CELEBRATING 25 YEARS OF SKATING

So much has changed in the world of figure skating the past 25 years. Champions have come and gone; some have remained involved in the sport, while others have stepped away and moved on to new careers.

One of the major changes that took place in this era was in ice dance. The compulsory and original dances, which had been fixtures of the discipline since 1952, were discontinued in the 2010-2011 season and replaced with the short dance (now the rhythm dance). Italy’s Federica Faiella and Massimo Scali were the last team to compete a compulsory dance.

Qualifying rounds at Championships — which determined who actually got to skate in the official competition — were discontinued after the 2012 World Championships for many good reasons. The International Skating Union (ISU) then instituted a series of minimum scores for each discipline and only skaters who achieve those scores are eligible to compete at Europeans, Four Continents and Worlds. Zoltán Keleman of Romania was the last person to compete in a qualifying round.

Back in 1994, the 6.0 system was the standard by which skaters’ performances were judged. An arbitrary system that often lent itself to favoritism with judging panels was replaced with the International Judging System (IJS) in 2003. Since then, multiple versions of the IJS have been tested and updated, as the ISU seeks to implement a fair and equitable (and ultimately, honest) judging system.

In 1995, the Champions Series (five events) debuted, with the Final taking place in Paris, France, in February 1996. Now known