Jackson Haines considered the father of modern figure skating.
Jackson Haines (1840–1875) was an American ballet dancer and figure skater who is regarded as the father of modern figure skating. Haines, a New Yorker who had studied ballet, was the first skater to put form into figure skating After studying dance in Europe as a young teen-ager, he returned to the United States when he was seventeen and he began to incorporate dance movements into skating with musical accompaniment.
Figure skating was a stiff, even awkward exercise in its early years. At this time, figure skating was performed in the "English style", which was rigid and formal. His ideas met with little enthusiasm until he founded a skating school in Vienna in 1863. Although his skating style (called International) was rejected in the United States and England, he became a great popular success in Sweden, Austria, and elsewhere on the Continent.
His style of skating included athletic jumps, leaps, turns, and spins. Brought Ballet and Athletics to the Ice: Haines was the first skater to incorporate ballet and dance movements into ice-skating. He traveled to Europe to show off and teach his figure skating ideas. He lived in Vienna for a time, where his skating style became very popular.
Figure skating on ice was still in its infancy and had not yet developed as a competitive sport. For about 20 years, figure skating was tangled in a controversy between purists, mostly from England, and adherents of "fancy skating" as pioneered by Jackson Haines.
The purists advocated the sheer technique of tracing figures properly, as opposed to the flamboyant free skating that Haines had developed. Haines' style was a complete contrast to the English style; he used his ballet background to create graceful programs, and introduced accompanying music (a new concept at the time).
In 1898, the world figure skating championships were held in England, and many English skaters decided that they liked the "International Style" after all. The result was a compromise: Figure skating competition combined compulsory figures with free skating.
Haines created many new skating moves including the sit spin and, because the strap-on skates of that day proved inadequate for his extraordinary needs, he invented a revolutionary new blade, which was solidly affixed to the boot with screws and had a toe pick at the front to aid his jumping and spinning.
He arranged many dance steps suitable for the ice rink, like the "Jackson Haines Valse. Every good figure skater can do a Jackson Haines spin, the showy sit-spin that has helped make ice shows a popular U.
Haines was the inventor of the sit spin, one of the three basic spin types.
Haines died in Finland and was buried there.
