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Figure skaters aim to push their sport to limit A triple jump used to be the gold standard in figure skating. Now it's the quad. For the first time at an Olympics, a woman — Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva — landed a quad in competition.
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The 2022 Winter Olympics

< In the midst of scandal, 3 Russian figure skaters hope to elevate their sport

In the midst of scandal, 3 Russian figure skaters hope to elevate their sport

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ELISSA NADWORNY, HOST:

A controversial Olympic women's figure skating competition ends tomorrow. Fifteen-year-old Russian star Kamila Valieva is in first place going into the free skate. Her positive test for a banned drug before the games has clouded the event, and it's turned attention away from what experts say could be a landmark moment in the evolution of jumping in the sport. From Beijing, NPR's Tom Goldman reports.

TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: When American Nathan Chen won the Olympic men's individual figure skating competition last week, he landed five quadruple rotation jumps cleanly and predictably, says former U.S. men's skater Adam Rippon.

ADAM RIPPON: Now it is so commonplace.

GOLDMAN: It's been building to this since about 2010, according to analyst Jackie Wong from the website Rocker Skating. He says that's when Canada's Patrick Chan began mixing incredibly good skating with consistent quad jumps.

JACKIE WONG: And so everybody was like, OK, well, we need to catch up. In this generation of skaters, that was when the quad really became a thing for men's skating.

GOLDMAN: The women lagged behind, though not for lack of effort.

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UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #1: She is going to attempt a quadruple toe loop. That's four times around in the air. To complete it, she has to land backwards on one foot. And here it comes.

GOLDMAN: In the 1990s, French skater Surya Bonaly made the quad her personal mission.

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UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #1: Almost. A little bit short on the rotation, but a great effort.

GOLDMAN: For Bonaly, it would always be almost. She never landed a quad in competition. Fast forward to last September, when 17-year-old Alexandra Trusova showed in an event in Russia how far women have come.

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UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #2: You have to be kidding me. Five quads. That is ridiculous.

GOLDMAN: Trusova has been lending quads in competition since she was 13. Nicknamed the Quad Queen, she's in fourth place heading into tomorrow's Olympic free skate, where it's expected she'll try five quads again. Leader Kamila Valieva, who became the first female to land a quad in Olympic competition in the team event here, is expected to try three; second place Anna Shcherbakova, at least one. If successful, this trio could do for the women's sport what Patrick Chan did for the man.

How did skating get here with the quad commonplace for men and a reality for the women? Adam Rippon, who helps coach U.S. national champion Mariah Bell, says skaters have developed in recent years, so they now value quickness over the brute strength that got them high in the air for the big jumps.

RIPPON: Now the body type is very long and very lean, and that's more geared towards somebody who can be as quick as possible. So it doesn't matter how high you get. It matters how quickly I can rotate around.

GOLDMAN: To achieve this, Rippon says common training methods, even for kids under 10, now include a device that spins the skater on a disc and then lifts them into the air in a harness.

RIPPON: And they can hold these rotations in the air for not just two, three, four rotations, but for 30 rotations up in the air. And it's almost like a technique used by, like, astronauts so that they feel that they can keep their focus and balance no matter how quickly they're spinning.

GOLDMAN: Astronauts explore new frontiers. How far can skaters go with their jumps? Are five rotations possible? More? Here's Jackie Wong.

WONG: With the technology of skates that we have now, and, you know, you can only jump so high, and you can only rotate so fast. And five is, I think, the edge of the possible.

GOLDMAN: That's then. Tomorrow, three Russian teenagers, surrounded by controversy, nevertheless will try to show what's possible now.

Tom Goldman, NPR News, Beijing.

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