The winter Olympics are in February, and the big sport to watch is always figure skating. There are so many variations (women, men, couples) that figure skating will be on for the entire two weeks of the Olympics. A big change has been made to the figure skating rules that the audience will surely notice. The skaters are now allowed to have words in their music for their routines. This will create a new dynamic to the figure skating competitions.
Popular figure skating music in the past has been to popular music that is easy to recognize without the words. This includes popular movie soundtracks like “Pirates of the Caribbean”, or popular songs from musicals like “The Sound of Music” or “Fiddler on the Roof”, or even popular hit songs like “If I Were a Rich Man”. Classical music is also a popular choice for figure skaters. These songs appealed to the crowd because they could enjoy the figure skating routine and the music.
The International Skating Union allowed for words to now be incorporated in their music to try and innovate the sport. Figure Skating was losing viewers and made this move to try and attract some new fans. Now the skaters can skate to new and popular music that more people can recognize. Some skaters, like Jimmy Ma, are embracing the change and skating to very modern music. Ma has performed to an Eminem medley and to “Turn Down For What” in the past two years. He has said that his choices of music is to bring in more fans and to show that figure skating is a cool and modern sport. His goal is to turn some heads and get people to pay more attention to ice skating. Others music choices aren’t so bold, they still have lyrics in their routine but nothing too modern or different for the figure skating world.
Though many are embracing this new rule, it is not a requirement. Skaters can still skate to instrumental music, it depends on each skaters preference.
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