November 6, 1996

Most casual fans of figure skating have probably heard of Elvis Stojko.

But how about Sebastien Britten? Or Marcus Christensen? With the Skate Canada international meet in Kitchener beginning tomorrow, it's probably as good a time as any to catch up on figure skating personalities and terminology.

And there's no finer place to start than the home page of Edmonton's Carol Wang (http://www.skate.org/can/).

Wang's page has biographical info on top skaters, results from international meets like the European, U.S. and Canadian championships, and also results from past Olympics and World Championships.

You can also find links to dozens of other figure skating pages and instructions on how to sign up for some figure skating e-mail lists.

There's also a list of Canadian groundbreakers in international competition, some of which would be informative to even the most die-hard fan.

For example, although it's rather well-known that Kurt Browning performed the first-ever quadruple toe loop at the 1988 world championships in Budapest, perhaps you weren't aware that Petra Burka was the first woman in the world to perform a triple jump.

It was a salchow, by the way, and it came at the 1965 world championships.

All that's well and good, but how about if you're still puzzled by the difference between a salchow and a triple lutz? Just go to the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list of the rec.sport.skating.ice.figure newsgroup, and you'll get a definition of all the jumps, and a tonne of other info about the sport.

Although the FAQ list is posted to the newsgroup once a month, it's also been put up on the world wide web (http://haskell.cs.yale.edu/sjl/skate/technical.html ).

One of the best ones is run by the U.S.-based National Centre for Biological Information (http://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/medline), which has a searchable database of pharmaceutical information on hundreds of drugs.

For a look at the lighter side of the gridiron, take a wander into the home page of the Argonotes, the team's official band (http://www.next.com/~shayman/argonotes).

Another good page to check out is the CFL's official Grey Cup page (http://www.cfl.ca/GreyCup/home.html). For once, the league which has a history of shooting itself in the foot has finally done something right. The Cup page has all kinds of historical information and data, including summaries from every Grey Cup game ever played.

Josh Rubin can be reached on the Internet at sportsdesk@thestar.ca

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