Special figures were a component of figure skating in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Like compulsory figures, special figures involved tracing patterns on the ice with the blade of one ice skate. This required the skater to display significant balance and control while skating on one foot.
While compulsory figures were standard patterns derived from the figure 8, the special figures were elaborate patterns of the skaters' own invention. These designs included rosettes, stars, crosses, and other elaborate curlicues. The building blocks for special figures included not only the elements of the standard compulsory figures, but shapes known as beaks, spectacles, and cross-cuts.
Tracing of elaborate patterns on the ice was a characteristic of the American and British schools of figure skating. By the early 20th century, this had been largely displaced by the "International Style" of free skating which utilized the entire ice surface and featured more athletic movements set to music.
Special figures were first performed at the first international figure skating competition in Vienna in 1882, when Theodor Langer traced a filigree design of a symmetrical four-point star. According to figure skating historian and writer Ellyn Kestnbaum, the body movements required to execute the design were unpleasant to watch, jerky, and did not use the flow of the blade across the ice, but the pattern Langer traced across the ice was aesthetically pleasing and demonstrated a great deal of skill and control. Langer inspired other skaters to develop their own special figures, which became an important part of figure skating in the rest of the 19th century and into the 1940s.[1]
Special figures was an event in the 1908 Summer Olympic Games. Nikolai Panin of Russia won the event. Nikolai Panin held a gold medal in this special figures skating and was unbeaten through 1952 when the Olympic Committee removed the event due to the fact this was considered too difficult to perform. One challenger of Nikolai Panin saw the complex geometric pattern he had performed and instead of trying to recreate it he forfeited.
Special figures have had a modern renaissance with the founding of the World Figure Sport Society in 2015 and the World Figure & Fancy Skating Championships & Festival on black ice.[2] Special figures are now being competed at the World Figure & Fancy Skating Championships by skating artists including the Maltese Cross, the Swiss S, the Winged Diamond Cross-cut, Swedish Cross-cuts, and many others.[3]
The World Figure & Fancy Skating Championships' name was inspired by a literary masterpiece from 1895 entitled Figure and Fancy Skating[4] by George A. Meagher. This timeless book of skating literature has profound knowledge of special figures, and it is considered to be culturally important worldwide by renowned museums, book publishers, and academics.[5]