Well, it's been a tad quiet around here for the past couple of months! I've been extremely busy, focusing on the demands of a very busy day job, but I'm back and chomping at the bit to talk skating history with you again this skatingseason. During my time away, I've been thinking about what I want Skate Guard Blog to be and where I want to focus my time. Spoiler alert: it's not creating filler for social media.
In 2026, social media is a bit of a "necessary evil" for anyone who is creative. It's one way of building an audience and attempting to expose your work to people who might never otherwise know about it. Unfortunately, the algorithms now focus heavily on promoting bite-sized stories, short-form content and punchy 20-second Reels. Social media platforms increasingly favour content that keeps people scrolling and bury anything that sends people elsewhere to read something longer. I have zero interest in telling a 20-second version of a story that deserves 20 minutes of someone's time. I'm not a TikTok influencer; I'm a researcher and a writer. I'd much rather focus my efforts and time on continuing to create engaging long-form content, so if I'm a little quieter on social media in the coming months, it's because I'm busy focusing on what I do best: digging through old newspapers, photographs, programs, books and archives to pull together stories about the people, places and events from figure skating history that have been overlooked, forgotten or simply haven't been given the context they were due. And that's what I want Skate Guard Blog to continue to be about.
1914 World Figure Skating Champion Gösta Sandahl. Photo courtesy Sveriges Centralförening för Idrottens Främjande.
There's something quite extraordinary about figure skating history and the way it is often judged through a modern lens. When we look back at the early days of the sport, it's all too easy to fall into the trap of comparison. Many people look at what today's skaters can do now and judge skating's pioneers against the same standards. They measure the merits of the sport's earliest pioneers by the jumps they couldn't perform, the aesthetic of the costumes that they wore or the clunky-looking skates on their feet. There's an unfortunate tendency to dismiss these early champions as "lesser-than" because they weren't doing quadruple jumps, when in reality they were very skilled experts at compulsory figures, which counted for over 60% of a skater's score at the time. Don't forget - in the early days, figure skating was all about figure skating - not free skating.
The sport's earliest champions were doing their very best with the knowledge, equipment, training conditions and opportunities available to them at the time. Like today's skaters, they pushed boundaries and laid the groundwork for generations of skaters who followed. They may not have been doing the same technical elements today's skaters do, but they were the very best skaters of their time - and their stories deserve to be told with nuance.
1929 World Champions Lilly Scholz and Otto Kaiser. Photos courtesy Mag. Elisabeth Rehse-Holzer / Wiener Eislauf-Verein.
We can become so preoccupied with looking at the past through the lens of the present that we forget something rather important: the people who made history weren't living in the past. They were living in the present.
They didn't know how their stories would end. They weren't thinking about how future generations would judge their skating. They were simply living their best lives, pursuing their passion for the sport, and dealing with the same messy, complicated business of being human that we all do. And telling their stories is where I want to spend my time.
I'd love to talk a little bit about some of the many projects that will be launched in the coming months!
Here's what you can expect:
MORE BLOGS
Skate Guard Blog will be returning to a weekly format, with new content coming out once a week at www.skateguardblog.com.
MORE BOOKS
New books are on the way! I'm excited to announce that I'll be launching two new reference books this season. "A Complete History of the U.S. Figure Skating Championships" is out this month. Like my last two books on the World and European Championships, this book is jam-packed with results, pictures and fascinating "Easter eggs" about the history of America's premier figure skating competition. In February, the next book in this series, "A Complete History of the World Junior Figure Skating Championships", will follow. During the 2027-2028 season, you can look for another new book, "The Great British Ice Rink" - which tells the story of British figure skating through the buildings where history was made. The latter book, in particular, was a mammoth effort - and I really think you're going to find it interesting! You can find more information about the books
here.
A NEW RESEARCH PORTAL
Later this year, I'll be launching a brand new section on the blog called the Research Centre. Here, you'll be able to take a deep dive into the history of the sport by exploring in-depth profiles of dozens of the sport's earliest champions, complete with primary sources, pictures, anecdotes and fun facts that you can't just Google. The first phase of this project, which will focus on the Victorian era, will launch in December. The second phase will be online in January.
If you love learning about figure skating history, buckle up! It's going to be quite the season. There's no better time than the present to learn about the past!
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
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please show your support for this archive by ordering one of eight fascinating books highlighting the history of figure skating:
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