An Arcane Discipline

It is one of the oddest sights in sport. Tracing the circumference of perfect circles on the ice, first forward then backward on one foot, the skater moves around a small patch of the rink. Then, after the ice chips have been swept clear, the judges, who have been watching closely, scurry onto the ice. They bend over to examine the skate lines cut into the frozen expanse.

The compulsory-figures competition is taking place. It is the vestige of a time when figure skating was the art of precise etching on the ice--when skaters traced elaborate figures like a Maltese cross or even signed their names in script with their blades. The school-figures test today is to skaters what conjugating verbs is to a language student. "It can be maddening," says Dorothy Hamill, who works constantly to improve her figures, "but when you do it right, there is a certain ordered, satisfying symmetry."

The purpose is to see how much control a skater has, how well he or she executes the fundamental techniques of the sport. In competition, three figures are used (they are often the counter, paragraph bracket and paragraph loop--see diagram). Each skater performs alone on the ice. Each may have some reference point in the rink--a pillar or sign--to help line up the dimensions of the figure, but the only reliable road maps are images programmed into sinew and synapses through years of etching the pattern in outlines of frost.

Not surprisingly, the drill before a panel of judges can be excruciatingly tense. Take the demands of the paragraph loop, for instance. The maneuver begins with the competitor pushing off, moving backward on the outside edge of the right skate. In that position, moving slowly, the skater traces half a circle leading into a loop, gliding out to complete a full circle. He then changes to the inside blade edge and carves a second circle and loop.

Both circles must be the same size (about 5 or 6 ft. in diameter), they must be lined up together, and the loops must be on the same axis. And with all that, the job has only begun. Back at the beginning, the skater shifts to the left skate and goes over the same pattern (still skating backward), this time starting on the inside and changing to the outside edge. The exercise is repeated three times on each foot. The ultimate goal--a single, thin track left on the ice.

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