OK, probably “Sow-Cow” isn’t the way it’s spelled, but that’s what it always sounds like when we watch the winter olympics.
So, what is it really named, and what distinguishes it from other moves where they jump into the air and rotate about their vertical axis before landing?
Salchow. Like many figure skating jumps, it’s named after the person who first managed to do one.
A description of jumps can be found here: So You Wanna – Learn to do just about anything…
Yeah, like Axel Rose, and the famous Joe Toe Loop.
What?
Don’t forget Flip Saunders.
No, like Gustave Lussi and Axel Paulsen. Here are the etymologies from www.m-w.com:
The page on jumps linked to before describes six jumps, so half of the important ones are named for people, even if describing three as “many” can be nitpicked.
Don’t forget Dorothy Hamill and the “Hamill Camel” too.
How about the Hamill Cameltoe?
pic?
And who can forget Susie Got-Dropped-And-Fell-Painfully-To-The-Ice?
The Biellman spin.
The Tano lutz (a variation of the lutz done by Brian Boitano).
And the Cynthia and Ronald Kaufman Death Spin.
Not to mention the Surya Bonaly Back Flip (technically legal, but not allowed).
By a remarkable coincidence, that was the original given name of this famous Native American skater, due to her mother having birthed her on a glacier. Why she thought it was a good idea to go into pairs skating is a mystery.