With the winter Olympics still on the forefront of everyone’s minds, we are often left thinking about some sports for the first time in four years. I honestly can’t say I’ve organically thought about skeleton or biathlon since 2014. It’s also the time when people think most about the sport I grew up in, figure skating. During the Olympics people love to marvel at the jumps, the costumes, and the elegance. Local “learn to skate” programs for children get a spike in enrollment. I also have more curious friends asking me questions and wondering when I’d be free to teach them how to skate. For me, every four winters is bliss, because things usually aren’t like this.
Figure skating is a sport DOMINATED by women and gay men. It is also a sport that is not taken seriously by many people here in the United States. While I don’t know if there is a definite correlation between these two factors, I’ve always suspected there has been. I assume that the general thought pattern people have is “well if the women and gays can do it, it can’t be too hard! My views haven’t changed since 1960!” I can’t count how many times I’ve had to argue with people after they claim that their boring and mainstream sport is more difficult. I remember numerous times when I got into the classic “which one is harder: figure skating or football” debate. For some reason I just couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that someone would think that an athlete who plays a game that stops every thirty seconds would need the same endurance as one who needs to go all out for 4 minutes straight. I also didn’t see how a football player’s balance, flexibility, or agility could come close in comparison. Not to mention the fact that figure skaters have to show incredible control over their movements because the placement of a foot or an arm even less than an inch off could end in terrible mistakes. I’m not trying to smear football here, it’s a difficult sport and the players at the top level are certainly fit and talented. However, years of not being taken seriously by anyone has worn on me, and well, I’m a little biased.
“It’s just a bunch of twirling, how is that even hard?” …If I had a nickel for every time I heard someone say that I would probably have enough money to dropout of school and train full time. It also shows me that the person clearly has no idea the effort that has to go into these “twirls”. Usually these are the same people I see falling every two feet at public skates on the weekend. I digress, first of all, the twirls are called spins, and they’re actually pretty freaking hard. The positions one spins in require an incredible amount of flexibility and control, not to mention the strength it takes to stay in that position for an extended period of time. Once the centripetal force one must try to counteract is accounted for, holding these positions becomes even more difficult. Spinning is actually more tiring than jumping because of this. A coach even told me once that figure skaters had been studied by NASA so researchers could get a better idea of how to train astronauts for takeoff.
However, it wasn’t just meat-headed jockey boys from my school I had to worry about. I hung out with predominantly athletic girls in high school. I myself did another sport—Cross Country. From Sophomore year on, I was one of the top scorers on the varsity team and I was even named captain my senior year. My friends played a variety of sports, both for the school teams and outside of school. Even among them, it was still difficult to be accepted as the athlete I was outside of my running. Freshman year of high school, in the springtime, I remember a clear example of this. It was time to do the mile run in gym class. A friend (who played a more traditional sport) and I decided we were going to try and run it together. While she had good intentions by saying “It’s ok if you can’t keep up with me, don’t feel bad if I run ahead,” I felt a bit put off by it. It made me realize that all my friends must assume I was out of shape because cross country season had been long over at that point. What they failed to realize was my sport, figure skating, is always in season. Sure, I skated and competed a bit more in the winter, but I skated pretty much the same amount. I have even skated in competitions in June and July before. I finished about 25 seconds before the friend I said I would run with in that mile. Afterwards she expressed that she was sorry because I was faster than she thought I would be. As I walked away with a smug sense of accomplishment, I also realized that my battle to be taken seriously would always be an uphill one.
Even after coming to college, where people tend to be bit more open minded about things, I have had a few run ins with people who don’t want to take skating seriously. I even had an argument with someone over whether or not running was harder than figure skating. As someone who has done both, I can confidently say that figure skating is harder, since it demands a lot more from an athlete. This didn’t stop the butthurt boy from still trying to argue that his sport (and also mine), running, was harder. While I don’t have too much hope for the future as far as his goes, I do see a glimmer of it. People are becoming more open minded (and less sexist and homophobic), and maybe this will lead to some progress on that front. For now, I’ll just ride out this Olympic bliss for as long as it lasts.
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