MOSCOW, September 5. /TASS/. The Finnish Figure Skating Association’s experiment allowing a same-sex female ice dance duo to participate in the domestic championship is ridiculous, a senior Russian lawmaker told TASS on Friday.
Reuters news agency reported earlier in the day that two young women are set to become Finland's first same-sex ice dancing team after a landmark rule change by the country's skating federation.
It seems to me that the Finnish [Figure Skating] Association has confused the sport of figure skating with an ice soap opera or an ice circus. In my opinion, this has nothing to do with sport and it has no prospects," Dmitry Svishchev, a deputy chair of the State Duma Committee on Physical Culture and Sports, said.
"Such experiments are simply ridiculous. Finnish figure skaters are middle-of-the-road, so they decided to experiment," the Russian lawmaker continued.
"We clearly understand that in [figure skating] pairs and ice dancing duos, a man and a woman perform, showcasing not only the beauty of figure skating but also the execution of the most complex elements and lifts," Svishchev added.
According to Reuters, the same-sex Finnish duo are 19-year-old Emma Aalto of Finland and 20-year-old Millie Colling of England. They were allowed to compete domestically following a revision of the Finnish Figure Skating Association’s regulations.
The new regulations refer from now on to ice dancers as "Skater A" and "Skater B" instead of "man" and "woman," the agency added.