The history of ice skating

Please settle back and share my vast expertise in ice skating.

As an Australian living in the tropics this astounding stash of knowledge has been accrued from three main sources;

1. Observations made whilst cleaning out the freezer compartment of my refrigerator.

2. Studying Australia's enviable gold-medal skating performances at Winter Olympics.   A grand total of ONE.
In the men's 1000 metre speed skating event at the 2002 Winter Olympics in South Korea, Steven Bradbury, after trailing for the entire race went on to win gold after every other competitor ended up in a spectacular pile-up on the final corner.

3. Viewing countless hours of figure skating on television. (Primarily involving shapely young women dressed in short diaphanous yellow skirts.)

I also once fell in sympathy-love with Nancy Kerrigan (pictured above) back in 1994 after the charming Tonya Harding arranged for harm to be done to Nancy's gorgeous long, shapely, sensuous, sylphen, sexy........my apologies.....I almost drifted off into old-man's fantasies there.

Right!  Back to business.  You are here for the formal history of ice skating, so here it is;

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Ice skating enables a minority of people in the world to make the most of the appalling decision their ancestors made in migrating from hospitable African climes to the frozen extremities of the planet.

It is generally accepted that ice skating began on the frozen canals of The Netherlands more than 1000 years ago, when animal rib or shin bones were strapped to the feet.

When Dutch people travelled to North America in the 19th century, they brought their schaatsen with them along with clogs, windmills, their Dutch courage, elm disease, auctions and ovens.

The first steel skate blade appeared in 1860 and speed skating was introduced as a winter Olympic sport for men at Chamonix, France, in 1924, and for women at the 1960 Olympiad in Squaw Valley, California after the girls demanded equal ankle-sprain rights.

Canada gave birth to the game of Ice Hockey after a mob of unemployed English soldiers were observed swinging sticks at a little flat rock on the icy surface of Kingston Lake, Ontario, in 1867 before the whole lot of them were hauled off by their superior officer to the nearest Sanitorium for psychological intervention followed by repatriation back to Britain.

Figure skating is an activity originally perfected and made popular by Norwegian world champion Sonja Henie.

God bless Sonja.

God bless figure skating, the most graceful and elegant sport in my world.

God bless Nancy Kerrigan.

I still have the latent hots for Nancy Kerrigan.

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P.S. My use of the words "God bless" should not be used as evidence of the History Academy having religious affiliations.
The Cosmic Perspective of life has so far failed to come up with an equivalent phrase to represent this sentiment.