Figure skating at the 1920 Summer Olympics
Figure skating at the 1920 Summer Olympics
Three figure skating events were contested at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, but they were held in April 1920, four months before most of the other Olympic events at the 1920 Games. The figure skating competition took place at the Ice Palace of Antwerp.
Quick Facts
- Title
- Figure skating at the VII Summer Olympics
- Comptype
- Olympic Games
- Championmen
- SWE Gillis Grafström
- Championladies
- SWE Magda Julin
- Championpairs
- FIN Ludowika Jakobsson / Walter Jakobsson
- Previouscomp
- 1908 Summer Olympics
- Nextcomp
- 1924 Winter Olympics
Facts from the source article.
Lore & Background
Gillis Grafström of Sweden captured the first of three consecutive Olympic gold medals in the men's single event in 1920. Theresa Weld, who came in third place in the ladies' single event, was the first North American skater to win an Olympic medal. 1908 gold medalist Ulrich Salchow finished fourth. At age 44, bronze medalist Martin Stixrud is the oldest man to ever win an Olympic medal in an individual winter event.
Reader's Guide
Despite receiving no first place votes from the judges in the women's singles, Magda Julin of Sweden captured the gold on the strength of three second-place ordinals. She was three months pregnant at the time. Bronze medalist Phyllis Johnson from the UK had captured the silver medal at the 1908 Olympics with a different partner.
A Century of Olympic Ice
Figure skating has been a fixture of the Olympic program since 1908, making it one of the Games' longest-running winter disciplines. Across 26 Olympic Games, skaters representing 30 different National Olympic Committees have collectively earned 301 medals, a tally split almost evenly into 101 gold, 100 silver, and 100 bronze. The competition has spanned six distinct events throughout its history, though the men's special figures discipline, which was contested only in that inaugural 1908 appearance, was dropped after a single edition. The sole winner of that one-off event was Russian Nikolai Panin, whose victory gave his nation its first-ever Olympic gold medal in any sport. Since then, the program has settled into five standing competitions: men's singles, women's singles, pair skating, ice dance, and the team event, the latter having joined the Olympic lineup only in recent decades.
Legends of the Podium
A small group of skaters have etched their names into Olympic history through extraordinary medal hauls. Canadian ice dancers Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir stand alone as the only figure skaters to collect five Olympic medals—three gold and two silver—across their competitive careers. They also share a unique distinction with American skaters Nathan Chen and Alysa Liu: all three are the only skaters to win two gold medals at a single Olympic Games. Four-medal achievements belong to Sweden's Gillis Grafström, Russia's Evgeni Plushenko, and Japan's Yuma Kagiyama and Kaori Sakamoto. Perhaps most remarkable is the feat of winning three consecutive Olympic titles, a feat accomplished by only three skaters in the sport's entire history: Grafström in men's singles, Norway's Sonja Henie in women's singles, and the Soviet Union's Irina Rodnina in pair skating.
Scandals and Re-allocated Medals
Olympic figure skating has not been immune to controversy, and several medal results have been overturned or complicated by scandal. At the 1964 Games, German pair skaters Marika Kilius and Hans-Jürgen Bäumler were stripped of their silver after it emerged they had signed a professional contract before the competition. The medals were briefly re-allocated to Canada and the United States, but after a lengthy appeal, the IOC ultimately declared in November 2014 that both the German and Canadian pairs were legitimate silver medalists, with the Americans receiving bronze. A far more dramatic incident unfolded at the 2002 Winter Games, where allegations of vote-swapping involving a French judge led to the discarding of her scores. Canadian pair Jamie Salé and David Pelletier were upgraded to gold, while the Russian pair Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze retained their medals. The French judge and her federation president each received three-year suspensions from the ISU.
The Team Event and the Valieva Storm
The team event, first introduced at the 2014 Games, represents the newest addition to Olympic figure skating. It weaves together all four individual disciplines—men's singles, women's singles, pairs, and ice dance—into a single competition where the nation accumulating the most placement points claims gold. The 2022 edition became mired in a prolonged legal and anti-doping dispute centered on Russian skater Kamila Valieva, whose December 2021 sample tested positive for trimetazidine. The Russian Anti-Doping Agency cleared her in February 2022, a decision appealed by the IOC, WADA, and the ISU. The Court of Arbitration for Sport initially permitted her to compete in the individual event, citing her minor status. However, in January 2024, CAS retroactively disqualified her for four years, and the ISU subtracted her points from Russia's team score. The United States and Japan were upgraded to gold and silver, with Russia demoted to bronze. The American and Japanese teams finally received their medals at a ceremony in Paris in August 2024.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where and when did figure skating take place at the 1920 Summer Olympics?
The skating competitions were staged at the Ice Palace of Antwerp back in April 1920, roughly four months before the rest of the Olympic program kicked off.
What events were on the figure skating program at the 1920 Antwerp Games?
Three disciplines were contested: men's singles, ladies' singles, and pairs skating.
Why was figure skating held at the 1920 Summer Olympics instead of a Winter Games?
The Winter Olympics had not yet been created, so winter sports were folded into the Summer program, just as they had been during figure skating's Olympic debut in London in 1908.
How many skaters and countries competed in figure skating at the 1920 Summer Olympics?
A total of 26 skaters—14 men and 12 women—represented eight different nations across the three events.
What made the 1920 Antwerp figure skating competition historically significant?
It was the second time figure skating appeared at the Olympic Games and produced several notable firsts and records for the sport.
More in Figure skating at the Olympic Games 1-24
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