I rant about figure skating– for lack of a better title idea
In my opinion, the best sports are the ones that are unpredictable. That’s why the balance beam is the best gymnastics event, where leaning just one centimeter too far can cost you everything. And it’s why figure skating is my favorite sport. The suspense of crossing my fingers and hoping that my favorite skaters land all their jumps, that the judges score them high enough to land on the podium. The 2018 Olympics was an all-time high for figure skating with skaters producing iconic programs and moments out of it. So it pained me four years later when the 2022 Olympics came around to see just how much the thrill of figure skating had diminished.
The 2018 Olympics were highly anticipated by the figure skating community. Although many top skaters from the previous Olympic cycle had retired from competition, there were still some iconic skaters competing, such as the ice dance team Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, whose Moulin Rouge program still takes my breath away every time I watch it, and Yuzuru Hanyu, who literally made my heart stop as he skated to successfully claim his second Olympic gold medal.
There have always been favorites for the Olympic gold, and the 2018 Olympics were no exception. Examining the Women’s event, because let’s be honest, the Women’s event is always the most cutthroat, it was clear there were two skaters essentially fighting to the death for the gold medal. Evgenia Medvedeva, a two-time and reigning world champion renowned for her consistency, and Alina Zagitova, who was only in her first season competing on the senior circuit but had already won two prestigious titles earlier in the season. What’s more, both skaters shared the same coach and trained together. It was also a bloodbath for the bronze medal with top skaters from other countries such as Satoko Miyahara of Japan and Kaetlyn Osmond of Canada, both of whom had previously medaled at the world championships. Carolina Kostner of Italy, who previously won bronze in the 2014 Olympics, was also a contender as well as Maria Sotskova, the third skater representing Russia who’d also had a successful season leading up to the Olympics.
Tensions were high on the ice. No one was sure of who would rise to the top of the podium. For many skaters, it was their first Olympics—nerves and pressure could easily affect their performances, and the podium was unpredictable. Zagitova would end up taking the gold, beating Medvedeva by less than a point. There was a shock since many had been rooting for and expecting Medvedeva to win but at the same time, Zagitova had won every competition she competed in the months leading up to the Olympics and she performed just as well, if not better, than ever before.
Flashforward four years to 2022, and the expectations leading up to the Olympics were quite different. Again focusing on the Women’s event, there was one skater who was essentially being groomed to become the Olympic champion: Kamila Valieva of Russia. She was the whole package, with beautiful lines and flexibility while also being able to jump quadruple jumps and a triple axel. These skills are quite difficult and rarely done by women in competition. Of the small number of female skaters that compete in quad jumps, most are Russian and are trained by the same coach. Which brings us to our other two Russian skaters, Anna Shcherbakova and Alexandra Trusova. All three girls share the same coach and train at the same rink. And these three girls were the ones expected to sweep the Olympic podium. Nobody was entirely sure of the order but many people, me included, were certain that Kamila Valieva would win gold and Shcherbakova and Trusova would claim the other two spots on the podium. The emergence of the doping scandal brought up questions about the mechanism by which the young skaters were achieving their quad jumps, but only added one more detail to the harsh training conditions skaters in Russia must endure. What’s more is that even after the doping scandal broke, everyone still knew a Russian would still win; the gold medal would just go to either Shcherbakova or Trusova. And when Valieva was cleared to compete, a decision achieved by questionable methods and scorned by much of the skating community, people still thought she would win.
I wasn’t as excited about this event as I was for the previous Olympics. Truthfully, it was because I felt that there was some preordained order and that it didn’t matter how well the rest of the skaters did, the three Russian skaters would podium whether they skated well or not. Before the scandal broke out and sparked international outrage and scrutiny, I wouldn’t have needed to watch the competition to know who would medal.
If you had simply given me a sheet with names, I would’ve easily been able to pick out three names that would end up winning: Valieva, Shcherbakova, and Trusova.
Where is the excitement, where is the suspense? Even taking the scandal and its aftershock into effect, those three names weren’t far off; Shcherbakova and Trusova would win gold and silver respectively while Valieva would place fourth overall even after skating the worst performance of her career. A part of me knew that even if my favorite skaters were flawless and their performances transcended time and space, their scores still wouldn’t compare to the scores the Russians would get. That’s just the pattern that had been set in the years leading up to this event. See, after the 2018 Olympics, the Women’s discipline had been completely dominated by Russian skaters.
In 2019, multiple Russian skaters made their debut on the senior circuit. These skaters were all under the Russian coach Eteri Tutberidze, leading them toward a quick rise to the top. Eteri Tutberidze is, or was, the coach of the five aforementioned Russian skaters: Medvedva, Zagitova, Valieva, Shcherbakova, and Trusova. Many noticed a pattern in these skaters: they were receiving pretty inflated scores and thought the PCS scores were way too high for newly-senior skaters. In turn, athletes from other countries were constantly underscored. Furthermore, under-rotated jumps and edge violations weren’t called for Russian skaters but were appropriately called for other skaters. As more Tutberidze skaters started competing on the senior circuit, the bias became all too apparent as they started playing musical chairs with podium positions. Over the past few years, Tutberidze has become infamous for her harsh training methods as well as for the very high scores her skaters get. In fact, in the time leading up to the Olympics, there were skaters that left Tutberidze for other coaches but saw a decline in their scores; so, in hopes of having a chance for Olympic glory, they came back to her in order to start receiving those high scores again. I’m sure even without inflated scores, the Russian skaters would have still won because they’re all talented skaters with amazing technical skills and beautiful performance qualities. But the inflated scores just seem to rub salt in the wound, that the other skaters have no chance because the judges have made their allegiance clear.
The International Skating Union, the governing body for figure skating, is no stranger to corruption. The 2002 Olympics ended in a French judge admitting to fixing her vote for a Russian pairs team in return for an advantage for the French ice dance team. The 2014 Olympics are sourly remembered by fans who unanimously believe Yuna Kim was robbed of her rightful gold medal by the judges and the Russian figure skating federation.
Public scoring details make it easy to see where bias might lie. A judge could be giving a skater’s jump a grade of execution much higher than the rest of the judging panel. The technical panel may or may not decide to call under-rotations and edge violations.
Countries that have historically dominated the sport such as America, Japan, and Russia are known to have significant pull in the sport—some much more than others, as previously evidenced. With every thrilling sport comes dirty tactics and politics behind the scenes that inevitably come to light and the corruption of figure skating is no secret. And it’s been frustrating to see this sport evolve into a predictable cycle of seeing a list of competitors and easily being able to pick out the podium.
With the ongoing international ban of Russian athletes due to the Russo-Ukrainian War, the figure skating world is experiencing change. It is a shame that so many talented skaters in Russia are essentially stuck if their circumstances aren’t perfect: if they aren’t under the right coach, if they don’t have the right look, or if they can’t compete with triple axels and quads, they can easily get replaced by the next skater waiting to take their place. Many young skaters that are thriving in Russia now might never be able to compete internationally. But I can’t say that I’m not happy to see how the sport has become rejuvenated with competitions actually being competitive, where every medal is up for grabs, and skaters are starting to get accurately scored by judges. I hope that eventually, the skilled Russian skaters will be able to compete internationally again; although I hope that when they do, the figure skating world will not revert back to the way it was.
