How to watch men’s figure skating at the Winter Olympics: A guide to understanding and appreciating the sport

2018 will mark the 110th anniversary of figure skating in the Olympics. It first appeared in the Summer Olympics of London 1908 before becoming a staple winter competition in Antwerp, 1920. It is the oldest winter Olympic sport.

Skating was first invented by the Dutch as a way to travel between villages in the 13th century but became what it is today after Edward Bushnell, an American, added steel-bladed skates in 1850 and Jackson Haines turned it into a sport involving dance and ballet in the 1860s.

It’s an intricate balance of technical skill, ambition, competitiveness, and beauty. It’s a sport that combines art with efficiency, which makes it incredibly difficult to perform and even more difficult to judge. This year’s event will be the first one to use music with lyrics, which adds another element on which the skaters will be judged.

Nathan Chen, an American, is the favorite to win gold this year.

All competitions can be watched live on NBC or on NBCOlympics.com and the free NBC Sports app.

Thursday, Feb. 8
8 p.m.: Team Event: men’s short programs

Monday, Feb. 12 — medals awarded
8 p.m.: Team Event: men’s free skate

Friday, Feb. 16
8 p.m.: men’s short program

Saturday, Feb. 17 — medals awarded
8 p.m.: men’s free skate

You can also live stream NBC, NBCSN, and the Olympic Channel coverage via FuboTV on your computer or mobile devices.

It’s the most aesthetically and mesmerizing sport in the Winter Olympics. It tries to combine two conflicting ideals, that of beauty, which is in the eye of the beholder, and competition, which can be judged and recorded. From that conflict comes amazing artistry that is breathtaking even at its most unoriginal. Its base is to be impressive.

The skaters are judged on five program component scores: skating skills. They are: skating skills: their ability to skate with ease; transitions: what the skater is doing between technical elements. Basically, don’t skate without a purpose; performance: the art of the skating. Really abstract. Does the skaters embody what they are doing? Do they captivate the audience? Composition: how the skater tells the story of his or her performance on the surface; interpretation: another abstract concept that can be best explained as the skaters skating with their souls. Basically, are they in tune with what they’re doing? Is the skater in flow?

These are graded on quarter increments from 0.25 to 10.00 on an absolute scale.

The weirdest rule is that even facial expressions play a part in the grading, since the components are abstract and deal with the beauty of the skating as much as with how well it is performed.

There are six different type of jumps in figure skating: axel, lutz, flip, loop, salchow, and toe loop. You have to have a keen eye to differentiate among all six. For example, the flip is when a skater takes off from the back inside edge of one foot and lands on the back outside edge of the opposite foot. But a loop is when the skater takes and lands on the same edge and on the same foot that he takes off from.

There are no jerseys in figure skating, but if you really want to be fashion forward you can just wear whatever outfit that Chen wears for his performance. He’s the first skater in history to land five quadruple jumps in a single program.

Chen has the best chance to medal in these games, and he’s planning on doing a number of outrageous four-revolution jumps. The United States leads in total medal counts in figure skating, and the sport was revolutionized by a guy in Philadelphia so it’s as American as can be.