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The Sports
Skating is the act of sliding over an even surface of ice on ice skates boots with fixed metal edges. Earlier people skated on natural ice surfaces, such as frozen canals, lakes, ponds, and rivers. Today, machinery make ice in indoor rinks is available, making skating an all year round sport.
The Skates
Nowadays skates are preferred by professional players have blades about 1 mm thick and generally its lengths ranges from 13 to 18 inches permitting the skater a more standard range of movement.
The Rink
Skaters perform on a two-lane elliptical, identical in dimension outdoor or indoor rinks. Rules of the International Skating Union standardise the length of rink to 400 m for the professionals. Tracks of other, non-standard lengths, such 200 or 250 m are also employed for training and domestic competitions. On standard tracks, the curves have a radius of 25-26 m in the inner track, and each track is 3-4 m broad.
Below are the major skating arenas or centers of the world
Canada Olympic Oval
The Oval is considered as a main speed skating centre, and a favoured training center for skating teams round the globe.The blend of the climate-controlled facility and the impacts of high altitude have been acknowledged for the fast ice surface.It was during the speed skating events of the Olympic Winter Games in 1988 that The Oval gained the title of "the fastest ice on Earth".
Utah Olympic Oval
The Utah Olympic Oval is situated southwest of Salt Lake City in the urban regions of Kearns. The Oval hosted the long track skating games for the 2002 Winter Olympics. Due to its high altitude (1423 m) and the associated low air recalcitrance, ten Olympic and eight world conducted this skating center.
Bislett Stadium
Bislett is Norway's most famous sports complex worldwide, with 15 skating world records having been set here.Despite its low-lying altitude, Bislett was on many occasions able to offer ice of a great grade, resulting in ten single distance world records and five overall world records. The biggest speed skating event at Bislett was 1952 Olympics.
Sportforum Hohenschönhausen
Sportforum Hohenschönhausen of Berlin is a multi-use sports skating center complex in Hohenschönhausen, Germany. Opened on 17 November 1986, it was the first indoor skating rink of the world and had witnessed many world records.
Thialf
Thialf is a rink in Heerenveen, Netherlands, mainly used for skating.The covered stadium, which has a seating capacity of 12,500 people, opened on 17 November 1987. World skating records were broken at Thialf, due to the indoor conditions of Theialf skating center. |
