Figures in Chicago

What a Picasso abstraction is to a billboard, figure skating is to what most people do when they exercise on ice. Half sport, half art, it requires a course of training feasible only because figure skaters begin their vocation soon after leaving the cradle. When Robin Huntingdon Lee became U. S. champion at the age of 15, in 1935, he was no prodigy but a veteran of eight years' arduous training. Last week Robin Lee, Maribel Vinson, Erie Reiter and the rest of the small company of U. S. figure skating virtuosos were at Chicago to whirl, spin and leap for U. S. championships on the dyed blue ice of the Chicago Arena. Most noteworthy member of the sophisticated crowd that watched them was Negro Frank Haskins, retired petty naval officer.

Living on a Government pension, Mr. Haskins has concentrated on the art of watching fancy skating, made himself its No. 1 U. S. exponent by traveling to figure skating meets all over the country.

At a figure skating championship, the hardest figuring is done by the judges. For contestants, the event falls into two divisions, school and free figures. School figures are six standard maneuvers selected by lot from the 42 that all able figure skaters have at their toe-tips. They count two-thirds of a contestant's total score. Free figures, improvisations selected by the contestants, count one-third. Contestants are judged partly on how closely the patterns made by their skates on the ice match the classic figures they attempt to execute, partly on the patterns made by their bodies moving through the air. Each skater does his figure three times, trying to superimpose each set of skate tracks on the last. To decide a close event, judges sometimes get down on their hands and knees to study the scratches on the ice.

Last week the judges scrutinized the ice most closely when Lee and Reiter were skating for the men's singles championship. In the school figures. Lee had an edge but it was so slight that Reiter, much improved since last year, had a fine chance to catch up the next night. The chance was improved when Lee, starting his free figures with double Salchow jumps (two revolutions in the air) twisted his left knee so badly that, through the rest of his five-minute routine, he had to switch from his left foot, on which he usually takes off, to his right. He made the change so expertly that no one guessed he was hurt till he limped off the rink when the music stopped. When Reiter finished, his free figures were a few points better than Lee's but Lee's lead the day before was still enough to save the title for him, 977.09 points to Reiter's 964.92. Perennial champion of U. S. women figure skaters is Maribel Vinson, who has won the title every year since 1928 except 1934 when she went abroad, placed fifth in the world's championship. Last week at Chicago, chic, brown-haired, 25-year-old Skater Vinson. who also rides, swims, sculls and writes ably on, women's sports for the New York Times, won her title for the ninth time, took the pairs title for the fourth with her partner, George Edward Bellows Hill of Boston.

By becoming U. S. women's figure skating champion for the ninth time last week, Maribel Vinson by no means received rating as the finest woman figure skater in the world. That title still belongs to blonde Sonja Henie of Norway who, on leave from Twentieth Century-Fox studios in Hollywood before beginning her second cinema of the year, last week packed New York's Madison Square Garden for a professional exhibition. Finest male skater in the world is swart Karl Schafer of Vienna, Olympic champion in 1932 and 1936, who arrived in the U. S. last fortnight not to compete in the National Championships, but to appear in New York's Charity Ice Carnivals next month.

Last week, Skater Schafer, whose side lines are swimming (Austrian Olympic team in 1928) and leading his own dance orchestra, astounded the small world of figure skaters by announcing that he too would become a professional. Married last month to Viennese Christa Engelmann. he said his decision to capitalize his talent was occasioned, like that of Tennist Fred Perry's last autumn, principally by the necessity of supporting his wife, hastened when a controversy between the International Skating Union and the Austrian Skating Association as to how to divide receipts from his performances delayed sanctioning him to give them. Said he : "I work and work with my legs for the associations to make money. . . . Now I must make some money too. . . ." Admirers of Skater Schafer wondered whether he would follow Skater Henie to Hollywood.

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