Death spiral is an element of pair skating performed with the man in a pivot position, one toe anchored in the ice. Holding his hand, the woman circles her partner on a deep edge with her body almost parallel to the ice.

This is a common but dangerous move for many pairs skaters. Unassisted Death Spirals can be performed by singles skaters.

Variations

Death spirals can be performed in all four variants of inside/outside and forward/backward edges. The outside edge death spirals are considered more difficult than the inside edge variants, with the forward outside death spiral the most difficult of all.

History

The backward outside death spiral was invented in the early 1900's by Charlotte Oelschlagel, although it was first performed with the skaters holding both hands and the lady not fully lowered towards the ice. The current one-handed version was developed in the 1940's by the Canadian pair Suzanne Morrow and Wallace Diestelmeyer. The other death spiral variants were invented by Ludmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov in the 1960's. They assigned the following names to them:

• Backward Inside: Cosmic spiral
• Forward Inside: Life spiral
• Forward Outside: Love spiral

ISU Judging System

Under the ISU Judging System, the death spiral is abbreviated as "DS" in the protocol, with the edge listed before and the level listed afterwards. The abbreviations are:

Edge	Abbreviation
Forward Inside	FiDs
Forward Outside	FoDs
Backward Inside	BiDs
Backward Outside	BoDs

A level three backward inside death spiral would be written as BiDs3.

For the 2007-2008 season, the back inside death spiral was the required death spiral for the senior pairs short program. For the 2008-2009 season, the required death spiral will be the forward inside.

References