What year did figure skating start, and how?

I'm doing a report of the 2010 olympics, and I had to pick a person and write a report about that person, and there sport. I picked Rachael Flatt in figure skating, and i can't figure out what year, and how it started.|||1908 at the Summer Olympic games. Winter in 1924.





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figure_skat鈥?/a>





The USFSA is the national governing body of the sport of figure skating in the United States. (Athlete bios and lots of info.)





http://www.usfsa.org/





The international governing body of speed skating, short track speed skating, figure skating, and synchronized skating is called the ISU. (Athlete bios and lots of info.)





http://www.isu.org





NBC is a good source for videos about the back stories to some figure skaters' lives and how they came to be at the Olympics. I'm not sure if there's a video about the skater you mention or not.





http://www.nbcolympics.com/figure-skatin鈥?/a>|||Figure skating itself somewhat evolved. It was used by the viking thousands of years ago just to travel across frozen lakes and rivers and such. From there it basically evolved into a real sport with jumps and spins and elements.