THE HISTORY OF FREESTYLE ICE SKATING

Hey guys! What's up? I'm Patrick from AlpineIce Freestyle and today I'm going to talk about the history of freestyle ice skating. Let's go! If we are talking about the history of anything or anyone, what are we doing if we need more information? We type it in google, have a look at wikipedia and we got all the information we need. But in freestyle ice skating there is no wikipedia and if you google it you just find videos or websites but nothing about the real history of freestyle ice skating. So for this video I had to do a lot of research on my own. I got in contact with some freestyle ice skating friends and pioneers of this sport, for example my friend Florian Herpel, greetings to you Florian, and they helped me to find some footage you haven't seen before about this sport and then I also did a research on my own on youtube and some internet pages and I found out where the first steps of freestyle ice skating were made and where the idea, the first tricks for this sport were born and how the sport developed to that what it is today. At first let's talk about the origin of freestyle ice skating, the sports where freestyle ice skating was born of. Ice freestyle is developed out of a mixture of many different sports. Let's start with ice hockey. Ice hockey, the first match as we know it today, was played in 1875. In 1917 the NHL was founded. So NHL players in training sometimes they develop tricks, for example the triangle and the grapevine as we know those tricks today were born by NHL players in the 1920s to show their skills to other players. It's comparable to the round the world move in football. It has nothing to do with the final match but everybody who sees a guy doing this trick knows oh he's pretty good at his sport. So those tricks are just representative for the good ice skating skills of hockey players that time and it is today because most of the professional hockey players are able to do those easy tricks. Figure skating. Also figure skaters developed tricks we know today in freestyle ice skating. So figure skaters call freestyle or called freestyle at that time tricks which look good, feel good, bring fun but are not useful for the final competition. Because in figure skating there are rules who forbid some of the freestyle ice skating tricks. For example ground touches. Roller freestyle and roller slalom where freestyle ice skating got his cones moves from were developed in the early 2000s. But freestyle skating on streets or rollerblading, for example rollerblade was invented in 1983 so the classical inline skate we know today. So they did the first tricks with those skates in the middle of the 80s. But the first tricks with small wheels mounted under the foot are made in circus in the early 1920s. Ice cross downhill was invented in 2001 by an energy drink company. This sport brought the speed and the sharp turns and the hard breaks into freestyle ice skating. There are some freestyle ice skaters who do nothing else except going very fast, going very sharp turns, doing very hard breaks, ground touches and everything. So some people just think that footwork and those kind of jumps and ground touching skills and everything are freestyle ice skating. But for me and also for a lot of guys freestyle ice skating is going fast and doing sharp turns and hard breaks. And there are freestylers which call themselves freestylers but they just go in speed skating and doing tricks, small tricks like jumping while they do this speed skating. Breakdance has nothing to do with skating or with the ice but some of the basic freestyle ice skating tricks were developed out of this sport. And the beginning of freestyle ice skating was also developed out of some breakdance moves. For example the donut and handstand moves come out of breakdance, a sport which is developed in the early 1970s in New York City. Tricking also pretty important for freestyle ice skating is a sport which has its focus on pretty cool high motion jumps. For example the butterfly or the b-twist of my friend Nandi are developed out of tricking moves. And of course what's pretty important for freestyle ice skating is the creativity of the freestylers who watch the moves out of a different sport and bring it on the hockey blades. The beginning of freestyle ice skating as we know it today. The first steps of the modern ice freestyle as we know it today were taken in early 2005 by Dean Jansen and Florian Herpel on the ice rink called Eiszeit Karlsruhe in Karlsruhe, Germany. And after a few years developing their tricks they founded the first freestyle ice skating team, Ice Freestyler Karlsruhe, short IFK. They were followed in late 2007 by Xist founded by Rixus J and Xtreme United in early 2008. So now we got a team in Germany, a team in Belgium and a team in France and those teams were also the first teams which got in contact with each other and decided to do the first meetups and show and share their skills. IFK for example started to do freestyle with a combination of moves they have seen in figure skating and breakdance and tried to bring that together on hockey blades. And I think it's not that different to that what Xist or United for example did in their first days. And it didn't take too long that IFK was asked if they wanted to do shows and give lessons. So the guys from Karlsruhe decided to bring their sport on a completely new level. IFK had a big bit of luck because their popularity has grown out of videos. For example this video is the first freestyle ice skating video ever made but it was not made by the Ice Freestyler Karlsruhe. They met a guy on the ice while they were doing their tricks and this guy asked them oh you're doing such great tricks can you do it in front of the camera and they did. And this guy then started to edit this clips together to the first freestyle ice skating video. And this guy who edited the first video of the Ice Freestyler Karlsruhe is still the editor of this group till the present day. So Ice Freestyle is a sport which became popular and famous due to videos especially on YouTube. The oldest freestyle ice skating content on YouTube is this clip of IFK uploaded on February 19 2007 which shows Florian Herpel doing a handstand and a donut on ice. And this video is the oldest freestyle ice skating video on YouTube and the first freestyle ice skating content ever on this platform. There are way much older freestyle ice skating videos of IFK but they were uploaded on MyVideo a platform which was more popular than YouTube on this time. But nowadays MyVideo is not existing anymore so most of the content is gone. IFK first uploaded on their own YouTube channel on February 9 2010. They also had the first television appearance ever of a freestyle ice skating team on the 14th of December 2010 on ZDF in German television. Starting with that IFK got popular in Germany and all over Europe. The same as the sport Freestyle Ice Skating did. Orixas J, the founder of the extreme ice skating team Hustle, short OXIST, created his channel on July 9 2007. The first upload, a cone skating video, took place on February 2 2008. I started to develop my first freestyle ice skating tricks in November 2010 without knowing anything about OXIST or IFK. I just did the same as everybody at that time did. I saw some cool moves and thought hmm let's bring them on the ice. The big boom. How this sport finally became that popular. Freestyle became more and more popular by people who watched other people doing this cool tricks and tried to copy it on their own ice rinks. But finally the popularity exploded through YouTube. The video that started to spread this sport all around the world finally and still the most watched freestyle ice skating video is Freestyle Ice Skating uploaded on April 4 2011 by Najadeh Kovishak. Fun fact. Nandi, the creator of this video, was not sure if he should call the video Freestyle Ice Skating or Extreme Ice Skating but I think he made the right decision finally. With this video he made a sport popular he never heard about before. And now he creates some of the best freestyle ice skating contents on YouTube. With this video the sport became more and more popular all around Europe and the world. So the people started to learn this sport by themselves and tried to create their own content and uploaded it on YouTube. XIA Lifestyle started in 2013. Orixas J, also the founder of OXIST, started with this project to share his passion all around the world by doing representative videos, travelings and organizing events. One of the pioneers of this sport became the ambassador of Ice Freestyle. I think everybody knows XIA Lifestyle. A lot of freestylers got this logo printed on their t-shirts as I have or have bought one of those XIA Lifestyle logo t-shirts which are sold by Jay or for example me I also wear this bracelet with the XIA Lifestyle logo on it. Unfortunately Jay, one of the most important persons for this sport, is not active at the moment by virtue of his leg injury but I really hope that Jay can make it back on the ice soon. Ice Freestyle today! Freestyle has earned his place in the world of winter sports with different styles and people who spread it all around the globe. It's already officially acknowledged as a sport in France and I hope other countries will follow this soon. Battles, competitions, travelings and especially meetups bring the people who share this passion together and let the community grow every day. And the end is not in sight luckily. Alright guys, this is it. This was my video about the freestyle ice skating history. If you liked the video give it a thumbs up and if you have some extra information for me or I have a mistake in my video let me know that in the comments below. Also don't forget to subscribe to my channel if you don't want to miss anything in the future and feel free to follow me on Instagram. See ya!