65th Festival of Sport (FOS) – Skating Stars on Ice will be held on 16 July (Saturday) at Festival Walk Glacier. Let us first introduce the figure skating movements and judging criteria before enjoying the figure skating and short track speed skating demonstrations performed by Hong Kong athletes.

Spins, jumps, and step sequences are the three familiar elements in figure skating. In order to achieve a higher score, other than power, balance, and coordination, an excellent sense of art and aesthetics are required.

To commence with, spin combination, layback spin, and back spin are the general spin movements. The spin will be valued by the level of difficulty, intricacy, and quality.

There are 6 common jumps in figure skating, namely axel jump, double lutz jump, double salchow jump, double flip jump, double loop jump, and double axel jump. Base value is set for every jump and the technical panel will also consider the execution, when required, the level of difficulty of every element. Base values of elements are calculated by points and increase with the enhancement of difficulty. The landing is crucial. If a skater performs a jump with high level of difficulty but poor landing, his/her score will eventually be lower than the skater who executes a jump with lower level of difficulty but brilliant and stable finish.

Last but not least, on top of the music, skaters and their coaches can choreograph different sets of step sequences together.  They must fully utilize the ice surface. Lastly, turns and steps must have a balanced distribution throughout the sequence. Therefore, when we watch a figure skating performance, do not forget to pay attention to these arrangements!