History
Cecilia Colledge may have performed a one hand Biellmann spin from a layback spin at the 1937 World Championships. One of the earliest skaters to do the spin was Tamara Moskvina. She was inspired after seeing a gymnastics competition and performed the spin at the 1960 European Championships. She was also seen with this spin at the 1965 European Championships. Other early practitioners included Janet Champion, Slavka Kohout, and Karin Iten. In the late 1970s, the Swiss skater Denise Biellmann popularized the spin and it was eventually named after her. She was the first skater who performed it to win a major international title. Biellmann learned the spin at the Acrobatic School.
In the early '90s, the pair team of Natalia Mishkutenok and Artur Dmitriev incorporated it into a death spiral-like move.
Irina Slutskaya has been credited as the first person to have ever performed a Biellmann spin with a foot change (i.e., doing a Biellmann on one leg, then immediately switching over to perform it on the other leg).
Skaters often cut their hands performing the Biellmann.
Read more about this topic: Biellmann Spin
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