The art of the sport. It’s a broad idea, but there is no sport that displays the artistic nature of athletes as well as figure skating.
Dr. Hans Gumprecht, a proffesor at Stanford University broke down sport into seven specific fascinations. Three of his seven fascinations are extremely present in figure skating, so much so he even used the sport as his example in his book “In Praise of Athletic Beauty.” The three which are depicted I figure skating are grace, form and timing.
Three, which is nearly half of his seven key fasciations are found in the largely overlooked sport, however, they all came to the forefront over the past two days, as the province’s finest university figure skaters competed at the OUA provincial championships at the former Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.
Its the mastery of all three which skaters must do to earn themselves a place atop the podium. It’s something the University of Toronto Varsity Blues know how to do, as they captured fifith consecutive OUA title.
14 different gold medals were up for grabs and the Varsity Blues won 7 of them as well as the major award of the provincial banner., The overarching provincial banner is won by the combination of a team’s scores, which this year highlighted the depth of the Varstiy Blues.
Toronto’s search for a fifth straight banner started off strong, as they scored 59 team points on day one, giving them a 19 point buffer between themselves and second-place Western.
Individually, the Varsity Blues brought home seven medals, four of which were gold after the first day of competition, Certainly not a bad haul for a single day of completion. The home Ryerson Rams also brought home some hardware, with Kaitlyn Wilson striking gold in her Star 10 Freeskate.
“I just wanted to skate the best that I could possibly skate – it is my last skating competition ever,” said gold medalist Wilson to the OUA Website. “I wanted to go out with a bang…and it went even better than I possibly could have thought.”
The fashion design student is in her fourth year with the Ryerson Rams and has never won a gold medal at the OUA’s before.
The second day of the competition once again saw the Varsity Blues dominate the field, as they medalled in every event while finishing a trio of them on the top step. Following Toronto were the Western Mustangs, who also came second in the team synchronized skate. In third was the McMaster Maraduers, who finished on the podium six times through the 14 competitions.
All of the teams displayed the fascinations of sport over the last two days, although none matched up as well to them as the Varsity Blues, who now get to hang another banner in their ever historic Varsity Arena.