Winter Sports in Switzerland

by E. F. Benson

There are two manners of combined skating, called respectively pair-skating and simultaneous skating. The first of these (which we will first consider) is the more difficult, and, so to speak, the more classical. Theoretically it can be skated by two, four, six, or eight persons: practically it is skated by four persons, grouped, at the beginning of things, at right angles to their neighbours, and at a few yards distant from their centre. One of these, who skates in the first pair, is known as the caller, and he announces (in a loud mellifluous voice) what he is about to skate, and what the trembling gentleman opposite, who is his partner, must also skate. They advance to the centre, from opposite sides, and begin skating whatever is ordered. The moment after they have left their centre, speeding out to the circumference of the huge imaginary circle, of which their orange or india-rubber ball, from which they have started, is the centre, the second pair (at right angles to them) proceed to do exactly the same. The size and pace of the figure, as well as its details, depend entirely on the caller: as he skates, so must his partner skate, putting down his edges and turns simultaneously and at like speed to him, and as the first pair skate, so (with certain modifications) must the second pair skate.

Now, the whole material of skating is at the caller’s command. He can (and does) order threes, brackets, rockers, counters, mohawks, choctaws and changes of edge to be skated when and how he wishes them. He can (and does) couple any pair or any three of these movements, to be skated on one foot or on both, one after the other. He directs, with a word of power, from the elaborate vocabulary of combined skating, the length of an edge, and can command it to be held so long that the direction of progress is reversed, or to be further continued till a complete circle is made and the original direction of progress resumed again. Then, with another word, he brings himself and his partner (followed closely by the second pair) back to their centre again, on the off side or the near side of it, and orders that they shall start a fresh figure there, or that they shall make a turn there, or scud by it like four express trains which just, and only just, arriving from the four parts of the compass, do not collide with each other, and scatter again to east and west and north and south. Sometimes he brings them in simultaneously, so that they converge till they almost touch, and then spread out again. And if the figure is going decently well, there is no pause, no foot without its edge and turn assigned to it. This mystic, swift, interweaving dance lasts perhaps a quarter of an hour of hard, enraptured skating.

Simultaneous combined has this advantage, that an uneven number of skaters can take part in it. The caller’s duties are the same, but there are no pairs of partners. All leave the centre simultaneously, all (it is hoped) arrive back at it simultaneously. Since there is no crossing of pairs at the centre, a far larger number of skaters can take part in it, as they have not to wait for a prior pair to clear, and if elementary calls only are ordered, upwards of ten or twelve skaters can join the dance with effect. No one of them, as in pair skating, crosses the path of another skater: they leave and arrive at the centre on converging not crossing lines. Thus it is an easier sport than is crossing pairs, since in the latter case the edges that leave and approach the centre intersect each other. Vastly enjoyable as it is, it lacks to the present writer that classical distinction that characterises pair-skating.

The final item in English skating is hand-in-hand skating in the combined figure. Here, instead of single skaters combining to perform in unison, pairs take the place of units. Necessarily the figures compassable by a man and woman hand in hand are fewer in number, as at present worked out, than those which can be skated by single skaters, and the speed at which such figures are skated is less than in the combined skating of single skaters. Hand-holds have to be changed, and partners brought into the new position required by turns, &c., by pulls, or by what in the nomenclature is called “steps”—i.e. single strokes and edges. Already this style has taken the place in the annual championship of English skating, and without doubt it will grow both in the number of its practitioners, and in the force and speed of their movements. It is scientifically based, being evolved from the charming movements that are possible to hand-in-hand skaters when going free on the ice, and not bound to consider their opposing partner, or to arrive in a given manner at a given point. But it resembles, at present, in the opinion of the writer, the performance of a yearling. It requires the devotion of a dozen first-class skaters of both sexes to determine its possibilities. His wish is, that it will get them. His fear is that the necessarily cramping influence of conjoined hands will prove to debar it from the speed and largeness of other branches of English skating. He sincerely hopes that his fears are quite unfounded.

International Style

It has been already remarked that the two styles, English and International, have nothing to do with each other, and that the practitioner of one who is so imbecile as to belittle the other, is no less crack-brained and idiotic than a Rugby football player who calls Association a “rotten game.” Personally, I do not skate in the International style, but to attempt to depreciate the beauties of it would be to me as unthinkable as it would be to run down polo. To the spectator, whether of polo or of International skating, the skill and the splendour of these sports are, unless he is entirely lunatic, beyond any question at all. But it is as an admirer, pure and simple, that I venture to embark on a subject with which I have no practical acquaintance.

Spectacularly there is no doubt that to the ignorant the International style rightly makes the most powerful appeal. A simple manœuvre, as for instance a forward three to a centre, looks far more difficult and hazardous when executed even only moderately well in the International style than when executed almost perfectly in the English style. In the one case, to the ignorant, arms and legs are flying: it seems impossible to maintain a balance, and the attitude itself is charmingly graceful: whereas in the English style the whole difficulty of the manœuvre, such as it is, lies in the necessity of making it look easy, and standing quite still and at rest.

But the difficulty of doing it perfectly in the English style is, as a matter of fact, far greater than that of doing it properly in the International style. Of that there is no question whatever. A good English skater will put down his turns and edges one over the other, in the accurate fashion so rightly demanded by the International style, without producing half the effect that a good International skater will produce. But the English skater has done the more difficult feat. On the other hand, I do not think that the skater in the English style is ever called upon to do anything so difficult in his highest test as the back-loop 8, or perhaps the rocker 8, as required by the first-class International test. And then I think of a back bracket, executed at good speed at a certain point, in the correct style. Really I do not know.... Also I do not care. The back-loop 8 of the International skater is altogether lovely, which is all that matters.

But, as I have said, the two styles have nothing to do with each other, either as regards tests or as regards the general sport of them. I can imagine no more glorious athletic feat than that of four first-class English skaters performing a really difficult combined set properly, a set that is as far away from the compulsory set of the first-class test as is the first-class test from the second; nor, on the other hand, can I imagine a more glorious athletic feat than the free skating of some champion of the International school. But when Mr. Grenander or Herr Salchow are so kind as to show me the Hugel star, I no more think of comparing that with the combined skating of fine performers in the English style, and others, than I compare it with Mr. Baerlein in the tennis court or Mr. Jessop slogging his sixes. They have nothing to do with each other.

As in English skating, I propose to lay before the reader the tests of the International school, and in contrast to the rule of English form, I subpend the essential requirements of International excellence, as laid down by the collective experience of its senators. Proper form is no less essential in one than in the other, and the same sternness of requirement is insisted on in both. But the effect is poles apart: in the International style a fixed freedom of the unemployed limbs is necessary, in the English a fixed quietness and immobility. Neither is laid down in an arbitrary manner: it is impossible to perform the necessary evolutions in first-class skating otherwise than is provided by the rules. No English skater could, in his prescribed form, execute the International figures: no International skater in his could do what is required of his English brother. Here, then, are the essentials of good form as demanded by the International school: