Related Links: Kwan aims for third Skate Canada title Five world champions at Skate Canada Goebel pushes envelope in men's skating Kwan, Yagudin win Skate America Canadian pair score upset at Skate America Forum: Does the ISU need to redefine its rules on costumes?
	T O P   N E W S

Is figure skating supposed to be an athletic competition, or a competition to see who can get away with wearing the most outlandish outfit?

According to the ISU regulations, "the clothing of the competitors must be modest, dignified and appropriate for athletic competition -- not garish or theatrical in design." But you'd never know it by looking at competitors in some recent events.

Some of the female skaters seem to think that if a few beads and sequins are good, more must be better -- not to mention feathers, tassels, ribbons, and scarves. Some of the outfits are so loaded with glitter and trimmings that the skaters look more like Christmas trees than athletes. One wonders how they can skate at all in such heavily encrusted clothing.

Male skaters are usually more discreet in their use of sequins and beads, but that doesn't mean that they don't wear costumes that aren't distracting in other ways.

For his short program at Skate America last week, Alexei Yagudin wore an outfit that had a design of a hand playing a piano keyboard on the chest, another piano keyboard section over one hip on the skirt of his jacket, and the designs of various other musical instruments on the legs and sleeves of the outfit. The overall effect was similar to the "dazzle" camouflage that was used on ships in World War II: It confuses the eye by breaking up the line of his body. It's hard to understand why Yagudin dresses like this when a less visually "busy" and distracting costume would show off his skating to much better effect.

It's the ice dancers, though, who are the leaders of excess and bad taste in costume design. With the controversy that continually rages about whether ice dancing is really a sport that belongs in the Olympics, one would think that dancers would try to take more care to present themselves as serious athletes instead of as over-the-top theatrical performers. But they seem to be heading in exactly the opposite direction.

Last season, for example, Angelika Krylova wore an ugly outfit with a cubist-like rendition of a cat -- one eye on the front, the other on the back -- complete with "whiskers" and a "tail" spiraling down one leg. The "tail," in particular, seems to have set off a mini-fad this season for female dancers to have ribbons and ruffles and other distracting doodads wrapped around their legs.

The ISU has objected to sheer outfits like the one worn by ice dancer Maya Usova. Her partner is Evgeny Platov. (AP)

Even worse is the trend for dancers to wear costumes with bodies that consist entirely of sheer or semi-sheer flesh-colored fabric with a few sequins or appliques in strategic places. It's hardly good for the image of figure skating as a legitimate sport when the skaters insist on dressing themselves like performers in a burlesque show.

This particular fad has even made the ISU wince. Late last season, the ISU ice dance technical committee issued a ruling that "excessive" use of nude-look fabric was immodest and unsuitable for athletic competition, and "inviting" judges to take a deduction.

But, based on what the dancers were wearing at Skate America, this ruling hasn't discouraged them. Even worse, the fad is spreading beyond dance to the female singles skaters too; Yulia Soldatova wore just such a horror for her long program at Skate America, for example.

On top of that, some of the dancers seem to have decided that it's not enough to wear costumes that look topless -- they've got to go without a bottom, too. One unfortunate competitor at Skate America was apparently wearing only sheer tights and no briefs under her dress, which caused more than a few raised eyebrows.

In fact, the ISU regulations don't require women to wear briefs or pants at all, but they do require women to wear a skirt, which is in itself an insanely stupid requirement for athletic competition. Rather than celebrating women's strength and power as athletes, in ISU competition women are forced to disguise their athleticism by dressing up as "ladies" and conforming to an unnecessarily restricted, femme concept of what skating ought to be.

This paradox has provided endless fodder for analysis by non-skating feminists who keep finding all sorts of absurd sexual metaphors in skating. For feminists who are actively involved in the sport as participants, both the clothing restrictions and the excess baggage associated with them can be exasperating.

In any case, the skirt rule seems particularly pointless given by what passes as a "skirt" these days. A few years ago, Olga Markova wore a gold lamé costume whose "skirt" consisted only of a few pieces of string tied around her hips. Maria Butyrskaya for two seasons wore a white dress with a "skirt" that was almost completely transparent. Nicole Bobek routinely wears outfits with a "skirt" so short it amounts to nothing more than a ruffle over her hips.

It seems ludicrous that the ISU considers these outfits more "modest, dignified, and appropriate for athletic competition" than, for example, a plain, practical unitard that covers the entire body.

The ISU has pointless clothing regulations that affect men, too: Men are required to wear trousers and not tights. Of course, this hasn't stopped some competitors from wearing the world's tightest "trousers," or tights with cuffs that everyone pretends are "trousers."

Anjelika Krylova wore this cat costume while winning the ice dancing competition at the 1999 world championships. (Allsport)

The rule banning tights for men seems particularly ridiculous because, for the first 50 years or so of organized skating competition, tights or leggings -- combined with a jacket or sweater and tie -- were the traditional competition clothing for men. Trousers for skaters didn't even come into style until after World War II.

In short, it seems as if the ISU's clothing regulations seem to be focusing on all the wrong things. Given their recent track record on tinkering with the regulations, it seems likely that any attempts to "fix" the problems relating to inappropriate costumes might only make things worse. If fashion crimes in skating are going to be stamped out, the initiative has to come directly from the skaters instead.

In 1983, Scott Hamilton decided that he'd had enough of flamboyant, glittery costumes and adopted a plain, one-piece outfit similar to the suits worn by speed skaters. "No way did I want to want my potential Olympic moment to be marred by a costume that I would be embarrassed to look at 10 years down the road," he wrote in his autobiography. Not only did dressing like a serious athlete reflect his own attitude toward his skating, but he thought it might "get cynics to start taking figure skating seriously as a sport."

What skating needs now are more Scott Hamiltons who are willing to "just say no" to ugly, tasteless, and overdone costumes. Theatrical-style costumes might be all right for theatrical skating performances, but for competition they've got to go.

Come on, folks. These ridiculous costumes distract attention from your skill as athletes and make figure skating the laughing stock of the sports world. Besides, do you want to look back in 10 years and be embarrassed by what you were wearing?