1. Reading Comprehension (with audio)
Ice Skating
Reading Comprehension
(with audio)

2. The History of Ice Skating
Ice skating is an exciting sport and popular pastime. Wearing special boots with blades on the bottoms, ice skaters glide across the frozen water, sometimes in sharp lines, sometimes in elegant circles; sometimes traveling at amazing speeds and sometimes leaving the ice in dramatic leaps and jumps.

3. Ice Skating: A Sport
As a sport, ice skating is generally divided into two disciplines: figure skating, which is something like dancing on ice, and speed skating, which is more like running. Ice skating is also an important part of ice hockey.
Ice skating has been an Olympic event since the first Winter Olympics.

4. The First Skates
Ice skating has been around longer than the Olympics! The oldest pair of skates dates back to at least 3000 B.C. Those skates were found in Switzerland. The earliest skates were made from bone and leather.
About 600 years ago, people started making wooden skates with iron bottoms. These were probably faster than the bone skates, but skaters still needed poles in order to move across the ice.

5. Five hundred years ago, the Dutch put the first “blades” on skates
Five hundred years ago, the Dutch put the first “blades” on skates. These were much wider than contemporary ice skate blades, and there were pairs (rather than single blades). Still, these were an improvement: finally, people could skate on their own two feet!

6. Ice Skating is Fun!
Skating has developed, and so have the skates themselves. Each discipline has specific skates made to help the participants skate as well as possible, whether that means special toe picks and custom designs for figure skaters, or extra long and flat blades for speed skaters.
Ice skating requires strength, posture, and balance. Professional ice skaters train for hours every day.
However, even if you are not a professional ice skater you can still enjoy the feeling of crisp ice beneath your blades and perhaps something nice and hot to drink afterwards!