Learn all about the fascinating world of figure skating history with Skate Guard Blog.
Explore a treasure trove of articles on the history of figure skating, highlighting Olympic Medallists, World and National Champions and dazzling competitions, shows and tours. Written by former skater and judge Ryan Stevens, Skate Guard Blog also offers intriguing insights into the evolution of the sport over the decades. Delve into Stevens' five books for even more riveting stories and information about the history of everyone's favourite winter Olympic sport.
Exciting news! Today is the official launch of my new book, Sequins, Scandals & Salchows: Figure Skating in the 1980s. Get ready to dive into the fascinating and fabulous world of figure skating in the 80s!
Sequins, Scandals and Salchows: Figure Skating in the 1980s is an extraordinary history of a decade when figure skating was the talk of the town and its stars were household names.
This one-of-a-kind book expands far beyond iconic moments like Torvill and Dean's Bolero and The Battle of The Brians, exploring intriguing connections between figure skating and real-world events that shaped the decade, including The AIDS Pandemic, The Cold War and The Fall of The Berlin Wall.
Brimming with fascinating facts and eye-opening insights, the book chronologically highlights the competitions, shows and skaters that made figure skating everyone's favourite winter sport.
A must-have collector's edition for any knowledgeable fan of the sport who came of age in the 80s - or wishes they did.
Why wait? Order the book now!
Winner of Best Sports Book - 2024 Firebird Book Awards
"A journey through one of the most exciting decades in figure skating history when the sport was at the height of its popularity and its stars were true icons... An essential read." - Suzie Housley, Midwest Book Review
"Ryan captures the era with a colorful account of a decade of figure skating... full of conflict, sadness and excess, one that changed history for all of us. The details and research are off the charts. Amazing." - Randy Gardner, World Pairs Skating Champion, 2-time Olympian
"Meticulously researched, highly compelling, entertaining, memorable and significant... Ryan Stevens is clever, acerbic, witty, compassionate, positive, and realistic. He loves and understands figure skating and he writes really, really well. This is a wonderfully readable and historically important book." - Phillippa Cranston Baran, author of "Toller Cranston: Ice, Paint, Passion
"Whenever I need to learn anything about figure skating history... Ryan Stevens is my go to guy. He even knows stuff about Tai & Randy that I didn't know!" - Tai Babilonia, World Pairs Skating Champion, 2-time Olympian
"I can't imagine the amount of work... This book drags out pieces of history that will really grab people's attention." - Matteo Morelli, This Week In Skating podcast
"Exceptionally well constructed... A triumph... I'm now so obsessed with 80s skating that I've resorted to grainy videos online and am loving every minute, after loving every page of Stevens' book. Very highly recommended."- Asher Syed, Readers' Favorite
Sequins, Scandals & Salchows: Figure Skating in the 1980s is available for pre-order in print and eBook editions where books are sold. The book will be released on September 3, 2024.
Born March 27, 1900, in Brooklands, a suburb of Greater Manchester, England, John 'Jack' Ferguson Page was the only child of Frank Ferguson Page and Ellen 'Nellie' Annie Chate. He grew up wanting for nothing at a posh home at Beechthorpe, St. Margaret's Road in Dunham Massey, Altrincham, his needs attended to by a live-in cook, housemaid and nursemaid. His father, a former bank clerk, was a very successful stockbroker and his grandfather, also named John Page, was the superintendent of a Manchester market.
Photo courtesy "Skating World" magazine
When Jack was eleven, he was shipped off to a boarding school, St. Chad's Preparatory School for Boys Aged 7-14, in Prestatyn, North Wales. Afterwards, he studied chemistry for a time. At the age of eighteen in May of 1918, he enlisted in the Royal Air Force. It wasn't until after the Great War that he took up figure skating at the Manchester Ice Palace, which just happened to be the only indoor ice rink that was operational in England until the late in the roaring twenties. Splitting his training time between his home rink and the popular skating resorts in St. Moritz, Switzerland, he was taught by Bernard Adams. Theresa Weld Blanchard and Nathaniel Niles first saw him skate in 1920 when they visited Manchester after the Summer Olympics in Antwerp. "Even at this time he seemed most ambitious and showed much promise," they recalled seven years later.
Jack won the British title in 1922 on his first try, defeating his Manchester training mate Ethel Muckelt. The following year, he defended his title and teamed up with Ethel to take the pairs crown. In the years that followed, Jack became an NSA Gold Medallist and won an astonishing total of eleven British men's titles and nine consecutive British pairs titles with Ethel.
Ethel Muckelt and Jack Page. Photo courtesy Bibliothèque nationale de France.
Jack's only loss in ten years of competing at the British Championships came in 1933, when he and Ethel lost the British pairs crown to Mollie Phillips and Rodney Murdoch. Even to this day, no other man or pairs team has matched Jack's records in singles and pairs at the British Championships.
A. Proctor Burman, Kathleen Lovett, Kathleen Shaw, Ethel Muckelt and Jack Page in 1928
Internationally, Jack's record was equally as impressive. He won the first international competition he entered, the men's senior non-championship class at the 1923 World Championships in Vienna, defeating eight other skaters from Austria, Germany Czechoslovakia and Finland. With Ethel, he claimed the silver medal in the pairs event at the 1924 World Championships in Manchester, and in 1926 he took the bronze medal in the men's event at the World Championships in Berlin. He placed in the top ten in both singles and pairs at both the 1924 and 1928 Winter Olympics and amassed top six finishes in singles or pairs in every European and World Championships he entered from 1924 to 1929. Along the way, he defeated an impressive roster of skaters, including Olympic Medallists Martin Stixrud, Georges Gautschi, Bud Wilson, Sherwin Badger and Robert van Zeebroeck. In 1930, Herbert Ramon Yglesias remarked, "Mr. J.F. Page, not only by his actual victories but in his placings above many good Continental skaters, has carried English skating a real step forward. He has set a standard that will need much effort to keep up." Others were not so kind in their analysis of Jack's skating. In a review of the 1928 Winter Olympics penned for "Skating" magazine, Joel B. Liberman noted his strong figures, spread eagle and dance steps but criticized the "complete absence of spins and a scarcity of jumps."
Some felt Jack was robbed at the 1927 World Championships in Davos. T.D. Richardson recalled, "He was an extremely fine school figure-skater, but he had absolutely no musical ear at all - the sort of man who has to be told to stand up when the National Anthem is being played. While this was undoubtedly a great handicap he was, on the whole, badly treated by Continental and World judges. I had him first on my card at Davos in 1927, when he was the only skater who did not fall at least once. Most of them, including the winner, were tumbling about in the high wind and driving snow. But nothing could disturb Jack Page, and as Böckl the winner himself said afterwards: 'If ever anyone deserved the title Jack did so on that occasion'."
At the 1928 World Championships in London, Jack skated before King George V and Queen Mary of Teck. After the competition, a group of skaters were invited to the Royal Box to be presented to Their Majesties. The King congratulated Jack and asked him how long he had been skating. When he told the King he'd only started after the War, the King expressed surprise and said thoughtfully, "That is very wonderful." At those same World Championships, Jack joined forces with three of the world's top skaters - Sonja Henie, Maribel Vinson and Willy Böckl - to demonstrate fours skating to the enthusiastic British crowd.
Top: Mr. G. Fuerst, Nancy Beard, Thomas Harris, Mrs. Maurice Harris and Jack Page at the Park Lane Hallowe'en Ice Carnival in 1929. Bottom: Jack Page, Lady Maude Hoare and Mrs. Slesinger at the Park Lane Hallowe'en Ice Carnival in 1929. Jack won best men's costume!
By the time Jack and Ethel retired from competition in 1933, they had already made a lasting impression on future generations of British skaters. Rosemarie Stewart recalled, "We last saw [Muckelt and Page] skate in England in 1932 at the Imperial Ice Club Purley. Their excellent program consisted almost entirely of spirals, dance steps, and field figures, with only one or two simple jumps, such as the flying-three, and about two spins. Nevertheless, their program was very successful. From watching them, incidentally, Robert Dench learned how to put together a program."
In his book "Our Skating Heritage", historian Dennis Bird recalled, "He had a sense of humour... He evidently had a low opinion of the judging in championships, and after winning his last British title he sent a letter to the 'Skating Times' pointing out that the judges did not notice that he skated one figure twice on the left foot, instead of once on each foot as required by the rules. 'I think,' he wrote, 'This is the first time I have won a Figure Skating Championship and have been marked for a figure which I did not skate.'"
In June of 1932, Jack married fellow skater Leonie Wilson at Christchurch, Denton. Following in the footsteps of his father, he also became a stock broker, opening his own firm at St. Ann's Square called J. Ferguson Page and Company. He remained active within the National Skating Association by serving as a national and international judge. In 1937, he judged the pairs event at the World Championships. As of 1939, Jack and Leonie lived at Sunny Corner, Planetree Road, Hale, Cheshire.
Jack survived World War II but was found dead in his office of apparent coal gas poisoning in Manchester on Valentine's Day, 1947. He was forty-six years old. An inquest into his death resulted in "a verdict of suicide while the balance of his mind was disturbed." The February 18, 1947 issue of "The Guardian" reported, "Mrs. Leonie Page told the city coroner... that last November when she told her husband she contemplated divorce proceedings, he left the house. He had been to see her many times since, and on every occasion had begged for a reconciliation. When he told her he would take his life if she did not stop the divorce proceedings, she said it was a lot of nonsense and he would feel better after his holiday in Switzerland. When he returned however, he seemed to be of the same mind. His last call at the house was on the day of his death." The fortune he left his wife would be equivalent to over one and a half million dollars in today's currency.
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 "Jackson Haines: The Skating King" and pre-ordering "Sequins, Scandals & Salchows: Figure Skating in the 1980s", which will be released this fall where books are sold: https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.
Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sound Of Silence" topped the music charts, Adam West and Burt Ward made their television debut as Batman and Robin and President Lyndon Johnson gave his first State of the Union Address. These were the events that happened in the weeks leading up to the 1966 U.S. Figure Skating Championships, held at Iceland, the St. Moritz Ice Skating Club's rink, in Berkeley, California from January 26 to 29, 1966. Let's take a look back at all of the excitement!
Left to right: Atoy Wilson, Barrett Brown and Gary Palmer and Jimmy Disbrow. Photos courtesy "Skating" magazine.
Torrey Sun of the Broadmoor Skating Club won the novice men's free skate, but hampered by poor scores in figures was unable to grab one of the top three spots. Atoy Wilson made history as the first skater of colour to claim a U.S. title, expanding on his lead in figures to win the event in a three-two split over Kenneth Shelley. The bronze medal went to Denver's Douglas Berndt. Benjamin T. Wright recalled, "Much of [Atoy Wilson's] success can be attributed to his mother, Thelma, a strong supporter of all skaters and especially those of colour, a loyal friend to those she chose to honor with her friendship and a 'pillar' of skating in Southern California, whose untimely death in 1994 was mourned by all who knew her."
Dawn Glab
Twelve-year-old Dawn Glab of Paramount, California moved up from second after figures to claim the novice women's title but had only one first-place ordinal. All three of the junior pairs medallists skated almost as impressively as the seniors, but the gold narrowly went to Betty Jean Lewis and Richard Gilbert of Boston.
Left: Dolly Rodenhaugh and Thomas Lescinski. Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine Right: Janet Lynn in 1966.
In Silver Dance, Dolly Rodenhaugh and Thomas Lescinski of Pittsburgh defeated Barrett Brown and Gary Palmer in a three-two split of the judging panel. Sixteen-year-old John 'Misha' Petkevich of Great Falls, Montana defeated Jimmy Disbrow in another three-two judging panel split in the junior men's event. Though he fell early in his program, his dazzling free skating effort earned him unanimous first-place marks in that phase of the competition, as well as a standing ovation.
The junior women's podium. Photo courtesy "Peace And Love" by Janet Lynn.
Gail Newberry of the Broadmoor Skating Club held a slim lead over Janet Lynn after the school figures, but she was no match for Slavka Kohout's student when it was time for free skating. Lynn's winning performance included Axels in both directions and a triple Salchow. In her book "Peace And Love", Lynn recalled, "In the press room, a sportswriter told me I'd just won the junior national championship. I couldn't believe it. I burst into tears. It was such a surprise, because I'd been in competition for so many years already and never won a sectional title, let alone nationals... A judge, who must not have been watching too closely, stopped my dad in a hallway to say, 'Nice triple Axel your daughter did out there.'" THE PAIRS COMPETITION
The retirement of Vivian and Ronald Joseph meant that a new pair would be walking away with the Henry Wainwright Howe Memorial Trophy in 1966. Only three pairs vied for the title, and Seattle's Cynthia and Ron Kauffman, who were students of Ron Ludington, led the event from start to finish. The five judges were all in agreement on the order of placement of all three pairs. The silver went to Susie Berens and Roy Wagelein and the bronze to Paige Paulsen and Larry Dusich. "Skating" magazine described the Kauffmans winning free skate thusly: "These two presented free and athletic movement without sacrificing unison and control, grace and beauty without sacrificing strength and speed. During the beautiful 'mirror' sequence, the audience was absolutely silent, breaking into applause and cheers at the thrilling split double twist to the knee." THE ICE DANCE COMPETITION
Defending champions Kristin Fortune and Dennis Sveum stood atop the leaderboard after the compulsory dances - the American Waltz, Argentine Tango, Viennese Waltz and Kilian. The large field of twelve couples was whittled down to eight after the competition's initial round. Though Lorna Dyer and John Carrell offered Fortune and Sveum some stiff competition, they were unable to catch up to them in the free dance. Both of the top two teams used four different tempos in their programs and were coached by World Champion Jean Westwood. The bronze medal went to Buffalo's Susan and Stanley Urban.
Sandy Schwomeyer packing for the 1966 U.S. Championships. Photo courtesy Judy Sladky.
A young Judy Schwomeyer and James Sladky placed sixth in their first trip to Nationals, two spots behind her sister Sandy and her partner James Pennington. Judy Sladky recalled, "'66 was our very first. We got together on December 6th after I'd passed all of my tests. Jim's partner quit and my partner quit. We had skated a little bit of pairs in the summer and we really skated well together we thought. At that time, you didn't leave your partner. That was like a divorce. You did not do that! I said to Luddy, 'I quit! If people are going to be like this, I don't want to do it.' He said, 'Well, why don't you get your Gold Dances?' so I went out and took all four of them on the same day and passed them. As far as I know, it hadn't been done and if it had, it was a while ago and it certainly wasn't done by a fourteen-year-old girl. I said, 'Well, Luddy, why don't we see if Jim's available.' That was December and Easterns I think were in December too. Jim was in the midst of finals at Syracuse University so he sent me the dress from his old partner and wrote down the free dance on paper and I learned it from paper. He flew out after his finals and we skated maybe a week, two weeks and entered Easterns then Nationals." THE WOMEN'S COMPETITION
On the road to her third U.S. title, seventeen-year-old Peggy Fleming won every school figure, including the paragraph loop which had been something of a personal nemesis. Her winning free skate included two clean double Axels.
Photo courtesy Ingrid Hunnewell
Sixteen-year-old silver medallist Tina Noyes landed a double Axel of her own in the free skate, which was in combination with a double loop. She also performed a novel one-foot Axel/one-foot double Salchow/double Salchow sequence. Pamela Schneider of the Skating Club Of New York hung on to claim the bronze medal, despite losing out in the free skate to Sharon Bates of the host St. Moritz Club. THE MEN'S COMPETITION
Smoke Rise, New Jersey's Scotty Allen earned first place ordinals from three of the five judges in the school figures. However, his lead over Gary Visconti, who'd unseated him as U.S. Champion and defeated him at the North American Championships the year prior, was tenuous at best. In the free skate, Visconti fell early in his program but rebounded to skate the rest of his program cautiously but cleanly. Allen skated one of the best performances of his career, landing a triple Salchow and triple loop in addition to a host of double jumps. Though Allen managed to regain his national title from Visconti, it wasn't a 'runaway win' as again had only three first-place ordinals. Detroit's Tim Wood, who had been third after figures, disappointingly fell three times in his free skate. His errors allowed Billy Chapel of Colorado Springs to move up to third. Though Chapel fell on a double Axel, his energetic performance - which was heavy on showmanship - won over the crowd and earned him a standing ovation. Paul McGrath finished fifth, followed by Duane Maki, Richard Callaghan and Ronnie Frank.
Photo courtesy Ingrid Hunnewell
In his book "Falling For The Win", Gary Visconti recalled the competition thusly: "I was on the five-minute warm-up, the last group of five top male competitors. It was the most dreaded part of any competition for me, with the judges watching and the fans cheering every major move of their favorite skater. I had drawn second to last to perform; Scott Allen achieved the coveted spot of last. I remember my name announced and gliding out slowly to my starting position. It was calm now and there was dead silence. I looked up at the clock on the scoreboard and it was 12 midnight. I thought, I wish it was 12:05, and I would be finished. What a way to think! Well, that’s just how my performance went. I did not complete three of my major tricks, and each time I missed I had more 'juice,' more 'pizzazz,' more smiles, and more performance ... more audience connection. Funny how we try to wing it and cover up under pressure. It was a great performance, but one with too many errors. Scott won. Guess I gave it to him. It was a super life lesson for me and just what I needed! Second place felt like 20th place."
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 "Jackson Haines: The Skating King" and pre-ordering "Sequins, Scandals & Salchows: Figure Skating in the 1980s", which will be released this fall where books are sold: https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.
The Republic of Singapore, a sovereign city-state in Southeast Asia just one degree north of the Equator, is best known as a global financial hub. Its sensational skyscrapers and superb street food are as world-renowned as its Merlion and Marina Bay Sands resort. It was one of the last places I thought would have a rich skating history. Was I ever wrong!
Unsurprisingly for a port city with a tropical climate, Singapore's first exposure to skating wasn't on ice, but on rollers. When Singapore was under British Colonial rule in the late Victorian era, The Elite Skating Rink opened across from the Ice Works at the foot of Foot Canning. An advertisement in the July 2, 1890 issue of the "Daily Advertiser" captured the excitement captured the excitement generated by the rink. It read, "Skating! Skating!! That most fashionable of all exercises, recommended by the medical faculty, indulged in by the nobility. Strongly recommended to ladies... As everybody knows, the prettiest place in Singapore is the Elite Skating Rink." Roller skating's popularity continued well past the time of the Great War.
During World War II, several figure skaters spent time in Singapore while in service with the military. 1937 Canadian Champion in junior men's skating Peter Chance was a Sub-Lieutenant with the Royal Navy when Japan bombed the city. Mr. John Nicks, a World Champion in pairs skating, was stationed there for a time too.
In March of 1951, Singapore had its first exposure to figure skating, when the Scandinavian Ice Revue arrived to perform a charity show in aid of Singapore Boys' Town. The Revue had previously performed on tank ice in Scandinavia, Egypt, India and Hong Kong under the name Manhattan Ice Show. The cast included Winnie and Dennis Silverthorne and twelve-year-old Lydia Cloots, who joined the show in Cairo. The April 2, 1951 issue of "The Straits Times" raved, "A first-class show, it brings to Singapore a new kind of entertainment and the cast do everything on ice from badminton to cycling and from ballet to clowning. Inevitably it includes the Skaters' Waltz and the lovelies of the ballet, the international skating champions and the other members of the show really put it across. All of this is done on a stage frozen eight degrees below zero in a theatre where the temperature is around seventy eight degrees. And the result is amazing."
Holiday On Ice arrived in Singapore in April of 1954, installing ice at the Happy World Stadium amusement park. It wasn't an especially profitable venture for the tour, owing to a ticketing snafu. Four thousand members of the British Armed Forces and their families were offered discounted tickets, but far more than that number ended up showing up to see the show. Because the organizers agreed to give profits to the Armed Forces Welfare Association, Holiday On Ice didn't end up making a penny. In the years that followed, the tour returned and had considerably more success.
Pat Gregory. Photo courtesy National Library Of Australia.
So did Tivoli star Pat Gregory and her husband-manager Hal Downey. The Australian couple put together a company of sixteen performers embarked on a six-week tour of Hong Kong, Thailand, Japan and Singapore. Pat's show "Ice Follies" played to standing-room-only crowds at a nightclub called Goodwood in the summer of 1967.
The Ice Palace in Jurong. Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine.
Singapore's first permanent ice rink, the Ice Palace, opened on August 10, 1974, on Yuan Ching Road in Jurong. It was installed as part of a nine-million-dollar recreational complex and open from eight in the morning until midnight on weekdays and until two in the morning on weekends. Over one hundred and sixty thousand people skated at the rink in the first two months it was open. The rink's director, Lim Yeow Yeck, offered reduced rates for "schoolchildren and housewives" and tried to schedule public skating sessions and learn-to-skate classes around them.
The Ice Palace at Kallang Leisure Park opened a few months later on a site opposite the National Sports Stadium. This rink was managed by Thomas K.S. Tan. Tan also gave "first priority to school children" and arranged classes in figure skating and hockey. Soon after, the Lion City of Skating Club was founded. An article in the February 20, 1975 issue of "New Nation" stated, "The latest craze among Singaporeans trying to get away from the rat race atmosphere and to squeeze in a little fun and recreation is, undoubtedly, ice skating. It is hardly surprising that the local crowds are all converging on the two skating rinks. For one thing, there is a lack of recreational facilities for our over two million population. So any new outlet is more than welcome. For another, ice-skating is a very cooling sport. With the blazing sun for company almost all year round, it's a refreshing change to be at the ice-cold rink... Two problems, however, arise: Distances of the two rinks from the town centre and the high costs of learning to skate (both in terms of money and possible injuries)." The fear of "possible injuries" was something that the Singaporean press would not let go of. In the first year, the Jurong and Kallang Ice Palaces were open, dozens of articles showed in newspapers warning of the dangers of skating. One claimed that two hundred people were injured at these rinks every week - suffering everything from bumps and bruises to broken teeth and broken collarbones. These reporters might have come across as fear-mongering, but it's worth noting a later rink in Singapore made the unusual rule of requiring all skaters to wear gloves... but not helmets.
Figure skating exploded in the second year the Jurong and Kallang Ice Palaces were open. The President of the Lion City Skating Club, Dr. Dennis Hangchi, founded the Singapore Ice Skating Union and began communicating with American, Australian, Japanese and ISU officials about how to best set up the organization. The first skating competition in Singapore was held in January of 1975 at the Jurong rink. There was only one judge, an ISIA instructor named Nancy (Copeland) Ackerman. The winner was eight-year-old Sharon Tan, who had only been skating for five months. She went on to win become one of the country's top coaches in the nineties.
Singapore's first National Championships (then referred to as the 'first nation-wide ice skating Championship') were held in September of 1976 at the Kallang under the patronage of Chan Chee Seng, Senior Parliamentary Secretary to Minister For Social Affairs. The National Skating Union of Japan sent six judges to help with the event, including 1954 Japanese Champion Kazuo Ohashi. There were competitions in five classes: men's, women's, ice dancing and student's boys and girls. Sharon Tan, the youngest of five competitors, won the girl's class. She received instruction from a visiting coach from Canada named Linda Sawyer. The boy's winner was fourteen-year-old Alfred Alphonso, who was taught by Nancy Ackerman. The women's champion was thirteen-year-old Terri Hangchi and the dance champions were Dorothy Lau and Raymond Cheah. Cheah didn't start skating until he was twenty-one and, like Tan, went on to become a top coach in the nineties. The winner of the men's event was a flamboyant thirty-year-old named San Nah, who worked as a costume designer at a local nightclub. His self-choreographed program included a flip, Lutz, Russian split jump and flying camel spin.
Nancy Ackerman's contributions to Singapore's skating roots are really worth mentioning. She gave talks about the sport at the public library and showed films of skating which served as important teaching tools for people who had never been exposed to the sport before. USFSA President Charles A. DeMore was part of a group of American officials and judges visited Singapore in 1977. In "Skating" magazine, he remarked, "Mrs. Ackerman has done much to spark enthusiasm and interest in figure skating in Singapore. She uses the ISIA Alpha-Beta-Gamma program to teach the basic, elementary skating skills. As the skaters become more proficient and master that program, she continues with the USFSA test structure, beginning with the Preliminary and First Tests. When we found out about her program, Mrs. Ackerman, Dr. Hangchi and Mrs. Core asked if some of our judges would judge some Singapore skaters who had been working on their Preliminary Test. We realized the difficulties in arranging a test session on such short notice but we promised to try and conduct a demonstration test session. We had eleven American judges and one Canadian judge ready at the rink the next day. We were greeted by Mr. Bobby Yeo, Executive Director and General Manager of Jurong Ice Skating Centre, who was very happy that our judges would conduct the tests. We were able to make three panels, each consisted of three judges and a judge-in-charge, and the test session was underway. The judges were: Margaret Bergland, Elaine DeMore, Margaretta [Spence] Drake, Wilma Dressel, Ethel Garwood, Gladys Hirsch, Fannie Howard, Virginia LeFevre, Fred LeFevre, Delly McDaniel, Tom Monypenny and Nancy Meiss."
Just as Singapore's figure skating future couldn't look brighter, it all came crashing down. The Jurong rink closed down suddenly in July of 1977 and when the National Championships were to be held for the first time under ISU rules in January of 1978, San Nah (by this time President of the King City Figure Skating Club) led a boycott of the competition because he was unhappy with the rules. He complained, "We will not be able to express ourselves freely and will be tied to certain compulsory manoeuvres." Nah wanted the judging panel to be all-Japanese, as it was in 1976. Due to a lack of participants, the Championships were cancelled. Just three months later, the Kallang rink closed its doors too. The closure of both rinks was a shock to the public, but things hadn't been rosy behind the scenes. Both rinks had high overhead costs, low revenue and constant issues with machinery and equipment. The Jurong rink had suffered a loss of thirty thousand dollars a month. Ultimately, the Jurong rink became a supermarket and the Kallang rink reverted to a roller rink, disco and then a food court, bowling alley and shopping area.
Left: Sharon Tan. Right: Raymond Cheah.
For a decade, figure skating in Singapore died completely out. At the time, inline skating was becoming trendy and many skaters from the Jurong and Kallang rinks navigated to other rinks that catered to 'iceless skating'. All that changed when the Fuji Ice Palace Rink opened on June 15, 1989, on the former site of the Rex Theatre at Mackenzie Road. This drew over a thousand people a day in its first months.
Walt Disney's World On Ice performed at the rink in October of that year, starring World Champion Linda Fratianne. This rink also faced financial difficulties and closed in April of 1993.
Skaters at the Fuji Ice Palace
A new Fuji Ice Palace on the third floor of the Jurong Entertainment Centre opened shortly after and in 2001, the Kallang Leisure Park rink reopened after expensive refurbishments under the name Kallang Ice World. A new Singapore Ice Skating Association was formed in 2000 and the Skate Singapore competition was established. In 2001, the Tropical Blades Ice Skating Club was formed. The Junior Ice Skating Club and various University Skating Clubs followed, but things got tricky in 2008 when the Jurong Entertainment Centre was closed for redevelopment the same year the Singapore Ice Skating Association joined the ISU as a provisional member. They almost lost their status in 2010, because they'd promised the ISU they'd have an Olympic-sized rink in 2009.
Singapore's first Olympic-sized-rink, JCube in Jurong East Mall, didn't open until April of 2012. In the meantime, Singapore's National Championships had to be held three hundred kilometers away in a different country - Malaysia.
The first skaters from Singapore to compete internationally were Sarah Paw Si Ying and Anja Chong, in the 2008 Junior Grand Prix Series events in South Africa, Mexico and Great Britain. Sarah Paw Si Ying was Singapore's first competitor at the Four Continents Championships in 2010. After winning Singapore's figure skating title and acting as the country's first competitor at the World Junior Championships in Bulgaria in 2009, Anja Chong represented Malaysia as a speed skater and won three gold medals at the 2017 Southeast Games in Kuala Lumpur. At those Games, Yu Shuran won Singapore's first international figure skating title. That same year, she was one of the country's first participants in the Asian Winter Games. She placed an impressive sixth in a field of twenty-four. Behind the scenes, things weren't at all rosy. In 2020, Shuran opened up in an Instagram post about the physical abuse she suffered while training in China. She was beaten with a skate guard, kicked by her coach's toe pick and hauled out of a car in a secluded area and beaten as a punishment for a poor training session. The horrific treatment Shuran endured enacted change. Singaporean officials and the Safe Sport Taskforce are working hard to enhance safety protocols for athletes training both home and abroad.
Though the ISU's tiresome policy of TES minimum scores has had an unsurprisingly negative effect on 'developing skating nations' like Singapore, there is much hope for the future. There are talented skaters living abroad competing internationally and many rising stars at home. It's hard to say what the country's skating future will look like, but Singapore's slow and steady approach to development may just pay off like it did for the tortoise.
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 "Jackson Haines: The Skating King" and pre-ordering "Sequins, Scandals & Salchows: Figure Skating in the 1980s", which will be released this fall where books are sold: https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.
.png "Learn about the important history of Latin American figure skaters with special content for Latin American Heritage Month 2023")
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png "\"Sequins, Scandals & Salchows: Figure Skating in the 1980s\"")
.png)
.png)
