Expert reveals why Winter Olympic figure skaters don’t get dizzy after spins

Top figure skaters spin at such unbelievably fast speeds - as many as six revolutions per second - that it can make even spectators feel a little woozy.

Curious viewers of the Beijing Winter Olympics want to know why. “How do figure skaters not get dizzy?” has been one of the top Google searches over the past week.

So how do these athletes pull off such head-spinning moves without toppling over?

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As skating events continue in Beijing this week, we turned to experts for answers.

Not so much, because they’ve learned how to minimize it.

Although they occasionally tumble upon landing, figure skaters mostly spin through the air without losing their balance.

That’s because they have conditioned their bodies and brains to quash that dizzying feeling, experts say.

American figure skater Mirai Nagasu, who won a bronze medal at the Winter Olympics in South Korea in 2018, says she feels the rotations but has learned how to recenter her focus over the years.

“I think we have a learned ability against the momentum that hits us while we’re spinning,” she said.

Kathleen Cullen, a professor of biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University, has a more scientific answer.

She studies the vestibular system, which is responsible for our sense of balance and motion, and says spinning without stumbling from dizziness is an art perfected over time.

At the start of their careers, skaters and other athletes feel dizzy when they spin around, Cullen says.

But ultimately, they train their brains to better interpret that feeling.

“There’s a really profound fundamental thing that happens in the brain of people like dancers or skaters over lots and lots of