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A year after Russian doping scandal, what’s going on in women's figure skating? [1]

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Date: 2023-02-22  

Immediately following the Olympics, Russia invaded Ukraine and has since been excluded from international skating competitions for that reason, not because of doping. A year later, it’s worth looking back at how Russia reshaped women’s (or “ladies,” as it’s officially called) figure skating over the past decade or so, and what has happened in the sport since Russian skaters have been absent.

The short answer is this: Without Russian women (or teenage girls, more accurately), things look a lot like they did during many years other than the unprecedented period of Russian dominance from 2014 to 2022.

The Grand Prix of Figure Skating is a series of six international competitions that culminates in a final with the top six skaters in each discipline. As such, it’s a good measure of which countries are strong in a discipline, since it rewards consistency—it’s possible to win a World Championship in a fluke, but the Grand Prix shows where there’s strength over a full season.

Things shift over time: In the 1990s and into the early 2000s, U.S. women were strong (as were two Russian women, more on which in a moment). From the early 2000s to about 2012, Japanese and South Korean women were strong. Individual skaters might come out of other countries to win major events—Italy’s Carolina Kostner, Canada’s Joannie Rochette, Alissa Czisny and Ashley Wagner of the U.S. after American dominance had faded—and there was never a single country completely dominating the ladies’ competition, but there were usually two or three countries showing particular strength.

Russia was not one of them. From 2006 to 2010, not a single Russian woman won a Grand Prix event gold medal. In 2011, Elizaveta Tuktamysheva—not a Tutberidze skater—won gold at both her events in the series. In 2012, no Russian skater won gold in women’s singles. In 2013, Yulia Lipnitskaya won two and Anna Pogorilaya won one, with Lipnitskaya taking silver at the final.

And then, in 2014, four of the six Grand Prix events were won by Russian skaters, as were two of the medals at the final. In 2015, two golds at events in the series and two medals at the final. In 2016, four of the six events and two of the finals medals were won by Russian skaters. It was the same in 2017. In 2018, Russians won just three of the events but again took home two medals in the final. In 2019, Russia swept golds through the entire series and the medals at the Grand Prix Final. The next two years of Grand Prix were canceled due to COVID-19, and in 2022, Russia arrived at the Olympics with three likely medalists, Valieva chief among them.

As French ice dancing coach Romain Haguenauer suggested in 2022, that kind of sudden dominance is really suspicious. “Before Sochi, Russia didn’t shine in women’s figure skating, that’s the one discipline where it was far away from other nations. And by quite a lot! And now, all of a sudden, every year they bring us four new young girls with quads,” he said. “It’s not a progressive evolution, there’s a phenomenon.” This is not the sudden emergence of a unique talent: It’s the creation of a system.

Consider the careers of the only three Russian women to medal at the Grand Prix final since the series was established in 1995. Irina Slutskaya was a two-time World Champion, a two-time Olympic medalist, a seven-time European champion. Maria Butyrskaya was a three-time World medalist (once a champion), three times the European champion and three other times a European medalist. She was the oldest woman to win a world championship. Viktoria Volchkova did not attain those levels of success, but she was a four-time European bronze medalist. All of these skaters, in other words, had sustained careers. They weren’t being treated as disposable. There were also three of them, three Russian women, on the Grand Prix Final podium, between 1995 and 2011.

In 2011-2012, Alena Leonova, a skater who otherwise didn’t make all that much of an impact on the sport, took bronze at the Grand Prix Final. But it was in the 2013-2014 figure skating season that the floodgates opened. Yulia Lipnitskaya took silver at the Grand Prix Final in a season in which she also won the European Championships, came in second at the World Championships, and helped Russia win team gold at the Olympics before she appeared to crumble under the pressure and placed fifth, while fellow Russian skater Adelina Sotnikova won gold with a clear assist from the judges at an Olympics hosted by her home country. Lipnitskaya never returned to the top of the podium at major events and retired in 2017, aged 19, citing anorexia and injuries.

Significantly, Lipnitskaya was the first major international women’s skater coached by Eteri Tutberidze. The years following that breakthrough would see a steady stream of Russian teenagers—many of them coached by Tutberidze—who medaled at the biggest events for one season, maybe two, and then faded away into retirement, usually still as teenagers. Evgenia Medvedeva (who also won the 2016 and 2017 World Championships and silver at the 2018 Olympics). Alina Zagitova (gold at the 2018 Olympics and 2019 World Championships). Alena Kostornaia. Anna Shcherbakova (gold at the 2021 World Championships and 2022 Olympics). Alexandra Trusova (bronze at the 2021 World Championships, silver at the 2022 Olympics). And, yes, Kamila Valieva.

To be sure, there were skaters in this explosion of Russian women’s figure skating wins who weren’t coached by Tutberidze. But if you take out the Tutberidze skaters, it’s not a massive shift in Russia’s success in this discipline. There is some shift—it looks like, going into the Sochi Olympics, Russia decided to invest in winning a medal in this event—but it’s not a move toward the dominance Russia achieved through Tutberidze’s abusive training techniques. Tutberidze’s students made one advance after another in the technical difficulty of the jumps women were doing. Trusova landed the second quad ever in a ladies’ competition in 2013, at the junior level, and went on to land quad after quad. Another Tutberidze student landed the first quad at the senior level. And then they went on to make it a standard part of competition, one Tutberidze skater after another, with each one fading away within two or three years. Disordered eating is a training technique for this coach and her skaters as they push the limits of what one teenage girl can for a year or two before being too injured to carry on.

But, as we learned at the 2022 Olympics, it wasn’t just eating disorders and skating injuries. It was also doping. That toxic combination pushed skaters in other countries to work to compete with the avalanche of quads coming out of Russia. Competition can be healthy, of course, pushing athletes to ever-greater achievements. But competition with a system that relies on doping and on irreparably breaking the bodies and spirits of teenage girls cannot be healthy for the competitors who either cannot win an unfair competition or have to decide how badly to damage themselves to keep up.

The 2022-2023 skating season isn’t over—the World Championships are in March—but the Grand Prix final is, so we can assess what things look like without Russia skewing the outcomes through cheating.

In the 2022 Grand Prix, Japanese women won eight medals through the series and Mai Mihara won gold at the final. U.S. women won four medals through the series and Isabeau Levito won silver at the final. South Korea won three medals. Belgium’s Loena Hendrickx medaled at the Grand Prix de France and the Grand Prix of Espoo and won bronze at the final. None of them landed a triple axel or any quad. That’s not a step backward for figure skating. It’s not a step backward in part because judges were forgiving a lot of weak skating if it came attached to a quad, and the programs are better for not consisting of skaters wandering around the ice conserving their energy for a jump. It’s also not a step backward simply because it’s better if the sport is not dominated by doped-up teenagers being abused by their coach.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/22/2154285/-World-Anti-Doping-Agency-appeals-after-Russia-very-believably-cleared-its-figure-skater-for-doping

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