Discussn on Skate Gear/ Accessories - Feats & Characteristic

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Supplementary to a pair of skates, as expected there is the usual inventory of accessories many of which are necessary to permit a skater on the ice from a safety perspective. Equipment reqd to be supplied by each athlete:  

• helmet, 
• gloves, 
• long-sleeved shirt, 
• long pants, 
• long sports socks (the thinner the better), plus 
• a towel for post-practice blade drying wipe-down (mandatory to be used immediatly after the session to prevent corrosion damage to the blade during storage, ahead of the next practice).

Equipment additionally recommended (mainly optional though safety items are mandatory for participating in any competitive race event - should you develop a hankering for that). Appropriate advice for each athlete to make up their kit for themselves is readily available upon request): 

• knee pads, 
• shin guards/ankle protection socks (special cut-resistant aramid fibre), 
• protective eye-wear, 
• heel spade/horn, 
• laces tightening hook.    

Short track speed skates differ from the other common types of ice skates - such as those intended for use in ice hockey. Blades of figure skates are similar to hockey skates, but also incorporate nose end serrations. Both figure & hockey skate blades have an underside surface comprised of a semi-circular groove running from tip to tail - formed by the profile of the sharpening machine grindstone. 

All skates - figure, hockey & short-track feature relatively uncomfortable boot fit (compared to that of an athletic shoe), because from a performance standpoint, stiffness corresponds with degree of control.

Long Track speed skates are altogether a different, more complex animal, where discussion taking in the features peculiar to these is beyond the scope of this forum (and beyond the knowledge bounds of the writer)!

Materials used in boot shell construction have varied over history as permitted by available technology, where leather was the obvious natural original choice. Over the years, a variety of natural & man-made woven fabrics, often coated with some polymer layer (to stiffen or water-proof them), or perhaps in assembled combination with molded plastic components, unreinforced or reinforced with fibre - all these have been seen utilized. Boot shells designed and made for speed skating are probably the stiffest type.

Contemporary skate boot have shells with the highest performance models constructed from a fibre/ polymer (often carbon or graphite) combination with a heat reformable shape characteristic. As a result, for an ideal fit, the speed skate boot can be taken to a technician whose job it is to use an oven to reform each to more perfectly conform to the shape of the skater's foot - toes, heel, sole and ankle.   

A figure & hockey skate's blade shape appears as an arc when viewed from the side, where this lengthwise curvature of a contacting pair of sharp edges (formed by virtue of the groove) results in essentially pair-of-points contact of the blade underside with the ice - which varies in location dependent on the fore-aft lean of the skater's foot. In lexicon of other sports gear, this characteristic is sometimes referred to as degree of 'rocker'.

Speed skates on the other hand have considerably longer blades than for the comparable foot size of hockey or of figure skates, where an appropriate length for a skater grows with their skill level.

Each blade has an underside surface that presents very close to flat to the ice over the majority of its length and thickness, since (unlike as in figure/hockey skates) for speed skate blades there is no lengthwise groove formed by the sharpening grindstone. When viewed from the side this blade appears 'practically' straight for its entire length, where can see from the image of two different grade skates, they each show a minor deviation from straight flatness appraoching the tip & tail ends. Note also that for achieving the highest performance, the blade length needs to be maximized to whatever extent an athlete can ably cope with.

However, when viewed from flat to the boot sole, one sees an arc formed through careful bending of the blade by a skilled technician, where tuning is about setting this lateral bowing bend appropriately to match a skater's skill level/ preference. The bowing bend radius is formed such that when the skates are worn by the athlete, they will naturally have a mild tendency to turn inwards when skating a rink lap in a regular direction (anti-clockwise).

A comparison may be made of features associated with the two different grades of boots shown in the surrounding images, both by BONT (skates all designed & manufactured in Australia):

• blue pair => intermediate competition grade;
• black pair => used by a former successful US Olympian to win a silver medal in a relay event at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi.

From visual inspection, one can only detect slight discrepancies in these blade characteristics as described - in degrees of blade rocker curvature, as well as lateral bowing bend.

Besides observing the slightly greater lateral bowing of the (black boot) Olympic competition standard skate, one additional characteristic (beyond the scope of too much more discussion here) is lateral positioning/angling of the blade when attaching each via the anchoring screws to the mount holes in the sole of each boot shell: 

• offset shift location and 
• angular orientation 

are both made relative to a theoretical centreline which in general is not marked on the boot in form way, but an imagined location for each must be best guessed. In bio-engineering speak, this centreline would correspond/ align with the sagittal plane passing through the athlete's left & right side ankle joints.

• The subtle adjustment decisions for setting these blades in an optimal manner are arrived at through trial & error changes - according to recommendations provided by an expert technician, considering also an athlete's best judgement/preference inputs.