Without strength and courage it’s really hard to perform at the highest levels of international figure skating, because you’re alone on the ice and you only have seven minutes over two nights to prove yourself.

Scott Hamilton (b. 1958), the 1984 Olympic men’s figure skating champion and a longtime television analyst, is reflecting on the particular pressures of elite competition. In international figure skating, athletes perform individually, without teammates on the ice, and outcomes can hinge on a small number of minutes spread across the short program and free skate. Hamilton’s remark draws on his experience of the sport’s high-stakes environment—where preparation, mental toughness, and physical resilience must converge in a brief window under intense scrutiny from judges, audiences, and media.

The quote emphasizes how figure skating compresses an athlete’s entire training cycle into a fleeting, unforgiving test. “Strength and courage” point to both physical capacity (to execute difficult jumps and maintain speed and control) and psychological fortitude (to manage fear, isolation, and the knowledge that a single mistake can decide the standings). By stressing that the skater is “alone on the ice,” Hamilton highlights the sport’s solitary accountability: success depends on self-command in the moment, when there is no time to recover and no teammate to share the burden.