Numbers show regressive impact of Russian ban in skating. Is the decline good or bad?

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Numbers show regressive impact of Russian ban in skating. Is the decline good or bad?

So here we are, hard upon a second straight figure skating Grand Prix Final without Russian entrants as justifiable punishment for their country’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, still waiting on a decision in the soap operatic Kamila Valieva doping case almost two years after the Russian phenom tested positive six weeks before the 2022 Winter Olympics.

The Valieva decision, which has delayed awarding the 2022 team event medals, is expected by mid-February.  That presumably is mid-February 2024, but who knows?  Anyway, it can go on the back burner for today’s discussion, which is about the state of the sport without the beleaguered Valieva and her compatriots as the Grand Prix Final begins Thursday in Beijing.

There is no doubt that the absence of the Russian women, who had utterly dominated the sport since 2014, has had a dramatic effect on jumping.

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World figure skating championships the latest chapter of Deanna Stellato-Dudek’s comeback

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World figure skating championships the latest chapter of Deanna Stellato-Dudek’s comeback

There are so many improbabilities in the story of how Canadian pair team Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps got to this week’s world figure skating championships that the whole thing reads like a flight of fancy.

You start with a talented junior singles skater from suburban Chicago named Deanna Stellato, whose skates had sat in a closet at her mother’s home for 16 years after injuries pushed her from the sport.

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With war at home in Ukraine, Anastasiia Smirnova and Danil Siianytsia persevere and embrace skating for the U.S.

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With war at home in Ukraine, Anastasiia Smirnova and Danil Siianytsia persevere and embrace skating for the U.S.

There are thousands of threads in the tapestry of a life, with the sturdy and neutral monochrome warp threads covered by multiple colors of fine weft threads to create a scene that can pull together a moment in time or an enduring image.

Events can conspire to make the whole thing start to unravel, too, turning a settled and pleasant view into an unnervingly jarring one, and seemingly stable lives into ones full of uncertainty. That’s what has happened to the lives of U.S. pair skaters Anastasiia Smirnova and Danil Siianytsia.

In the weft of their tapestry, the azure blue and golden yellow threads of Ukraine’s flag combine with the coral red, bright white and navy blue threads of the United States. The colors illustrate the past, present and future of a team who left their native Dnipro, Ukraine two years apart to build sporting lives 5,200 miles away in suburban Minneapolis, where they train with coach Trudy Oltmanns.

Their move involved expected cultural and linguistic dislocation and separation from families, difficult but surmountable obstacles in an ever-more-connected world. None threatened the integrity and strength of either the warp or weft of their story.

“We had no problem adapting,” Siianytsia said in a recent Zoom interview, his English now fluent.

Then came last Feb. 24, when Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine began a war that has lasted nearly a year, tearing apart the fabrics of millions of lives.

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Bold Isabeau Levito faces skating idol at Grand Prix Final

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Bold Isabeau Levito faces skating idol at Grand Prix Final

The highlight of Isabeau Levito’s season so far came at Skate America in October.

It wasn’t the silver medal Levito won there, in her debut on figure skating’s senior Grand Prix circuit.

It was meeting the reigning world champion – and 2022 Skate America winner – Kaori Sakamoto of Japan.

“She is one of my idols,” Levito said of Sakamoto, who is also the 2022 Olympic bronze medalist.  “Right before her long program at worlds, you could see she was determined and strong and fierce.  Her eyes would obliterate you.

“That look and that fierceness and determination. . .I admire it so much, and I hope to have it someday.”

At only 15, Levito already belies her delicacy of movement on the ice with such powerful determination to reach her aspirations that she gets to meet Sakamoto again this week at the Grand Prix Final in Torino, Italy, where the senior women’s event begins Friday.

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Isabeau Levito claims final nugget in U.S. gold rush at World Junior skating

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Isabeau Levito claims final nugget in U.S. gold rush at World Junior skating


One after another, the final four skaters in the women’s free skate at the World Junior Championships performed with assurance and compelling quality, brightening the end of a long and muddled figure skating season.

All did clean programs, the best by surprising Jia Shin of South Korea, who won the free and nearly upset favored Isabeau Levito of the United States for the title Sunday in Tallinn, Estonia.

Levito, gritting her way through the free and getting some benefit of the doubt from the judges, held on by just 0.54 points to become the first U.S. woman atop the world junior podium since Rachael Flatt in 2008. Compatriot Lindsay Thorngren earned the bronze.

Levito’s gold medal, following those in ice dance by brother-sister team Oona and Gage Brown and in men’s singles by Ilia Malinin, gave Team USA three of the four world junior titles for the first time since 2008.

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