Winter Sports in Switzerland

by E. F. Benson

III. The unemployed leg, i.e. the leg of the foot which is not skating, must hang close to the employed leg. Again the reason is obvious. If four persons came into their centre with a waving unemployed leg, they would hit each other. Also, if the unemployed leg is put out behind, the skater must lean forward in order to counteract its weight. He will then tend to skate on the forepart of his skate. In a series of long edges this attitude is impossible to maintain except by effort. Nobody could skate for a quarter of an hour in combined skating, accurately and largely on such a principle.

IV. The arms must hang by the side, and be carried loosely easily, close to the body. Again the explanation is obvious. There is no need for their flying abroad, since a long edge is most easily accomplished with the limbs and body in rest after the stroke, and these long smooth edges are part and parcel of English skating: it is founded on them. English skating postulates so perfect a balance, travelling on the middle of the skates, that it chooses (this is the reason for the rule) not to let that balance be assisted by the added or subtracted weight of a correcting arm. It says (this is what it comes to) that you must be so firm on your travelling root, so to speak, of balance, that you dispense with all adjustments of weight. The weight has to be practically perfectly adjusted. There must be no adjustments adventitiously obtained.

Now these four rules are at the base of English skating. If you happen to play a game, you conform to the rules, and you do not argue, for instance, when you are playing cricket, whether you should be given out, when quite clearly you have been caught at the wicket. If you are at all sensible, or in any way like cricket, you pocket your duck’s egg and retire. Superb strokes may be made at cricket, which nevertheless are fatal to the striker. Superb attitudes, similarly, may be made in the International style, which are quite completely wrong. They may be supremely statuesque, but they are not skating. The case is exactly the same with the English style. Certain canons have been laid down, all of which seem to be necessary to the attainment of excellence. It is no doubt possible to skate charming “threes to a centre” doing everything quite wrong from beginning to end. But if you choose to adopt a style, you must conform to the rules of that style. Similarly, it is quite possible to skate the same “threes to a centre” in the International style, which shall leave the same mark on the ice (though the skating of them broke every possible rule) as the most finished performer could leave there. But who would not applaud the International judge who ruthlessly ploughed such a candidate? He has not kept the rules, which in contradistinction to other games prescribe not only what the object in view is, but the manner in which the performance is to take place. But this manner, we venture to point out, has not been laid down in an arbitrary way: it is the manner, both in International skating and in English alike, in which the feats demanded can alone be properly performed.

Now if the skater will take the trouble to conform to the four rules given above, he will find that even at the outset of his career there is great fun in store for him. Should he conform to them completely, when the complication of turns is added, he will quite certainly find that there is a championship, if he cares for that, in store for him also. The rules were not negligently made; indeed they were never made at all, but are simply the condensed experience of the best skaters, the methods by which the fittest survived. And the fittest did, and always will do, that which is recorded in these rules, and the ensuing complications, even the most complicated of them, are comparatively easy to those who can maintain the proper travelling position. But nobody who cannot hold a long firm edge, for which the proper travelling position is essential, need ever trouble his dreams with the notion of becoming a good skater. And no one’s edges approach perfection, if he cannot traverse, on backward and forward edges, outside and inside alike, a distance of at least a hundred yards, given that the ice is reasonably good, without stirring from the attitude he has taken up after his stroke. A really fine skater will traverse much more, and be still as a rock throughout his travel; but no good skater will be so unsteady that he will not easily traverse that. In his actual skating he will, probably, never be called upon to make so lengthy an edge, but its accomplishment should present no difficulty to him, if he aspires to be a fair performer. Even as the pianist, when performing, is not called upon to play simple scales with both hands, so the skater will not be called upon, in his combined figure, to skate for a hundred yards on one edge. But both pianist and skater ought to find no difficulty at all in executing these simple feats.

The beginner is advised to get a fair mastery of all the edges before he begins to attack the fortress of the turns. He should be able to progress steadily and smoothly both on the outside edge and the inside edge forward, and to make some progress also on the back edges, namely, outside back and inside back. This last is far the most difficult of the edges, and it will be a long time before he is able to take fast bold strokes on it. But he should have some acquaintance with it before he attempts to make the turns that necessitate its employment, and be able to hold it in the correct position. He can then set about turns and changes of edge, which all imply correct travelling.

Now there are four groups of turns, common both to the English and International styles, each group of which contains four turns to be executed on each foot. Altogether, therefore, there are sixteen turns to be learned which employ each foot singly. These with the four edges, executed in the prescribed manner, form the material of the art. These turns are common both to English and International skating,

I. The first group is known as simple turns, and consists of turns (or changes of direction, from backwards to forwards or forwards to backwards) from:

(i)	Outside forward to inside back.
(ii)	Inside forward to outside back.
(iii)	Outside back to inside forward.
(iv)	Inside back to outside forward.

They are all of the same shape with regard to the marks they leave on the ice, and from their shape are known as “three” turns, or “threes.”

Thus: