By Henry Thompson
When the summer Olympics roll around, it’s a lot easier for many of us to comprehend what it’s like to play many of the sports, if not at such a high level. We’ve run, we’ve kicked a soccer ball, we’ve shot hoops, we’ve even done some gymnastics at a birthday party when we’re six.
But it’s tougher with the winter Olympics, like the ones going on in Milano/Cortina right now. Yes, we may have gone skiing. But how many of us living here in Atlanta have gone bobsledding or ski mountaineering or curling?
Despite the wide array of sports to watch, one seems to clearly stand out amongst the rest as a fan favourite, making up nearly fifty percent of responses to the survey question: “What is your favourite Winter Olympic sport?” Figure skating.
The main reason survey responders cited for their love of figure skating seems to be the sport’s fusion of physical and artistic talent. As one person put it, “It’s hard not to enjoy the artistry and physical prowess of the figure skaters.” This would make sense as a key component of successful figure skating is the athlete’s ability to perform intense skating tricks in time to music, in certain events with a partner. I, of course, am far from an expert on this topic, so I decided to seek out a few people who have a deeper well of knowledge on the subject.
One student who is currently involved in figure skating is junior Ava Tahmasebi Bakhtiary. She said she took a break for a couple of years after an injury, and then she completely stopped. “I am getting back into it, though,” she said. “I have to skate quite a bit over spring break, and then I’m going to be taking weekly lessons over summer.”
For her, Atlanta’s limited figure skating options don’t pose as much of an issue, as she doesn’t plan on taking part in any competitions until she has regained some lost skill, allowing her to use more nearby rinks. She named Center Ice Arena as her go-to location.
Given her knowledge of the sport, I wanted to get a better idea of what exactly I had been watching for the past 17 days. One piece of information that I found particularly interesting was the role each leg plays in relation to the other during a routine. “There’s a different set of jumps you can do and different turns,” she said. “A lot of them depend on which foot you jump off of, and you always have to land on a certain foot after.”
On the faculty side, computer science teacher Ms. Graham was once a high-level figure skater herself, her mainly Denver-based childhood providing a much more direct pathway into the sport than someone in sunny Atlanta might have.
During her time as a figure skater, she competed in both singles and doubles for an extended period. Singles skating consists of a lot of what you would expect: jumps and smooth, almost ballet-like movement across the ice. The differentiating factor for doubles seems to lie in the moves a pair can execute only with each other’s help. “In the Winter Olympics, there’s the men’s event, the women’s event pair skating, which is basically doing a lot of the single stuff but also doing lifts and throw jumps,” Ms. Graham said.
Ms. Graham took part in mostly single skating events. ”Then for five years I was paired up with a fellow skater by a coach we both shared,” she said. Despite her time in doubles skating being short, it seems she connected with figure skating the most, as she later went on to win the Junior National Championships in the event, she connected with figure skating the most, as she later went on to win the Junior National Championships in the event, progressing even into international competition with her partner.
This connection seems to have continued into the present day, even as she left the world of participating in figure skating competitions in the past to pursue her teaching career, opting to be a judge and “world Olympic” official in the sport. “I am qualified to officiate the Olympics, potentially in pairs, not for singles,” she said. “I don’t know if they’ll send me to try to get that or not though” she added with a chuckle.
Through her job as an official, she experiences the Olympics through a different lens, seeing it both as a spectator and as a detail-oriented judge. “It’s interesting to be with a friend who doesn’t know about skating,” she said. “They’ll say, oh, that looked really good. And I’ll say, I think there might’ve been something wrong with that. But I guess it is hard to see if you haven’t done it.”
Although Ms. Graham enjoys the unique perspective her critical eye provides, she admits that sometimes she can just watch the sport and appreciate its beauty on its own.
Her job also comes with some pretty nice perks if she is willing to make her life a little more hectic. There are travel opportunities throughout the year, both national and international. And it seems as though Ms. Graham has been taking advantage of them. She said things usually ramp up in late July, when she’s out in Los Angeles. “I usually get to Colorado in June, and Milwaukee, maybe Philadelphia. And then I was in St. Louis in early January for our national championships, and I was in Poland. And I’ll be going to Prague,” she explained.
She does still get to officiate local competitions too, though as you might expect, as the opportunities for figure skating officials here in Atlanta are more limited. “There are some rinks here. I actually was asked to do a test session this past weekend, and then there’s another one in March. There used to be a rink called the Cooler in Alpharetta, but it changed to a pickleball facility,” she said.
Now, there’s a sport more of us have played here in Atlanta. But as of right now, it’s not on the list of new sports for the Los Angeles games of 2028.
Despite the difficulties, Ms. Graham sticks to her passion and finds joy in her work.
This whole experience left me wondering what other winter sports our Lovett community takes part in, but maybe that’s something we will discover in four years time. Maybe now it’s time for us to land on the right foot and skate on to the warmer months.
