TRAUMA FOR TRIUMPH:
ABUSE IN THE WORLD OF LADIES' FIGURE SKATING
"No sport for grown women"
Figure skating is one of the most popular sports of the Winter Olympics. Jumping, spinning, and performing on millimeters-thick blades, the culture of figure skating requires extreme discipline, training, and mental strength…and relying on young teenage girls to bring their country glory.
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The result of this is a sporting culture rife with scandal & abuse towards young girls, especially in Russia, which dominates the ladies' field.
For decades, ladies’ singles figure skating has been dominated by young, teenaged girls.
In 2022, at just 25 years old, Mariah Bell became the oldest U.S. Olympian women’s figure skater since 1926. The past 3 Olympic gold medalists in the discipline have all been under the age of 20. But nowhere is this teenage dominance more prominent than in Russia.
Russian ladies have been taking the sport to new heights–Alexandra Trusova kickstarted the "quad revolution", or landing jumps with 4 rotations in competition, which the sport has been dominated by. If you want to stay competitive, you need to jump quads. With the rise of the “quad revolution,” longevity and sustainable careers in the sport have given way to these jumps, which can immensely impact the body, leading to more frequent injuries. More and more young women are jumping quads, since their lower body weights and smaller size can better handle the extra rotations.
Alexandra Trusova (RUS) performs a quad flip (4F) at the 2022 Olympics in Beijing, China. Alexandra was the first women to land a quad Toe-loop, quad Flip, and quad Lutz in competition.
Ðтери Тутберидзе
Eteri Tutberidze
is the name of the game when it comes to figure skating in Russia and the whole world–her skating school and coaching method have a stranglehold on the sport, with podiums at major competitions often being dominated by only Tutberidze proteges. Her school is known for intense, rigorous coaching with emphasis on quad jumping. Although her athletes are successful, her methods are brutal, and their careers are short because of it.
Her dominance of the sport seemed unmatched, and in 2022 the three Olympians representing Russia in ladies’ singles––all from Eteri’s school––were expected to take gold, silver, and bronze.
That all came to an unexpected halt when her student, 15-year-old Olympic Gold Medal Hopeful Kamila Valieva, tested positive for banned substances during the 2022 Olympics.
The doping scandal of 2022 highlighted the open secret of the abusive coaching methods of Russian figure skating kingpin Tutberidze and her team. While Tutberidze's students and her extreme coaching methods remain at the top of the sport, figure skating has been plagued with abuse around the world.
In the aftermath of the doping incident, and the ban of Russian athletes from international competition leaving the future of the sport in the air, how did we get to this point?
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Click the skaters below to learn the story.
