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Every four years, a giant swath of the American population fixates on a worldwide competition that fuses turgid nationalism with the hypnotic chaos of humans flinging themselves into the air and landing on tiny metal slivers atop a slick, glassy surface.
The air is cold, the ice is crisp, and it’s once again time for Olympic figure skating.
Like Olympic swimming, gymnastics, and track and field, figure skating is a sport that captures Americans’ attention at every Winter Games in a way that doesn’t happen with sports we can more easily follow year-round: basketball, football, baseball, soccer, and, to a lesser extent, tennis.
But even with so many people enthusiastically tuning in, the sport can still seem a bit impenetrable. With few exceptions, skaters tend to have shorter careers than other athletes — the best-case scenario is to win an Olympic gold medal and then retire — and that can make it feel like there’s a new crop of contenders competing at every games. What’s more, the scoring system can be really hard to follow; just try asking someone on the street to explain GOEs.
And then there are the jumps.
They all look sort of similar. Names like axel and salchow sounds like nods to German efficiency or species of bovine rather than feats of power and grace. Only a few subtle changes separate a triple loop from a triple toe loop. A tiny shift in direction dramatically changes the triple lutz into a triple flip.
Keeping track of all these details can make identifying which jump is which the single most confusing thing about an otherwise simple and exhilarating sport. Here’s a brief guide to everything you need to know about figure skating jumps.
Edges are the most important thing to consider in a figure skating jump
To really understand how jumps work is to understand how an ice skate works. While it can look like figure skaters are gliding and balancing on only one edge, there’s actually a middle groove, or “hollow,” that runs the length of the bottom of a figure skate blade. So really, skaters are skating on two edges: the inside edge and the outside edge of each skate.
“Edges are what allow a skater to gain speed across the ice,” Jimmy Morgan, a US pairs figure skater and coach, told me. “The inside edges are toward the big toe, and the outside edges are toward the pinky toe. The transfer of weight between blades and edges is what allows everything in figure skating to be possible.”
Which edge a skater puts his weight on going into a jump is what distinguishes one jump from another.
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The other determining factor is whether the jump uses the toe pick — a little set of jagged teeth at the front of the blade that helps skaters stab into the ice to push upward and launch themselves into the air.
For an example of how the toe pick is used, here’s a clip from the greatest romance movie of my generation, The Cutting Edge, in which Kate Moseley shows renegade ex-hockey player Doug Dorsey the importance of the toe pick:
There are only six recognized jumps in competitive Olympic-level figure skating
If you tune in to any broadcast of a figure skating competition, it can seem like the announcers are speaking a different language. But all you need to know is that because there are only a certain number of edges and a certain number of ways a skater can land a jump, there are only six recognized jumps in competitive figure skating: the toe loop, the salchow, the loop, the flip, the lutz, and the axel.
These six jumps are generally divided into two groups. “Edge” jumps — the loop, the salchow, and the axel — rely on the power from a skater bending her knee to jump off the ice. “Toe” jumps — the toe loop, the flip, and the lutz — rely on skaters using their toe pick to launch themselves into the air.
In competition, each jump is worth a certain number of points based on their difficulty level, with the toe loop worth the least and the axel worth the most. The elite women figure skaters perform triple jumps (three to three and a half revolutions), while the medal contenders on the men’s side regularly hit quads (four revolutions). Read on for a rundown of each jump.
The toe loop (a toe jump)
What figure skating judges are looking for when they assess jumps, and what announcers are calling live, is which edge skaters are taking off from, whether they’re using the toe pick, and which leg they’re landing on. As seen in the above GIF of Spanish skater Javier Fernández, the jump begins with the skater approaching the jump backward on the outside edge of one foot, then landing the jump on the outside edge of the same foot. A triple toe loop’s base value is 4.3 points.
The loop (an edge jump)
The loop is another edge jump. Though it’s executed differently from the toe loop (which I’ll explain below), it shares the same entry and landing as the toe loop — approaching the jump backward on the outside edge of one foot, then landing the jump on the outside edge of the same foot — minus the toe pick. You can see this in the above GIF, where American skater Nathan Chen performs a triple loop. A triple loop’s base value is 5.1 points.
The salchow (an edge jump)
If you’re looking to better understand the difference between an edge jump and a toe jump, the salchow is one of the jumps that makes it easiest to spot. The salchow doesn’t use a toe pick, and you can clearly see the skater launch himself from the knee bend. It starts from the inside edge of one foot and ends on the outside edge of the opposite foot. A triple salchow’s base value is 4.4 points. But in the GIF above, Japanese skater Yuzuru Hanyu performs a quadruple salchow, which is worth even more due to the extra rotation.
The flip (a toe jump)
The flip is a toe jump. As seen in the GIF above of Russian skater Alina Zagitova, it starts on the inside edge of one foot while the skater approaches the jump backward and uses the toe pick of her other foot to take off, and ends with the skater landing on the outside edge of the opposite foot. A triple flip’s base value is 5.3 points.
The lutz (a toe jump)
The lutz, a toe jump, is a lot like the flip. But instead of approaching the jump on an inside edge, it requires skaters to take off from the outside edge of one foot and then land, as they would with a flip, on the outside edge of their opposite foot. Note, in the GIF above, how American skater Nathan Chen leans into the outside edge of his left foot as he extends his right leg and toe pick behind him to launch himself into the air. A triple lutz’s base value is 6 points.
The axel (an edge jump)
The axel is the easiest jump to spot and arguably the hardest to execute. It is the only jump where the skater takes off while facing forward. “The skater needs an extra half rotation to land gliding backward,” Morgan explained, due to that front-facing takeoff. “The extra half rotation is notable because it’s much more difficult to create rotation when taking off from a forward edge.” You can see that extra half rotation in the GIF above, as Korean skater Yuna Kim leaps off the ice and swings her right leg around to vault herself off the ice and then does two full rotations in the air to complete a double axel. A triple axel’s base value 8.5 points.
Why a jump can sometimes look good but score low
Aside from telling the jumps apart, the hardest thing for casual figure skating fans to see is whether a jump is executed well. One does not need to be an expert to spot a sloppy-looking landing. But there are some technicalities that only slow motion or the expert eye of a judge can discern.
One of those technicalities is under-rotation.
This means that a skater didn’t complete the required number of full revolutions while performing a jump. It’s fairly easy to notice when a skater performs, say, a double toe loop in place of a planned triple toe loop — the revolutions aren’t as dramatic, and the jump isn’t as dynamic. The harder thing to recognize is an instance where a skater performs close to three rotations but falls short. All high-level figure skating competitions, including the Olympics, have slow-motion cameras that the judges can use to double-check these important details.
One of the ways to tell if a skater under-rotated a jump (besides a skater deliberately and obviously turning a triple into a double or a quad into a triple) is to look at how they landed. If a skater lands a jump but under-rotated it, their skate will finish that revolution when it hits the ice.
Another thing to look for is which edge a skater uses to take off. For example, the only difference between a lutz and a flip is the edge used for takeoff (inside versus outside), but the lutz is worth more points.
“The two jumps are very similar,” Morgan told me. “If the skater is attempting a lutz but makes an error and accidentally switches to an inside edge before launching into the air, the skater would say that they did a ‘flutz.’”
The skater would get deducted points because of the incorrect edge.
Keeping disciplined edges on lutzes and flips is important to skaters since they ostensibly want to earn credit for difficult jumps and because skating competition rules don’t allow skaters to repeat the same type of jump and get credit in the program unless they are performed in combination (one jump directly leading into the next) or have added revolutions (a quad lutz is counted differently than a triple lutz, for instance). There are also a limited number of jumping passes — eight for men and seven for women — allowed in the free skate.
Jumps have base values but also are awarded a grade of execution (GOE) score from -3 to +3. A triple toe loop with a perfect GOE score is worth 6.4 points while a triple toe loop with a -3 GOE score could only be worth 2.2 points.
“Things that make that GOE increase could be doing the jump where it makes sense musically, [and having it look very] tight aesthetically, [with] pleasing air positions, [good] jump height, etc.,” Morgan told me. “Things that could make the GOE decrease would be things like putting a hand down during the landing, tentative skating preceding the jump, or most notably, a fall.“
Under-rotating jumps can cripple a skater’s GOE scores. So can incorrect edges.
The ideal scenario is for skaters to skate clean programs. They want to make sure their jumps are high, cover a lot of ground, and leave no doubt that all their jumps were fully rotated. That’s easier said than done, of course. But now you have the basic idea of what that may all look like.
The Olympic figure skating team event at the 2018 Winter Olympics begins on February 9 (the evening of February 8 in the US) and kicks off the entire skating schedule, which includes the ladies’, pairs’, men’s, and ice dancing competitions.
