By the numbers, Russia's Petrosian looks golden at 2026 Olympics. Will pressure and her coach's past factor in?

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By the numbers, Russia's Petrosian looks golden at 2026 Olympics. Will pressure and her coach's past factor in?

Figure skating has become more and more of a math exercise since the sport began using its new scoring and judging system in the 2004-05 season.

If it were only a numbers game, you could securely place a bet on 17-year-old Russian Adeliia Petrosian becoming Olympic women’s singles champion next February because she has mastered high-scoring jumps none of the other contenders are likely to try.

But human behavior factors into the final score, so placing that bet involves more of a gamble than it might seem.

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Changes in skating rules to limit jumps may make Malinin's record literally one for the ages

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Changes in skating rules to limit jumps may make Malinin's record literally one for the ages

There is an old saying in sports that goes, “Records are made to be broken.”

That may not apply to the world record men’s free skate score Ilia Malinin posted in winning the 2024 World Championships – as well as to several women’s world records – if the International Skating Union passes proposals limiting jumps at its biennial Congress this June in Las Vegas.

Should that happen, everyone should have their asterisks ready, as the ISU once again will have to create yet another chronological subdivision on its already confusing record lists.

While the formal agenda for the ISU Congress will not be made public until next week, the preliminary agenda includes the following changes to singles free skate programs recommended by the singles and pairs technical committee:

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Gracie Gold faces her traumatic past in stunningly candid memoir

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Gracie Gold faces her traumatic past in stunningly candid memoir

It is tempting to see Gracie Gold’s story mainly as a compelling cautionary tale about the mental health risks of a sport in which the pursuit of excellence must start when athletes still are children.

It is also tempting to see Gold’s story as sui generis, the result of a childhood, adolescence and young adulthood spent in a family whose dysfunction she describes with raw detail in the memoir, OUTOFSHAPEWORTHLESSLOSER, published Tuesday.

Seeing it as one or the other would be a simplistic reaction to a story so complex it recalls a landmark 1957 movie, “The Three Faces of Eve.”

Rather than Eve’s multiple personalities, Gold had three different personas.

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Commanding the ice again after recent downfall, Ilia Malinin wins world junior gold in runaway

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Commanding the ice again after recent downfall, Ilia Malinin wins world junior gold in runaway

When you pick “quadg0d,” for an Instagram handle, the hubris factor comes into play.

It did for Ilia Malinin in the free skate at last month’s World Championships, when the skating gods reminded him that ice is slippery for mortals trying to navigate it divinely on thin blades.

So Malinin found himself reassured to get back on solid footing as he won the World Junior Championships in a runaway Saturday in Tallinn, Estonia.

“I am relieved that I finished the season really, really good,” Malinin said.

He did it with junior record scores in the short program (88.99), free skate (187.12) and total (276.11), beating silver medalist Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan by 41.80 points. That was more than twice the previous largest winning margin, 19.12, by Adam Rippon of the U.S. in 2009.

And Malinin did it with four fully rotated quadruple jumps, reprising his dazzling free skate at the U.S. Championships, when his silver medal performance led to controversy after he was not selected for the Olympic team.

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Ilia Malinin, the “quadg0d,” seems heaven-sent for U.S. figure skating

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Ilia Malinin, the “quadg0d,” seems heaven-sent for U.S. figure skating

When Ilia Malinin started skating, at age 6, the rink was basically a day care center for him.

His parents, Tatyana Malinina and Roman Skorniyakov, each a two-time figure skating Olympian for Uzbekistan, both were coaching, and it was both easier and less expensive to have their son with them after school at the SkateQuest facility in Reston, Virginia.

“At the beginning, we didn’t take it seriously,” Malinina said. “We just took him to where we were working, and he was skating there.”

That changed three years later.

With minimal preparation, skating just three times a week, Malinin qualified for the 2015 U.S. Championships in the juvenile division when he was just 9 years old. He finished ninth.

Suitably impressed, Malinin and Skorniyakov started having him skate under their tutelage five times a week. In 2016, just after his 11th birthday, he became national juvenile champion.

Many others soon would be as captivated as his parents by their son’s nascent talent.

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