Pre-dating skating, a figure is a named pattern of movement. Our skating forebears soon realized that performing a figure on ice leaves behind tracings, or figure artwork, that stand alone as visual art. They sought to retrace the same tracing to improve the visual appeal of the figure artwork. Free figures do not retrace themselves, instead focusing on graceful moves of the performer. Figure artwork and free figures may both involve airborne segments, at which point they become flying figures. Creative figure artworks are figures unique to one individual skating artist, and they are an important part of developing our own personal style. This gallery showcases figure artwork and free figures that are used in the World Figure Sport training curriculum or are competed at the World Figure & Fancy Skating Championships on Black Ice.
WFS Figure Artwork Exams
Figure artworks used in the World Figure Sport training curriculum may be viewed on World Figure Sport’s Skating Exams page.
NOTE:The terms “compulsory or school figures” refer to the set of only circular figures chosen by the International Skating Union (ISU) in 1897 for only their competitions. Figure and Fancy Skating international competitions pre-dated the founding of the ISU and the Figures skated were not only circular in shape but also more elaborate. The ISU did not value their own history or the history before their founding so they chose to discard the knowledge that built the entire technical development of skating over centuries.
World Figure Sport is built on leadership, advancement and preservation so the Figures that were known before 1897, after and new ones developed in modern times remain in the World Figure Sport Competitions and Exam curriculums today. World Figure Sport does not use the unnecessary terms “compulsory or school figures,” but the term Fundamental Figures so all knowledge is utilized to train great skating technique to the highest levels.
Championship Figure Artworks
These figure artworks have been used in World Figure & Fancy Skating Championships, many are also included in the WFS Skating Exam curriculum.
- Quadruple Artwork
- Twin 3’s
- Pivoting Heart
- Quad Loop de Loops
- Twin Bracket 3’s
- Maltese Cross
- Double-sided Maltese Cross
- World Record in the Maltese Cross
- Swirling Mirror
- Butterfly Loops
- Super Link
- Swiss S
- Exterior Ringlet Loops
- Cross Cuts
- Winged Diamond Cross Cut
- Winged Swedish Cross Cut
- 10th Anniversary Diamond Cross-cut with Pearls
Creative Figure Artworks
- Panin Lake Special Figure (Nikolai Panin, 1908; Marc Fenczak, 2023)
- Beacom Blossom (Gary Beacom, 2016)
- Creative Artworks (World Fancy Skaters, 2016)
- Ahlbrecht’s Gliding Grafstrom (Jill Ahlbrecht, 2016)
- Enthralling Elmore (Lisa Elmore, 2018)
- Shannon’s Shanrock, (Shannon Cattaneo, 2018)
- Creative Artworks (World Fancy Skaters – Ladies, 2019)
- Creative Artworks (World Fancy Skaters – Men’s, 2019)
- Creative Artworks (World Fancy Skaters – Ladies, 2022)
- Swans (Katherine Mangiardi, 2024)
- Shepherd’s Spiral (Shepherd Clark, 2024)