The 24th Winter Olympic Games will kick off in Beijing on February 4, 2022.
The Sports Department of Chinanews.com launched a series of columns "Hundred Questions about Winter Olympics", aimed at popularizing Winter Olympic knowledge, answering hot questions, sharing interesting stories about ice and snow, and helping everyone have a better watching experience during the Beijing Winter Olympics.
The 24th Winter Olympics 100 Questions | What are the similarities and differences between figure skating and ice dancing?
Figure skating is a sports event that combines technical skills on ice with the art of music and dance. It combines the beauty of music, posture and strength. It is one of the most popular winter sports.
In the Winter Olympics figure skating design items, including pair skating and ice dance (ice dance) two small items.
Both of these competitions are completed by a partner of each of the male and female players, and generally use the same venue, so many spectators are likely to confuse the two.
Pair skating and ice dancing do have many similarities.
Both are scoring items, which can be summarized as technical action points plus program content points and then subtracting points to get the final score.
The elements of technical actions include jumping, spinning, footwork, lifting, twisting, jumping, spiral, etc., while the elements of the program content include sliding technique, action connection, performance completion, program composition and musical expression.
Data map: Chinese pair skating team Sui Wenjing/Han Cong in the competition
However, in the Olympic Games, the content composition of pair skating and ice dance competitions is not the same. Pair skating includes short programs and free skating, while ice dance consists of two parts: rhythm dance and free dance.
For ordinary viewers, there are two relatively simple ways to distinguish the two: one is whether there are jumps in the action, and the other is the athlete's dress.
Jumping is one of the important techniques in pair skating, but there is no jumping action in ice dance.
Because of this, the skirts of the average ice dancers may be longer than the knees, while the skirts of the female pair skaters are relatively shorter for the convenience of jumping.
Data map: Chinese ice dance group Wang Shiyue/Liu Xinyu and Zhao Qiao
From a more professional perspective, the two sports have different focuses.
Pair skating has a richer composition of technical movements, while ice dance, as the name suggests, focuses more on dance steps.
For example, in the same lifting action, in the ice dance rules, the male contestant's arms cannot be higher than the head when lifting.
Because of the different technical movements, the skates used by the players are also different.
The skates of ice dancers have relatively low uppers and heels, while ice skates are relatively short. These designs are easy to complete the pace.
At the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics, pair skating and ice dancing will not only compete in individual events, but also in figure skating team competitions.
I hope Chinese players will perform well by then!
(Yuechuan)