs on the lives of celebrities was Hopper's full time job and it is no surprise that three time Olympic Gold Medallist, ten time World Champion and Twentieth Century Fox star Sonja Henie often popped up in her columns. Quite interestingly, Hopper, a staunch Republican who played a major role in the whole blacklist debacle took little digs at Henie in the early forties but backed off her considerably as the decade wore on. Compared to much of the venom she spewed about other top Hollywood actors and actresses of her era, her coverage of the Norwegian star was after 1943, mostly either saccharine sweet or trivial. She always included Sonja on her annual lists of the richest and most influential female celebrities in Hollywood though!

Hopper visited Henie on the set of "Sun Valley Serenade" in May of 1941, noting that the skater and John Payne "spent the afternoon clad in heavy ski clothes and huddled before a fire for a scene" on a day where the temperature was above thirty degrees. Then two years later on May 2, 1943, she turned her nose up at the star, printing a story about Henie being turned down by Warner Brothers: "The first time Sonja Henie performed on skates here, and before any one but Sonja thought of her as a movie bet, Holly brought her to Warners' for a screen test. Unfortunately, even the casting director refused to see her, and Holly was stymied. When he went backstage to ask if her she was interested in pictures she replied: 'Yes - but I do vant just to do a bit with skates. I vant to be the vun who is in luff with the leading man!' And when he asked if she could act she said, 'Any one who is a champion must have intelligence enough to be a good actress!' (Well, the jury's still out on that one.)"

Perhaps Henie and Cesar Romero's 1943 film "Wintertime" converted Hopper into a Henie fan, because aside from idle gossip linking her romantically to stars Michael North, Dan Topping and Steve Crane, she really was surprisingly kind to Henie! In one column, Hopper pointed out how polite she was to her dinner companion on set at a film. On another on July 30, 1944, she gleamed, "Sonja Henie, with a new chassis and streamlined hairdress was the center of attraction" at a garden party. That autumn, when discussing how Henie expressed an interest in taking on more serious roles, she said, "If our little skater's set her mind on it - she'll do it!"

Hedda Hopper's Henie compliments continued on June 11, 1948: "When I visited Sonja Henie in her dressing room on the set of 'The Countess Of Monte Cristo,' I found her and her mother planning the entertainment for 300 guests at her annual party. Last year only half of her tennis court was covered; this year the tent will cover it all. Sonja was taking care of an infected finger. She was about to do a scene in a one-piece black lace slip; and I must say that her chassis is as streamlined as some of those figures she cuts on ice."

Just how did the Norwegian manage to escape the clutches of the gleeful gossip columnist that many Hollywood stars of the era viewed as a pariah? Simple! Sonja gave Hedda Hopper access. In her 1981 memoir, Ingrid Bergman noted, "Sonja was in the top bracket so her parties were among the best in Hollywood." The delightful Ann Miller, in Edvard Hambro's 1995 documentary "Sonja Henie: Queen Of The Ice" gushed, "Every star in Hollywood would be there. Producers and directors... people like Marlene Dietrich, Merle Oberon, Ty Power (who was also at one point in her life very enamoured [with] her), Clark Gable... I could go on and on. The stars she had there!" By inviting Hedda Hopper to these lavish parties and welcoming her when she showed up on film sets and skating rinks for interviews, Henie provided Hopper the captive audience she needed to do her job. In turn, she received good press. Carol Channing also noted that when the Istanbul Hilton opened, she was on the same press junket flying from Hollywood to France to Turkey with both Hopper and Henie.

Inviting the tiger into your den is only wiser than keeping them locked outside if you are the one with the upper hand, and Sonja Henie, whatever you might say about her, was a very smart businesswoman.

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.

Headbanging History: Tracing The Roots Of The Bounce Spin

Calla Urbanski and Rocky Marval

You know that cherished recipe that has been passed down through the generations? The one your grandmother taught your aunt and your aunt taught your mother and your mother taught you? The story of one of adagio pairs skating's most mind blowing tricks of the trade - the bounce spin or 'headbanger' goes a little like the story of that recipe... and I had a little fun trying to unravel the mystery.

Kyoko Ina and John Zimmerman

Before we take a look at the mystery and the history, let's take a look at what the bounce spin is. It's a jaw dropping adagio pairs trick where one partner swings the other around with both feet off the ice, supported only by the grip of the swinger on the swingee's ankle. The swingee is elevated up and down during the spin. Performed well, the head of the swingee comes terrifyingly close to being smashed on the ice. The International Skating Union, of course, wants no part in it. Per ISU regulations "spinning movements in which the man swings the lady around in the air while holding her hand or foot, are illegal... Twist-like or rotational movements during which the lady is turned over one or more times with her skating foot leaving the ice are not permitted."

World Professional Champions Anita Hartshorn and Frank Sweiding have one of the best bounce spins out there and have performed thousands in their career without a hitch, but even they have had a close call. In my interview with Anita back in June of 2013, she told me that "while performing in a Sun Valley show we were entering into a bounce spin (headbanger) and right as Frank took that hard back inside edge to pull me off my feet he stepped onto a gum wrapper that had blown out onto the ice! We both fell hard but fortunately we came out of it with only some bruises as well as bruised egos." It's dangerous business.

My quest to learn how the bounce spin got its start began by doing the obvious - asking Anita how she and Frank learned it. Anita explained that "Frank learned the bounce spin from Don Yontz when he first joined Ice Capades in 1978. Don was a roller skater turned ice skater for professional ice shows as an adagio skater. He had the best bounce spin and Frank was lucky to learn from him." 

Like Anita and Frank, who have taken their act everywhere from Guam to Germany, Don Yontz' skating background was every bit as unique. A former water skier and roller skater who. since turning professional in 1968, toured with Ice Capades, Ice Follies and Holiday On Ice, Yontz was actually the principal skater and organizer of the first skating show at Cypress Gardens in the mid-eighties. He explained, "I learned it from Cal Cook circa 1969. I saw a roller skating table act do it in an old film from the thirties or forties. The roller table acts were popular in Vaudeville. The neck spin and neck swivel also had their origin there as well as the teeth swivel gimmicks. Remember, the table was sometimes only four feet in diameter. My early adagio training was from then partner Darolyn Prior. She was trained by Terry Rudolph at the Casa in Garmisch, Germany. There has never been a trick that thrilled an audience more. Hard to learn or do, no. Dangerous, yes."

Who was this Cal Cook? In the sixties, Cal and his wife Dori, daughter Melanie (Kim) and twins Kris and Kelly were one of skating's few family acts. While touring with Holiday On Ice as a stilt skater, he met his wife Dori, a chorus skater in the show from Los Angeles. They both left the tour, moved to Burbank, had children and Cal took up coaching. When Holiday On Ice returned to Hollywood, Morris Chalfen convinced Cal and Dori to return to the show... and incorporate the whole family in an act! The children, who hadn't even skated before, took lessons. Choreographer Tommy DePauw worked out an act for them which focused around Cal and Dori as an adagio pair and the family went on the road exploring the world by trailer. It would have been while The Cook Family was on tour as 'Harrigan's Hooligans' that Cook would have taught Yontz the bounce spin, which he passed down to Hartshorn and Sweiding.

Let's go a step further back to the late forties and early fifties and meet Narena Greer of San Diego, California and Dick Norris of Colorado Springs. The husband and wife pair toured with the Ice Follies from 1949 to 1952 as Narena and Norris, thrilling audiences with their adagio tricks. Narena had a roller skating background and she teamed up with Dick because he was the first man she could find who could lift her properly. Their signature move was also the bounce spin, but it looked a little different to the bounce spin we see today. In their version, he held Narena by one foot and one hand, spun her around level with his chin and then dipped her while rotating so that her chin whizzed just above the ice.  Footage of a 1950 roller skating act by Jerry Berke, Art Wall and Eva Hartley shows 'swivel spin' tricks that were eerily similar to the adagio tricks we see on ice today, including the same version of the bounce spin that Narena and Norris popularized after World War II.

Photo courtesy "The National Ice Skating Guide"

Though the Narena and Norris version of the bounce spin was most likely invented on rollers, it was first performed on ice decades earlier. An advertisement for one of the Hotel Sherman's College Inn skating shows in Chicago depicts Norval Baptie swinging Gladys Lamb around by her ankle with the assistance of one arm and credits them as "the originators of the airplane spin." Photo evidence and footage as far back as the early twenties and thirties show Charlotte Oelschlägel and her husband Curt Neumann as well as Howard Nicholson and Freda Whitaker performing the 'airplane spin' and 'whirligig'. While they are not the same as a headbanger, as you can see there are certainly strong similarities.

Where did the bounce spin really get its start? A hotel skating show in Chicago or at the Casa Carioca in Germany? A Vaudeville table top roller skating act? St. Moritz? Somewhere else entirely? I am not convinced it is a mystery that anyone can solve with absolute certainty. However, pieced together these scattered clues provide the ingredients for one of the most thrilling elements on pairs skating's menu. A recipe for disaster, if you will.

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 Shackled Schramm's

Photo courtesy Joseph Butchko Collection, an acquisition of the Skate Guard Archive

"You love the audience and the applause." - Ray Schramm

Born in North Dakota and raised in Minnesota, Ray and Roy Schramm were about as unique as they come in the figure skating world. The twin brothers learned to skate on a pond in their backyard and at the age of eighteen joined the Ice Follies. The November 29, 1947 edition of Billboard magazine described their act: "Among the newcomers, the Schramm twins (Ray and Roy) are outstanding with a novel duo routine with ankles and wrists shackled to one another."

Principal skaters Ray and Roy became known as The Shackled Schramm's for their unusual act chained together called Shackled Shadows. Other show skaters attempted to duplicate their act, and it just didn't work out the same. I will say that Klimova and Ponomarenko's "Captives Of Love" program with wrists shackled together was quite well done... but again, not really the same thing. Think about how hard that would be for a minute. You would not want to be catching a toe pick, that's for sure! The Schramm twins also made a foursome with another set of twins - Joanne and Joyce Scotvold - on the tour.

After serving in World War II, Ray Schramm returned to the Ice Follies where he met and married his wife Nadine Thompson. Ray and Nadine continued their professional careers performing in hotel ice shows and television specials until 1953. The following year, they bought their first ice rink in Mill Valley then moved to facilities in San Anselmo, Corte Madera and Marin. Roy and his wife April Schramm formed a professional pairs team and developed The Skating Schramm's Ice Show, performing a ten week gig on the E.K. Fernandez circuit in Hawaii as well as in Hollywood and at the Pacific National Exhibition in Vancouver, British Columbia. They also appeared on the California skating television show The Frosty Frolics in the fifties. In case you hadn't guessed it, Allen Schramm, the immensely creative choreographer and professional skater, is indeed Ray Schramm's son. Creativity clearly ran in the family.

Do you know what was even cooler about The Shackled Schramm's though? When the twins retired from touring, their next door neighbours were a pair of seven year old twins named Vicki and Judi Denton. At Ray's Raydine School Of Skating, the older twins worked with the younger twins for ten years and helped prepare them for their own professional careers with Ice Follies.

Photo courtesy "The National Ice Skating Guide"

Between touring productions like Holiday On Ice, the Ice Follies and Ice Capades, countless hotel shows and the British ice pantomimes, so many immensely creative skaters were able to carve out bona fide careers for themselves as professional skaters in the twentieth century. These two brothers from America's midwest had perhaps one of the most unique concepts going in their era. Audiences loved it then as much as we all can appreciate it now!

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 Outstanding Ogilvies

A. Raclare Kanal photos; Courtesy Jaya Kanal's It Figures! blog

Joan Astley Thompson was born in British Ceylon, a colony which no longer exists.The daughter of a British investment banker, she travelled a great deal in her youth and attended schools in Colombo and Calcutta before moving with her family to Great Britain. It was at the Queen's Ice Skating Club in London that Robert Ogilvie, a talented student of eminent Swiss coach Jacques Gerschwiler, met Joan. As was the case with so many at the time, World War II put a wrench in their skating development.

According to an article in the November/December 2012 edition of the Professional Skaters Association's magazine, "on September 6, 1940, Bob reported for training as an X-ray technician at the Royal Army Medical College in London. The college was about a half a mile down the Thames River from Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament and about one hundred yards from the 'Ice Club'. On the second night of his stay, the Germans started the 'blitz' by dropping a bomb on the Ice Club, destroying the building, which was never rebuilt. After a period of intense attacks, bombing continued spasmodically during his stay. Fortunately, the Queen's Ice Club near Hyde Park was below ground and continued to function throughout the War both as a rink and air raid shelter. Regrettably, one of the Queens Ice Club professionals, Walter Gregory, the inventor of the Rhumba, joined the Royal Air Force and was killed while fighting a German attack. Mr. Ogilvie spent about eighteen months working in a large army hospital before being sent out to Singapore, Malaya, which fell to the Japanese a few months later. Thus, Bob spent the remaining three and a half years of the war as a POW. Detention was very difficult on Mr. Ogilvie as the Japanese did not give the prisoners their Red Cross parcels and restricted daily rations to the volume of dry rice that would fit in the palm of your hand. 'At one point,' said Nigel Ogilvie, Bob's son, 'the medical officers concluded that eating food with maggots was okay because they added some protein value.' In a camp where almost 100% of the POW's had malaria and nearly 30% died, Bob credited his guardian angels for protecting him although in the end he did come down with beriberi (vitamin deficiency)." Meanwhile in England, Joan worked as an operating room nurse at St. Mary's Hospital and as an ambulance driver during The Blitz. The carefree days of figure skating must have seemed so far away for the war torn lovers but when Robert was liberated from the POW Camp in October 1945, the couple reunited determined to pursue their passion for the sport together. Both passed their Gold tests and Robert became certified as a judge.

Two years later, the on and off ice couple made their debut as a pairs team on the international stage at the European Championships in Prague. They finished an impressive fourth ahead of the sibling team of Jennifer and John Nicks. However, after marching in the opening ceremonies of the 1948 Winter Olympic Games in St. Moritz, they were cut from the British team in favour of the Nicks' and another sibling team (Winnie and Dennis Silverthorne) due to an excess of entries. Instead, they were sent to the 1948 World Figure Skating Championships in Davos where they finished a disappointing twelfth place of the fourteen teams competing.

Joan and Robert Ogilvie performing in "Suenos de Viena" at the Teatro Espanol in Barcelona, Spain in 1949. Photo courtesy "The Skater" magazine.

Joan and Robert married the same year and went on to an impressive professional career that saw them join touring productions in Belgium, Germany, Spain, Northern Africa and France before coming to America and skating at the Conrad Hilton Hotel. They then embarked on a coaching career in California, working first at Frank Zamboni's rink and then with the St. Paul Figure Skating Club in Minnesota. In 1957, they were hired as choreographers by the St. Paul Summer Pops Concert Committee to help revive the city's failing Summer Pops concert series by adding figure skating presentations to the mix. According to the September 23, 1957 edition of The Billboard, the Ogilvie's story was featured extensively in local media at the time in an attempt to draw skating fans to the events: "Feature stories included experiences of the Ogilvie's with the 1948 British Olympic skating team, traveling the international ice skating show circuit starting in 1949, and their work with 'wet' ice in Spain contrasted with the first-class ice sheet in the St. Paul auditorium."

The Ogilvie's moved from Minnesota to Maryland in 1959, where they established themselves as two of Baltimore's top coaches. A May 3, 2006 article in The Baltimore Messenger noted that in the Maryland city, "the Ogilvie's organized a popular, competitive, family-oriented ice club and trained students to achieve skating's gold level, the 'black-belt' equivalent for the sport." Robert Ogilvie patented the Ogilvie Blade Gauge and penned several books on figure skating including the USFSA's 1968 Basic Skills Program book, "Competitive Figure Skating: A Parent's Guide" in 1985 and "Handbook Of New Era Figures" for the Professional Skaters Guild Of America. In talking about school figures in his 1968 book, I think you'll find this expert coach's musings on scribes particularly on point:

For their outstanding contributions as coaches in America, both Robert and Joan Ogilvie were bestowed honorary lifetime memberships with the Professional Skaters Association. Joan retired from coaching in 1998 and enjoyed growing roses and breeding Siamese cats until suffering a fall in her Rodgers Forge, Maryland home in May 2003 and passing away in St. Joseph Medical Center at the age of eighty two. Robert passed away on November 18, 2013 at the age of ninety seven. In a January 23, 2014 article in The Baltimore Sun, former student Brienne Teske noted that "'He was very strict and he really ran a tight ship. He expected complete respect... We were scared of him because when he got angry, he scared you. You were a little girl, and there was this gentleman with a strong, deep voice and a British accent. But you respected him and you did what you were told. As you got older, you knew that his bark was certainly much louder than his bite, that he was a wonderful person and there was really nothing to be afraid of.' Robert Ogilvie once videotaped one of Fiske's struggling skaters, went home, studied the tape, typed up a report and presented it to Fiske, the student and the student's parents. The student soon landed that problematic jump. 'He loved it,' Fiske remembered. 'That was what he loved to do: analyze.'"

From their World War II experiences to Olympic disappointment, The Ogilvie's certainly endured their fair share of heartbreaking moments. Yet, the couple persevered and drew from their experiences in teaching many future coaches the same kind of life lessons they drew from themselves. Skating owes them a great debt.

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.

Skating On The Tivoli Circuit

Australia's figure skating history is just rife with fascinating stories. One that is far too often overlooked is the series of Down Under ice theatre shows in the fifties and sixties starring Sydney born ice show star Pat Gregory. Gregory was a precocious young skater who didn't really have much of an 'amateur' career but made a name for herself as a professional skater in England in the late forties and early fifties skating alongside Cecilia Colledge and Barbara Ann Scott in Tom Arnold's lavish ice pantomimes. When she returned to her home country, she starred in scaled down versions based on Arnold's shows such as "Rose Marie On Ice" and "Puss And Boots On Ice" on the The Tivoli Circuit.  

The Tivoli Circuit was first established in the late nineteenth century by a British music hall comedian named Harry Rickards. The premise was to bring a variety of different stage shows on tour to Australian theatres. The touring operation exchanged hands a few times but retained its popularity for over half a century. Its home base was the former Grand Opera House in Sydney which was renamed as the New Tivoli Theatre in 1932 and that venue is precisely where the majority of Gregory's skating shows flourished in the fifties and sixties. These shows did however go on tour to great acclaim as The Tivoli Circuit included stops at theatres in Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane and Kalgoorlie where makeshift ice was set up on stages to accommodate the productions.

The January 1962 touring show "Ice Follies Of 1962" of course starred Gregory and featured an international skating cast of sixteen as well as a sixteen member off-ice stage ballet including Rank Berry, Jodie Gray, Bill Christopher, Harvey Webber, Howard Hardin, Wim De Jong, Joe Chisholm, The Trappinos, Fay Melody and Dorothy Dee. The tour was billed by The Sydney Morning Herald as "2 big shows on ice! On stage! on ice!" 

Interestingly, Pat Gregory was friends with another Australian skater who turned professional in her teens named Pat Argue. Argue's professional career also started in Europe (with the encouragement of Gregory) and the shows on The Tivoli Circuit shows saw the old pals come full circle and cross paths again, as evidenced in this August 2008 interview from Limelighters Newsletter: "On return to Australia (Argue was) influenced to go overseas by Pat's good friends Pat Gregory and Hal Downy. As Pat puts it - 'Off we sailed to the UK and arrived with 10 pounds. We auditioned in London and luckily were offered a tour in White Horse Inn On Ice - a Moss Empire No. 1 tour. Great experience, we just loved the English digs and the landladies were truly a breed of their own. We left White Horse Inn at Nottingham and flew to Gothenburg, Sweden to join Holiday on Ice with Sonja Henie'. Pat and Graham spent 3 years touring Europe and then on to South Africa for 6 months. Pat came home expecting her first baby and Graham went to South America to fulfil his contract, arriving back in Australia 6 weeks before the birth of their first son, Greg. They settled into a home in Elwood and Graham started a transport company. They appeared in live Ice Show broadcasts for the ABC. From 1966 on, Pat performed in shows at the Lido, Her Majesty’s and Frosty Frolics and Ecstasy on Ice at the Tivoli."

By the late sixties, The Tivoli Circuit wasn't thriving like it used to be and Pat Gregory and her husband turned their attention to staging their own shows on a portable ice rink they owned in Australia and South Asia.

The flurry of excitement the Tivoli ice shows created across Australia was something that surely inspired many Australians to take to the ice and although Pat Gregory may not be a name that most skating fans in North America are familiar with, her stardom in Down Under was unquestionable. Of the influence of Gregory and her Tivoli shows, Australian ice skating historian Ross Carpenter wrote "Perhaps it was Bunty Turner of The Weekly who summed it up best: 'Elvis Presley toasted Pat Gregory in champagne. She was photographed with three young kids called the Bee Gees. Royalty and cabinet ministers and movie stars once called backstage to offer congratulations.' One of 22 inaugural inductees to Ice Skating Australia's Hall of Fame in August 2004. In December 1997, she was nominated as one of 65 leading Australian sports people for the Sports Australia Hall of Fame." A toast? All the more reason to break out the bubbly!

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.

From Titanic To Trump: High Society Skating In New York

Prussian born hotelier George C. Boldt once told his maitre d' Oscar Tschirky, "We must make this hotel a haven for the well-to-do. Pad on the luxury and ease of living. There are always enough people willing to pay for these privileges. Just give them the chance. Make the Waldorf so convenient and comfortable they will never go to another place." Under Boldt's management, New York City's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel blossomed into THE place for the upper crust of high society to be seen and doted on when visiting 'The Big Apple'. The opulent design included tapestries, draperies and vases imported from Europe and the hotel also introduced a new dining luxury to its visitors known as room service. One of the other features of the lavish space was its rooftop garden that was imagined by Boldt's cousin and one time co-manager John Jacob Astor IV, who perished in the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.

When the rooftop garden was installed in the hotel, it was so popular a dining spot in the summer and in the winter of 1917 that it was turned into - you guessed it - a skyscraper skating rink known as the Starlight Roof. The elite of New York and well-to-do hotel guests purchased admission tickets and enjoyed private skating parties with one of the best views around and even formed their own organization 'of ice skating enthusiasts' called the Waldorf-Astoria Roof Club.

Unfortunately, with refrigeration methods as they were the Roof Club didn't last. There were constantly issues with the ice melting. The January 4, 1917 edition of the New York Herald notes that "Mrs. Harvey Patterson invited a host of young people to go to the Waldorf-Astoria roof garden yesterday to skate, but the artificial ice, although it had been frozen the second time during the day, was too moist, so her guests danced instead." The March 28, 1917 edition of the New York Herald recalled one of the final rooftop skating parties of that year's season: "Members of the Waldorf-Astoria Roof Club, an organization of ice skating enthusiasts, have been invited by the management of the hotel to a skating party and contest Saturday night. The rink, which has been a popular gathering place for lovers of the winter sport, will have its last public session Saturday afternoon. The club will be guests in the evening of Mr. George C. Boldt, Jr. They will be entertained in the rink and skating will be followed by dancing in the sun parlor. Mrs. Boldt has offered a cup as a prize for the best skater, and Mrs. Alpheus P. Riker will present a cup to the best waltzer on skates. Mr. Walter Jarvis, the roof manager, will present another cup in a contest to be announced later."

Skaters in Central Park long before the Wollman Memorial Rink

In 1929, the original Waldorf-Astoria Hotel would be torn down and its property sold to the developers of the Empire State Building and two years later, a second Waldorf-Astoria was opened on Park Avenue. The hotel's connection to New York City skating history wouldn't end with the demolition of the Starlight Roof. According to Gwenda Blair's book "Donald Trump: Master Apprentice", the Wollman Memorial Rink opened in Central Park's southeast corner "was a gift from Kate Wollman, an 80-year old banking heiress who lived in the Waldorf-Astoria tower and had never been on a pair of skates." Her donation of six hundred thousand dollars to get the Wollman Rink started made an important contribution to skating history that lives on today under the name Trump Central Park Wollman Rink. Don't take that as a personal endorsement. I don't care for the angry man with the orange pancake make-up any more than you do.

That said, from John Jacob Astor IV and George C. Boldt to Kate Wollman to (as much as it pains me to say it) Donald Trump, generations of New York's upper crust have more than done their part to keep skating alive in the city. Whether or not a skating reality show on ice where Trump tells skaters who cheat their jump landings that "they're fired" is next remains to be seen. Let us just cross our fingers and toes he doesn't end up with a more important job.

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 Guiding Light: How The Girl Guides Introduced Generations To Skating

Much like the history of figure skating, the history of the Girl Guide and Girl Scout movement is far from linear. No one smashed down a gavel and said "this is how we are going to do this in every country in the world starting right now". That is simply not how history usually works. Interestingly though, both figure skating and the scouting movement faced the exact same issue during the Victorian and Edwardian eras: females wanting to take part in take part in 'male activities'. Heaven forbid, right? In this day and age, if your child wants to learn to skate, you sign them up for CanSkate, Skate UK's Basic Skills Programme or your country's alternative, right? What you may not know is that back in the early twentieth century in particular, many young women got their first introduction to figure skating when they joined various incarnations of the Girl Guide and Girl Scout programs... and that is something that continues to this very day.

Achievement in the Girl Guide and Girl Scout programs has always been been measured by the completion of badges in a diverse array of areas. Skating was introduced to young women via - drum roll please - the Skater badge. In Great Britain, the badge was first introduced in the early twenties and evolved over the years as new syllabuses and badge designs were introduced in 1931, 1957 and 1978.

The 1933 syllabus for the Skater badge in Great Britain

Curiously, the popularity of the Skater badge in England waned during a high point in British skating history. It was discontinued in 1983, one year before Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean won Olympic gold with their still unmatched "Bolero" in Sarajevo. Liz Rimmer, an expert on the history of the Girl Guides and Girl Scouts in the UK, explained to me that "after 1983, there was a Sportswoman badge which skating would have come under with a vague syllabus for 'Individual' sports requiring the Guide to participate regularly and show progress by means of awards in their chosen sport." Over the years the Skater badge was in existence in Britain, the requirements evolved from the 1925 requirements of skating forwards and backwards unaided, performing inside and outside edges on both feet and executing the Dutch Roll to requiring skaters to be able to demonstrate basic school figures. By the thirties, the requirements were changed to note that "a holder of the Bronze Medal for Compulsory Figures (Ice or Rollers) of the National Skating Association of Great Britain qualifies for the badge provided that she passes clause 5."  In case you're wondering, 'clause 5' required skaters to be able to explain outdoor ice safety.

Circa 1914, The Rosebuds offered Canadian youngsters between the ages of eight and eleven their first taste of the guiding movement and by 1924, the Skater badge was introduced here in Canada as part of the Ranger program, where it still remains part of the Brownie and Girl Guide programs today.
Take a look at the 1924 requirements below:

Things have changed drastically over the years, with considerably more options for young women than the British program. School figures, edges and three turns were consistently part of the syllabus early in the game but as early as 1948, you could earn the badge even if you weren't a figure skater by playing "a game of hockey or equivalent skating game."

The 1948 syllabus for the Skater badge in Canada 

By 1956, skaters could be awarded the badge if they had passed "the 1st Test (Bronze Medal) of the Canadian Figure Skating Association." Requirements remained similar for decades until 1995, when the Skater badge was incorporated into a wider 'Winter Adventures' syllabus requiring the young women to "dress properly to go outside in winter, know how to prevent and deal with frostbite, skin on cold metal, falling through ice, hypothermia, go for a winter adventure with a group and prepare and eat a winter snack outdoors" then demonstrate skill in either skating, skiing, snowshoeing or building an outdoor winter shelter. By 2005, the Skater badge was back in full swing in a standalone format designed to accommodate recreational ice skaters along with figure and speed skaters, hockey players and roller skaters.

I have to offer a huge appreciation to both Ms. Rimmer and Katey Watson, the Archivist at the Girl Guides Of Canada, Ontario Council, for their amazing help in providing me with copies of the badge requirements over the years and background information about how the Skater badge has evolved. The Guiding program certainly deserves our respect for holding a very overlooked place in 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.