Figure skating's latest attempt to balance art and sport rewrites history...again

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Figure skating's latest attempt to balance art and sport rewrites history...again

Figure skating’s rules have changed more in the last 22 years than they did in the entire 20th Century.

Since the sport thoroughly revised its scoring and judging systems beginning with the 2004-05 season, its officials have acted in a way that admits their International Judging System remains a work in progress. They have felt compelled to tweak or dramatically alter the way results are decided so frequently it has been hard to keep up.

It is as if the officials take a Zamboni out to clear the record books every season in an effort (Sisyphean?) to balance the sport’s emphasis between athleticism, i.e. jumps, and everything else in a free skate singles program, loosely defined as artistry.

Bring a large bag of asterisks.

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Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara pulled off tear-filled comeback to win Olympic gold

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Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara pulled off tear-filled comeback to win Olympic gold

Ryuichi Kihara looked crestfallen as he left the ice after the Olympic pairs short program Sunday, knowing his big mistake on a lift would be costly for him and his partner, Riku Miura.

The team’s coach, Bruno Marcotte, quickly tried to temper Kihara’s disappointment, which would increase when he heard the scores that put the reigning world champions from Japan in 5th place heading into Monday’s free skate.

“It’s not over,” Marcotte insisted to Kihara, then repeated. “It’s not over.”

How right he was.

And how different Kihara’s emotions were when it was over, even if someone watching without knowing the context might have wondered why he was bawling, his face contorted by the tears of joy just a few hours after he had finished crying tears of distress.

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In pairs skating, Deanna Stellato-Dudek succeeds in 10-year quest

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In pairs skating, Deanna Stellato-Dudek succeeds in 10-year quest

The results will tell you that Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps of Canada finished 14th of 19 teams in Sunday’s pairs short program at the 2026 Winter Olympics.

The results won’t tell that just by skating, Stellato-Dudek had succeeded in what seemed an utterly quixotic quest when she began it 10 years ago, that she had realized an improbable dream that nearly became an impossible one two weeks ago.

Stellato-Dudek, of course, couldn’t see it quite that way right now. The fierce competitive fire that carried her and Deschamps to the world title two years ago won’t be entirely banked by knowing that at age 42, she had become the oldest woman to compete in Olympic figure skating since 1928 and the third oldest in history, according to Olympedia.org.

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Team USA's path to Olympic figure skating team gold was full of surprises

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Team USA's path to Olympic figure skating team gold was full of surprises

This time, the Olympic figure skating team event is over when it was over.

Team USA claimed a second straight gold, and the medals were hung around the necks of the seven U.S. skaters who took part in the team event barely 30 minutes after the competition ended at the Milan Ice Skating Arena.

And it wasn’t over until it was over, coming down to a thrilling head-to-head contest between the final two men’s singles skaters — Ilia Malinin of the U.S. and Shun Sato of Japan.

“I was more nervous watching Ilia than I was skating myself,” said U.S. captain and pairs skater Danny O'Shea.

Malinin had lost the short program decisively to Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama, who was replaced for the free skate by Sato, recently stronger in the longer phase of events than Kagiyama. That left some doubt about how the Quadg0d would handle the free.

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Following his late father's plan, Maxim Naumov became an Olympian

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Following his late father's plan, Maxim Naumov became an Olympian

ST. LOUIS, Missouri - A year ago, barely hours after Maxim Naumov had finished a frustrating fourth at the U.S. Championships for a third straight time, his father, Vadim, laid out a plan for his son to avoid that frustration again.

Maxim and his mother, Evgenia Shishkova, listened in a Wichita, Kansas hotel room as Vadim outlined in a 45-minute conversation what, how and when they were going to do everything in the ensuing season to give their only child his best shot at both a podium finish and one of the three men’s singles spots on the 2026 U.S. Olympic team.

"He said, 'We have to be consistent where we haven’t been before, and we have to be strong and resilient,’’’ Maxim said. "That’s exactly what I’ve been carrying through this entire season.”

It was one of the last conservations he would have with his parents, the two-time pairs skating Olympians for Russia who were also his coaches.

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