Figure skating careers, especially the length of women\u2019s careers and age eligibility restrictions in skating have been discussed frequently in recent years. There are many reasons for this, and one of them is that the names of the best women skaters seem to change every season \u2013 especially the young Russian women seem to come and go in a flash. This trend is often compared to men (and pairs and ice dance) where the same names top the competitions year after year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The matter of raising the age eligibility limit for seniors from 15 to 17 was in the agenda of International Skating Union\u2019s congresses already before 2022, but the doping scandal involving the youngest participant at the 2022 Olympics finally made the general opinion favorable to making the decision. The age limit for seniors<\/a> will be raised to 17 in a gradual process: 15 years still in 2022\u201323, 16 in 2023\u201324, and finally 17 in 2024\u201325.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The arguments used for the proposal concerned mostly (and rightly so) the physical and mental health of the young skaters. The winners of the Olympics since 1994 and their almost immediate retirements from competition afterwards were also often mentioned. It is apparently hoped for that all senior figure skating careers will become longer \u2013 though at the same time, it is obvious that women are the only discipline where short competitive careers could be regarded a problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I started to wonder what figure skating careers really have been like so far and whether they could be analyzed in some way. It turned out that no one really had considered this very much and so I started to experiment on what can be found out about the careers of medalists of major championships. This produced some interesting observations, but I decided to extend the analysis to all singles skaters who participated in the World Championships starting from 1947 when the series was restarted after the WWII until the 2022 Worlds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The start time is somewhat arbitrary, but there is simply more information available from that era. In addition, 1950s skating is already perhaps more easily comparable to later times than 1930s skating is. Analyzing the elite skaters makes sense as they get most attention and their activities form the ideas of skating careers in our minds (and their careers are usually well documented).<\/p>\n\n\n\n My assumption at the beginning was that things were better back in the good old days, that competitive careers lasted longer. But was the past really like that? For example, including the 1920s could have been instructive as the women\u2019s competitions at the time were heavily dominated by teenagers. Sonja Henie<\/a> (NOR) led the way: she was 14 in 1927 when she won the first of her ten World titles. Henie was accompanied on the podium by quite a few other teenagers, for example, Cecilia Colledge<\/a> (GBR, first Worlds medal at 14), Megan Taylor<\/a> (GBR, first medal at 13), Hedy Stenuf<\/a> (USA, first medal at 15), and Daphne Walker<\/a> (GBR, first medal at 14). This trend was halted by the WWII, but nothing really is new, is it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n