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Quick answers
What are the six jumps in figure skating and how do you tell them apart?
There are exactly six, and the only difference is how the skater leaves the ice. Three are toe jumps, launched by planting the free foot's toe pick: the toe loop from a back outside edge, the flip from a back inside edge, and the Lutz from a back outside edge after a long counter-rotated glide, usually into a corner. Three are edge jumps, launched from the blade alone: the Salchow from a back inside edge, the loop from a back outside edge with feet crossed, and the Axel from a forward outside edge. Because the Axel takes off facing forwards it contains an extra half turn, so a triple Axel is three and a half rotations. Base values rise in that same order.
How is figure skating actually scored?
Each skater's segment score has two halves. The Technical Element Score adds up every jump, spin and step sequence: each has a published base value, adjusted by a grade of execution that judges award from minus five to plus five as a percentage of that base value. A separate technical panel confirms what was performed, assigns levels from B to 4 for spins and steps, and applies calls for underrotation, downgrade or a wrong take-off edge. The Program Component Score then rates Composition, Presentation and Skating Skills from 0.25 to 10.00, multiplied by a factor. Deductions for falls, time violations and illegal elements are subtracted last. The short program and free skate scores are added, and the highest total wins.
What is the difference between the short program and the free skate?
The short program is 2 minutes 40 seconds and prescribes exactly seven elements: three jumping passes including a required Axel-type jump and a combination, three spins of different families, and a step sequence. Anything extra earns nothing, and a missed element cannot be replaced, so it is a compliance test under pressure. The free skate runs 4 minutes and allows up to twelve elements, including seven jumping passes, with the skater free to choose content and order. It carries roughly twice the available points and includes the second-half bonus, which multiplies the base value of the last three jumping passes by 1.1 if they start after the halfway mark. Ice dance uses a rhythm dance and free dance instead.
What is a quadruple Axel, and who has landed one?
A quadruple Axel is four and a half rotations, because the Axel is the only jump taken off facing forwards, which adds half a turn to whatever the skater completes in the air. It carries a base value of 12.50, the highest of any element in the sport, more than a triple Axel and a double Axel combined. Ilia Malinin of the United States landed the first ratified quadruple Axel at the US International Classic in Lake Placid on 14 September 2022, aged seventeen, after decades in which the jump was assumed to be beyond human capability. He has since made it a routine part of his free skate, and no other skater had landed one in competition as of the 2024-25 season.
Why did compulsory figures disappear from the sport?
For nearly two centuries skaters traced precise geometric patterns on clean ice and were judged on the marks left behind, which is where the name figure skating comes from. Figures once accounted for the majority of a competition's score, but they were slow to judge, impossible to televise, and consumed enormous amounts of ice time in training. The short program was introduced in 1973 to give broadcasters something watchable and reduce the weight of figures, and their share of the score fell repeatedly through the 1980s. The 1990 World Championships in Halifax were the last to include them. Critics argue their loss cost the sport a generation of edge quality; supporters point out that no audience ever paid to watch someone trace a circle.
What is the difference between pairs and ice dance?
Pairs is a jumping discipline performed by two people. It includes throw jumps, in which one partner launches the other into multiple rotations; twist lifts; overhead lifts in five permitted groups; the death spiral, in which one partner circles the ice with their head inches above it; and side-by-side jumps and spins judged on unison. Ice dance forbids nearly all of that. There are no throws, no jumps of more than one revolution, and no lift in which the man's hands rise above his head. Ice dance is scored on pattern dance sections with key points, twizzles, step sequences in and out of hold, dance spins and time-limited lifts. In short, pairs is about flight and ice dance is about edges.
Every figure skating competition is decided over two segments. Skaters first perform a short program with a fixed list of required elements, then a longer free skate with more freedom of construction. The two scores are added, and the highest total wins. There is no head-to-head play, no clock to beat and no opponent on the ice; the contest is entirely against a published scale of values and a panel of officials.
Since 2004 that panel has been split in two. A technical panel — a technical specialist, an assistant and a technical controller, with video review — identifies what was actually performed: which jump, how many rotations, what level of difficulty a spin or step sequence reached, and whether a jump was underrotated or launched from the wrong edge. A separate panel of judges then awards each element a grade of execution and scores the program components. At ISU championships nine judges sit, the highest and lowest marks for each element are discarded, and the rest are averaged.
Scoring at a glance
Core rules
The two-segment structure
Senior singles and pairs skate a short program of 2 minutes 40 seconds, plus or minus 10 seconds, containing seven required elements, and a free skate of 4 minutes containing up to twelve. Ice dance replaces these with a rhythm dance of 2 minutes 50 seconds, built on a rhythm and a pattern the ISU assigns each season, and a free dance of 4 minutes. Scores from both segments are added. A poor short program can usually be recovered, because the free skate carries roughly twice the available points, but the starting order for the free skate is set by short-program placement, in reverse.
The Technical Element Score
Every element has a published base value in the ISU Scale of Values. A quadruple Axel is worth 12.50, a quadruple Lutz 11.50, a quadruple toe loop 9.50, a triple Axel 8.00 and a double Axel 3.30. Spins, step sequences and dance elements are graded Level B or Levels 1 to 4 depending on how many difficult features the technical panel recognises, with each level carrying a higher base value. The Technical Element Score is the sum of every element's base value after the judges' grade of execution has been applied.
Grade of execution
Each judge awards every element a grade of execution from -5 to +5, a scale introduced for the 2018-19 season to replace the old -3 to +3. The GOE is converted into points as a percentage of that element's base value, so a plus-four on a quadruple Lutz is worth far more than a plus-four on a double Axel. Positive GOE requires specific quality bullets — height and distance, a difficult entry, effortless flow out, matching the music — while a fall on a jump caps the GOE at -5 automatically.
Program components
Alongside the technical score, judges rate the program itself on three components, each from 0.25 to 10.00 in quarter-point steps: Composition, Presentation and Skating Skills. The ISU cut this from five components in the 2022-23 season, folding transitions, performance and interpretation into the surviving three. The raw component marks are multiplied by a factor that differs by segment and discipline, so that components and technical content carry broadly comparable weight. At the very top of the sport, component scores cluster tightly in the nines, which is why the technical score usually decides medals.
The six jumps
Figure skating has exactly six jumps, distinguished entirely by how the skater leaves the ice. Three are toe jumps, launched by driving the free foot's toe pick into the ice: the toe loop, the flip and the Lutz. Three are edge jumps, launched purely from the skating blade: the Salchow, the loop and the Axel. The Axel is the only jump entered facing forward, which means it contains an extra half rotation — a triple Axel is three and a half revolutions. Base values rise in the order toe loop, Salchow, loop, flip, Lutz, Axel.
The repetition rule
Known informally as the Zayak rule after Elaine Zayak, who performed six triple toe loops in her 1982 world-title free skate, this limits how often a skater can bank the same jump. In the free skate only two triple or quadruple jumps may be repeated, and any repeat must appear inside a combination or sequence. A quadruple and a triple of the same jump count as a repetition of each other. Extra jumping passes beyond the permitted seven, or repeats that break the rule, receive no value at all, which makes layout planning a genuine strategic exercise.
Spins, steps and choreographic sequences
A free skate carries three spins, a step sequence and a choreographic sequence alongside its jumps. Spins must hold at least eight revolutions in a basic position — upright, sit, camel — and gain levels through difficult variations such as the Biellmann, the layback, changes of foot and changes of edge. Step sequences are judged on turns, edge quality and how completely they cover the ice. The choreographic sequence has no required content and no level: it is scored purely on execution, and it is where a skater is meant to answer the music rather than the scale of values.
Pairs and ice dance
Pair skating adds elements no single skater performs: throw jumps, in which the man launches his partner into the air; twist lifts, where she is thrown, rotates and is caught; overhead lifts in five permitted groups; the death spiral, where she circles the ice with her head inches above it on a deep edge; and side-by-side jumps and spins judged on unison. Ice dance forbids all of it. There are no throws, no jumps of more than one revolution, and no lift in which the man's hands rise above his head — the discipline is judged on edges, twizzles, holds and choreography.
Fouls & penalties
Falls
A fall costs a flat deduction on top of the negative grade of execution the element already receives. In the short program each fall is worth minus one point. In the free skate the penalty escalates: the first and second falls cost one point each, the third and fourth two points each, and the fifth and any subsequent fall three points each. Because a fallen quadruple jump still banks around seventy per cent of a very large base value, aggressive skaters often profit from attempting and missing.
Underrotation, downgrade and edge calls
The technical panel reviews every jump on video. A jump short of a full rotation by more than a quarter turn is marked underrotated and receives seventy per cent of its base value. One short by more than half a turn is downgraded and scored as the jump with one fewer revolution. A Lutz launched from the wrong inside edge, or a flip from the wrong outside edge, draws an edge call that cuts the base value; an unclear edge draws an attention mark with no reduction.
Time and interruption violations
Programs must fall within ten seconds of the prescribed length, and every five seconds over or under costs one point. Starting more than thirty seconds after being called to the ice costs a point. If a skater stops mid-program, an interruption of more than ten seconds costs one point, more than twenty seconds two, and more than thirty seconds three; after three minutes the referee terminates the program. These are small numbers that decide large events, because elite margins are routinely under two points.
Illegal elements
Somersaults were banned from competition in 1976 after Terry Kubicka performed a backflip at the Innsbruck Olympics, and stayed banned for 48 years until the ISU legalised them for the 2024-25 season. Other prohibitions remain: lying flat or kneeling on the ice for any sustained period, and in ice dance, lifts above the shoulder, jumps of more than one revolution and separations longer than the permitted count. An illegal element costs a deduction and, in ice dance, invalidates the element entirely.
Costume, prop and music violations
Costumes must be modest, dignified and appropriate for athletic competition, and may not be theatrical to the point of being a prop; decorations that fall onto the ice cost a point. Props of any kind are forbidden. Music with vocals was banned until 2014 and is now permitted in every discipline. The deduction for a costume or prop violation is one point, applied by the referee, and it has decided placements at national championships more often than most spectators realise.
Doping and eligibility
Figure skating falls under the World Anti-Doping Code, enforced by the ISU and the International Testing Agency. The sport's defining case is Kamila Valieva, who tested positive for trimetazidine before the Beijing 2022 Olympics; the Court of Arbitration for Sport imposed a four-year ban in January 2024 backdated to 25 December 2021, disqualifying her results and stripping Russia of the Olympic team gold, which went to the United States. Eligibility rules also set a minimum senior age, raised from 15 to 17 after a 2022 ISU Congress vote.
Match format
At a championship, singles and pairs skaters draw into groups for the short program, warm up six at a time, and skate in a drawn order. The top twenty-four in singles and top sixteen in pairs advance to the free skate, where the starting order is reversed by placement, so the leaders skate last in the final group. Ice dance follows the same two-segment shape with a rhythm dance and a free dance. Total score decides everything; there is no tie-break by segment except a published rule favouring the higher free-segment score.
The Olympic team event, introduced at Sochi 2014, runs on a different logic. Ten nations enter one entry per discipline, points are awarded by placement in each segment, the field is cut to five after the short programs, and the country with the most points wins. It rewards depth rather than a single star, which is why the United States, Japan, Canada and Russia have dominated it, and it has produced the sport's most consequential doping dispute, with the Beijing 2022 medals not awarded on site and finally reallocated in 2024.
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