Description: Just in time to enjoy the Opening Ceremonies of the Games of the 23rd Winter Olympiad, today we have a bonus episode with our guest Ryan Stevens. Ryan is the producer of the Skate Guard Blog and was our guest for the Hello London episode. Ryan gives a primer on the history of Olympic Figure Skating and what to look forward to on the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeong Chang South Korea.

 

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Learn More About our Guest:

Ryan Stevens of the Skate Guard Blog

http://skateguard1.blogspot.com/

Ryan’s Free Definitive Biography of Belita Jepson-Turner

http://skateguard1.blogspot.com/2017/06/all-best-belita-definitive-biography-of.html

A Short Documentary on the “Battle of the Carmens”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiCLlAT0Idc

Music Provided by:

"Crossing the Chasm" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Begin Transcript:

This is beyond the big screen podcast with your host Steve Guerra and Agoura Podcast Network member.

Welcome back to this very special bonus episode of Beyond the big screen. Today we aren't specifically talking about a movie but instead we're revisiting a topic we discussed in a previous episode. Figure skating through the movie. Hello London. The 2013 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang South Korea are upon us and I am very happy to be joined by Ryan Stevens of the Schaik blog to give us a little primer on Olympic figure skating. Thank you so much for joining us today Ryan.

Oh you're most welcome. It's a pleasure to speak with you.

Ryan Stephens is a former competitive figure skater and S.F.A Skate Canada judge. He's been writing about figure skating history since 2013. Ryan has media credentials with Skate Canada covering the 2016 Canadian Tire national skating championships in Halifax as well as conducting interviews with many of the top figure skaters past and present. And in June 2017 Ryan released a full length biography of British actress figure skater and dancer Bellita Jepson. Turner who is a contemporary of Sanya Henie who we discussed in the Hello London episode which will be linked to this and the Schoenaerts for this episode as well as the links to Schaik guard so I highly suggest you go back and listen to that episode because it was a lot of fun and very informative. Before we get rolling Can you just tell us a little bit about yourself and your blogger.

Absolutely. So I'm based in Halifax Nova Scotia. I'm here in Canada. For those of you that are down in the States and I write about skating history all around the world and I cried about a little bit I bounced around a little bit a released three bloggers a week covering a whole range of topics everything from how schooling might have developed in a certain country to a biography of a skater to look back at an event. So we just kind of bump bump around a little bit and it's really a lot of fun.

Yeah that sounds like it that it gives you a lot of avenues to discover and explore different areas of the sport. Absolutely. Now can you just give us maybe a little bit of history or context to figure skating as an Olympic sport.

Certainly. So the first time that figure skating was actually included in the Olympic Games was in 1998 it was included in the summer Olympic Games in London England and there were three categories pardon me for categories. There were men's and women's singles skating pairs skating and a category that was only ever held at that first Olympics called special figures were skaters would trace out very intricate designs on the ice that they created themselves. And that was ...