I is for Ice Dance

 

For my A-Z challenge this year I'm taking a look at sports. Olympic ones, ancient ones, weird ones and some just non sporting sports.  I'm not athletic or even particularly fit but there are some sports I enjoy watching and in composing my posts I've come across many that I'd never heard of.  Join me in a sporting journey from the comfort of your couch (or wherever else you're reading this) and thanks for stopping by.


I love watching Ice Dancing. Of course technically it's part of the Olympic sport of Figure Skating but I'm using it for I.  My blog, my rules lol!  Plus the only other Olympic sport for I was Ice Hockey and I've already covered Hockey.  That gave me enough problems on solid ground.  I'm useless at Ice Skating so no way would I be any good with a hockey stick on ice.  I'd be using the stick as a support to keep me upright.  But Ice Dancing works for me - for many years I danced competitively - Ballet, Tap and Modern.  I actually qualified at Teaching level in Tap but never kept it up once I left school and started work.  I find it amazing the way skaters can move around the ice so gracefully and in time with the music.  I was a great fan of Torvill & Dean and their Bolero routine at the Sarajevo games in 1984 was just so special.

I do enjoy watching Figure skating too but I think the emphasis in their routines leans too heavily on how many complicated jumps and combinations are executed during the routine and the finesse of interpreting the music gets a bit lost. Just my opinion. (Plus they sometimes choose some strange pieces of music!)

There aren't too many I sports. There's Ice Climbing but you know how I feel about the cold. (Although I have been skiing a few times. 3 counts as a few right?)

There's Iaido and Iaijutsu which are both Japanese Martial Arts involving swords. Definitely not for me.

Apparently Ice Yachting is also a thing as is Immersion Finswimming. Yes, swimming with fins, underwater. If God had wanted us to be fish he would have provided us with built in fins!

Finally I give you the Icosathlon (in my case it would definitely be finally as I think it would be the death of me) .

An Icosathlon is like a double decathlon except it's not 10 events done twice it's 20 events. Like a Decathlon it's run over 2 days. But, they do build in an hour's pause each day so I guess that helps. The events included are:

Discus, Hammer Throwing, Shot Putt and Javelin. Long Jump, Triple Jump, High Jump and Pole Vault.

100m, 200m, 400m, 800m, 1500m, 3000m, 5000m and 10,000m

110m Hurdles, 200m Hurdles, 400m Hurdles and 3000m Steeplechase.

The only event they don't seem to do is the Marathon. I'm sure if they split it over 3 days they could manage that too!

It's making me feel exhausted just thing about it. What about you?