Figure skating is beautiful on ice, brutal on body

Pulled hamstrings, stress fractures, battered spines and arthritic hips are among the ailments elite skaters face.

Olympic champion Tara Lipinski says she struggled with back pain for years before her 1998 Olympic win. She recalls taking days off from practice hoping the pain would subside, but it never did.

"Nothing seemed to help, whether it was therapy or taking time off the ice," she said. "I skated in a lot of pain for a long time."

Lipinski, who now is a figure skating commentator, eventually had surgery to repair a torn labrum (cartilage) in her hip. The labrum cushions the hip joint to help it move easily.

The surgery, she says, saved her professional career and ended her pain.

While figure skating is not a contact sport, like football or ice hockey, the injuries can be just as brutal.

"Ice skating is so artistic, people view it as closer to golf as opposed to ice hockey," said Dr. Mark Adickes, medical director of Memorial Hermann's Sports Medicine Institute. "But when it comes to injuries, it's closer to hockey. Skaters reach an elite level at such a young age and exert so much power that injuries after their careers are over are common, especially spine and hip injuries."

Adickes said the jarring from landing jumps, more than falling, puts a tremendous amount of stress on the hip and back. And because skaters land on the same leg jump after jump, years of training can damage the spine's alignment.

Adickes estimates at least 25 percent of elite skaters will have significant injuries.

Lipinski's hip injury also was misdiagnosed for many years, even after repeat MRIs.

"No one could figure it out. I had a million different answers to what it was," she said.

After the surgery by a specialist in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Lipinski was back in the professional ice-show circuit in record time.

Although figure skaters are doing tougher and more complex jumps than 20 years ago, there is still not enough data to correlate the acrobatics with injuries.

Lipinski believes sport can't get much more complex for female skaters.

"The triple-triple (jump) is about where we're staying now," she said. "In a way, that's probably good for the bodies. I don't really know how much more you can do. We went from singles (jumps), to doubles to triples and triple-triples. Physically, how much more can a woman's body do? How much is humanly possible?"

Some in the industry argue the skater's boot compounds the chance of injury.

A standard skate is made of stiff leather that immobilizes the ankle so the skater can glide and land on a 1 8-inch blade without collapsing at the ankle. Until the early 1990s, the skates weren't considered a problem because skaters spent a large portion of their time working on compulsories (figure eight maneuvers). Since they are no longer required for major competitions, skaters began to spend more time on acrobatic jumps and spins.

Some experts say a typical skating jump produces a force eight to 10 times the skater's body weight.