No skating animation on rink, just walking

I've been searching the forum and haven't found this exact issue anywhere.

I don't get any error messages or crashes. My PC more than meets the recommended specs. And it's been happening since it was vanilla (No Mods and no CC)

I can use the rink, alone and with company, the skates go on, and for a split second the sim is standing with the skates on and with the wheels on the floor, but then the wheels sink into the floor and the sims walks on the rink (not skate). When partnered up, the sims will turn around smoothly with the partner with the wheels on the floor the way it's supposed to, and alone the sim can spin the way it's supposed to. But selecting skate forward or skate backward makes the sim walk on the rink.

The game has been installed and reinstalled many times with no change; a little embarrassing to say but because it's always been like this I thought this was one of Maxis big fails until I saw a video of sims skating properly.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks