The darker side of figure skating - eating disorders, insults and belittling

Emily Hayward says one of the problems with figure skating is that everyone feels the need to comment on how you look

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Photo: BBC
Photo: BBC
Disclaimer: The translations are mostly done through AI translator and might not be 100% accurate.

Emily Hayward was eight years old when she first went ice skating in Sheffield. She quickly fell in love with this sport.

As a self-conscious introvert, she loved being able to perform with confidence when she stepped onto the ice.

"It's something I really got into," she says.

At the age of eighteen, after winning her second national championship as a junior, Emily had the opportunity to start pair skating - one of the most dramatic disciplines in figure skating.

But soon the toxic environment that came with it caused him to compromise his own health.

"I thought this was an opportunity to do couples, this is what I've dreamed of doing," she says.

In pair skating, which is known for incredible acrobatics and jumps, the man often lifts and holds or throws his partner.

Opportunities for women in pair skating are rare due to the lack of men in the sport.

This means that in some cases male skaters can be more selective when deciding on a partner.

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Emily says that since starting pairs, her training has changed to include more skill and upper body exercises.

"My body kind of changed shape," she adds.

"I gained muscles in my arms that I never had before, and I continued to eat the same diet.

"I gained very, very little weight and then I was told it was a problem ... and I needed to fix it."

Emily says she was told by someone in the sport that her weight gain would jeopardize her partnership and therefore her ability to skate in pairs.

"Before, I never thought about what I ate or my body, or anything like that, because I'm naturally slim. I'm not wide and I'm petite," says Emily.

After the comments, she began cutting calories, exercising excessively and worrying about her appearance: "I lost a lot of weight in a very short time."

"I consciously thought I was just 'mega-healthy.' That's what I thought I was doing because I really wanted to do pairs."

'It totally broke me'

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After a year, Emily's partnership broke up.

"I was left behind after this drastic weight loss, and now I have this incredibly uncomfortable relationship with food, with my body, with how I should look, and with my career," she says.

Emily says she had body dysmorphia - where she thought she was too heavy and had a false illusion of what she actually looked like.

"It completely broke me, I was at rock bottom."

"It was an internal and mental struggle to the point that I stopped competing. I stopped skating completely, because I felt very bad."

Ruth Micallef, a mental health therapist in Edinburgh, says she sees people of all ages who have been involved in ice skating and who have eating disorders.

"These are often toxic, unhealthy environments where an athlete thinks about what they could achieve," she says.

Rut adds that eating disorders can occur in all professional athletes.

They judge you by how you look

Emily, who features in a new BBC documentary series about British ice skating Friz, believes that the nature of sports, especially in couples, can create a dangerous environment for the development of eating disorders.

"There's something about lifting that I think puts you under pressure to know you're light enough to be lifted," she says.

"It's your responsibility if the lift isn't right, which is wrong."

For all skating disciplines in competition, including singles, pairs and ice dance, skaters receive two scores from judges: one for technical elements and one for program components.

The evaluation of the program components focuses on the entire presentation of the performance, among other things, how the skater looks, and how "physically, emotionally and intellectually" she performs the choreography to the judges and the audience, in accordance with the rules of the International Judging System.

Emily says one of the problems with figure skating is that everyone feels the need to comment on how you look.

"At the rink, everyone says 'she looks good today.'

"At the end of the day, if you're standing in the middle of the ice, in a little costume, you're going to feel self-conscious."


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'Mental and physical intimidation'

When Hari Matik was five years old, in a car accident in which his father was killed, he suffered a severe brain injury.

When he started walking again, his medical team suggested that skating might be a good way to regain his balance.

Harry became the first British skater to land a quadruple jump in competition at senior level.

After attending a camp in Europe when he was fifteen, run by the best figure skating coach in the world at the time, Harry met a high-level Russian coach who offered to train him in America.

Harry and his mum thought this was an amazing opportunity they couldn't refuse.

Skaters of all ages, including under eighteens, often travel to train outside the UK.

This can mean that young people are left in vulnerable positions without wider support networks.

Harry trained with this trainer for more than three years.

When he reflects on that period now, he says that there were red flags from the very beginning: "There were a lot of insults."

Harry says his coach would call him "idiot", "stupid" and an insult to someone with a learning disability on a daily basis.

He would tell Harry that without his training he was "nothing" and would achieve nothing.

When Harry turned eighteen, the coach encouraged his mum to return to the UK.

"He would often say that he was trying, that he was doing me favors and that I should be really grateful for all that. While at the same time he treated me very badly and isolated me," says Harry.

"It was a lot of mental intimidation, as well as physical ... There were terrible consequences of bad training."

Harry says his trainer would weigh him every day, sometimes twice a day. But if he gained even a few grams, he would be severely punished.

"He pressured me to lose weight. When my weight was less he would be nice to me, when my weight was more he would be horrible."

Harry says his trainer would make him run extra, train extra and even wear tracksuits in 30 degrees if he gained just 100 grams.

Harry says the bullying and abuse completely changed him as a person.

"From a very confident, outgoing, confident person that I was, the way he treated me brought me very close to suicide."

"It ended up causing a full-blown eating disorder that resulted in anorexia and bulimia," says Harry.

“I had massive panic attacks over a few glasses of water because I thought it would increase my weight. I developed a huge phobia of drinking that lasted for years."

Harry recalls one training session, he lost his temper with the coach and answered him.

As a result, Harry says the trainer took him off the ice and punched him hard in the stomach.

Harry says that the coach manipulated his way of thinking into believing that he could continue to skate with only him as a coach.

"I thought if I couldn't handle his training, it was because I was weak."

"I wanted nothing more than to succeed in skating, and I was conditioned to believe that I could only succeed with him," he says.

Harry performed his first quadruple jump in training on 3 August 2011 and then became the first British skater to perform it in competition.

But Harry says breaking that record is not his greatest achievement as he was unable to sustain the jump due to the weight loss.

After three years of abuse, Harry changed coaches and returned to Great Britain.

“I did the quadruple jump again in training in 2017 and I was at a healthy weight.

"I proved that you can land yourself in a healthy way and that's what's really important to me. That's the achievement I'm most proud of," he says.

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Harry is now part of a doubles team hoping to compete at the 2026 Olympics.

"Previously, training was imposed on me. It was something I had to do.

"I had to get up and go to training because the consequences of not being there were terrible. And now it's something enjoyable, something I can be excited about," says Harry.

Change on the ice

After being out of the sport for over six months, Emily's supportive figure skating coach got her back on the ice.

"It took me a long time to get to the point where I thought: I look strong, fit, healthy and to understand that food is fuel. Being healthy is much more important than the number on the scale," she says.

Emily thinks things are starting to change, as more people are starting to talk about the pressures on physical appearance in sports.

"There's a wave of sliders that don't fit the shape and size of the mold that a slider should be in, and I think that's great," she adds.

"It's so inspiring for the younger generation to know that we can't all be the same size and shape, that's not normal."

Emily, now 25, says the pressure will always be there, so it's the responsibility of skaters and coaches to root out toxic comments and behavior that can lead to eating disorders.

She started training on her own, in order to financially support her own skating.

"My job as a role model and coach is to talk about it with younger skaters who are struggling right now," she says.

The British Skating Association told the BBC that they are committed to making sport a place where every participant can enjoy it without any form of discrimination, bullying or pressure on physical appearance.

They added: "One key tool in combating body image pressure and eating disorders in skating is education."

"We require all coaches to complete continuing professional development sessions in order to be accredited in the organization.

"Those sessions cover a wide range of topics to enable them to support the skaters they work with, such as nutrition and identifying eating disorders."

They encourage any skater who has experienced pressures related to physical appearance to reach out to them.


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