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Why is Robert Jonesās 1772 book A Treatise on Skating important to figure-skating history?
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figure skating
Katarina Witt, competing for East Germany, became the first woman since Norway's Sonja Henie (1928, 1932, and 1936) to win consecutive Olympic gold medals, doing so in 1984 and 1988.
Robert Jonesās 1772 book, A Treatise on Skating, is significant to the history of figure skating because it is recognized as the first known account of the sport.1
While earlier historical figures, such as the diarist Samuel Pepys, noted activities like dancing on ice as early as 1662, Jonesās work provides the earliest formal documentation of the practice. His treatise predates the mid-1860s, when Jackson Haines later transformed the sport by introducing free, expressive techniques influenced by dance.1