Our gymgod in heaven, hallowed be thy name

Since there's a storm coming and I have to stay put in my apartment, I figured it's the right time to write this. I've planned this for some time but waited for the competition to end, so I'll have the whole picture.

Kamila Valieva has been a hot topic this past week with the scandal rising above her head and nobody really protecting her but saying she's a protected athlete.

As the one time every four years that everyone watches figure skating is finally here, I’ve taken it as my God-given duty to educate you guys about the complete and utter CLOWNERY and the corruption that goes on daily in the Russian figure skating scene. I’m not joking when I say this shit is like bad reality TV. A famous coach has a cult following. Politicians get asked about coaches feuding. Putin, the president of Russia, got mad over unfair scoring and dissed a Canadian skater on live TV. It’s insane.

And there is a LOT of drama going on here, so I’ll try to explain it just in time for Olympics so you guys can understand why you are almost definitely not going to see a single ladies’ medallist over the age of 17 years old this Olympics (or possibly ever again).

If the only time that you tune in to figure skating is once every four years, here’s how things are going to go. You’re going to watch the 2022 Olympics. You’re going to casually watch the ladies’ figure skating segments. And if you’re a little bit observant, you’re going to think: ‘Why is every single medallist under the age of 18 years old? And why are they all Russian?’ And if you do your research, you’ll see that not a single girl over the age of 18 years old who is non-Russian has won gold in ladies’ figure skating for the past two winter Olympics. Why is this?

Well, it all started with Evgenia Medvedeva, one of the most famous figure skaters in the world. (If your last interaction with figure skating was with Yuri!!! On Ice in 2016, she’s that girl who wore a Victuuri shirt on the famously homophobic Russian national television, got illustrated into YOI official art, and did a routine to Sailor Moon. So. She’s really awesome and my favourite.)

Anyway, Evgenia won everything in the 2016 and 2017 seasons. She completed a Grand Slam twice, which is when a skater wins literally every major competition, at the ages of 16 and 17. Those two years were called the Evgenia dominance era, because she just kept winning. It was insane. She was Miss Stability because she literally never fell, she was reliable, she was unbeatable, she was the favourite to win the 2018 Olympics.

And then, just in time for the Olympics, at the old age of 18 years old, she started to fail.

The first time she fell in competition after two long years of straight clean programs, people thought it was a fluke. But then she fell again, and again, and again. And her younger, less injured teammate, 15yo Alina Zagitova, started to take the spotlight. Alina wasn’t struggling with back problems or a broken foot like Evgenia. Alina was born in the right year, at the right time, which made her 15 years old just in time to qualify for the Olympics, and she won the gold medal for ladies’ figure skating. Meanwhile, the favourite to win the Olympics won silver, being pushed aside for her younger and healthier teammate.

Now you might think, wow, that’s really sad. But it was just a one-time thing, right? Alina will surely go on to have the long and fruitful career that Evgenia, by some fluke of the universe, didn’t get to have. Right?

Wrong. Alina retires at the ripe age of 17 years old after peaking at 15 and the figure skating world. Goes. Crazy, because now people are beginning to notice a pattern. It started with Yulia Lipnitskaya, 15 years old at the Sochi Olympics, who skated the best programs of her entire life and retired soon after. It continued with Evgenia, who peaked at 16 and 17 and then developed chronic injuries that make her unable to turn her back to the left (a horrifying statement she revealed in a recent interview), and then with Alina, who skated her best at 15 and ‘took a break’ at 17, which fans have dubbed the ‘expiration date’.

Now, you might be remembering the figure skating greats like Yuna Kim, Michelle Kwan, Mao Asada. They didn’t retire at 17. This is not normal. This was not even close to the norm ten years ago, but now we’re heading into Beijing 2022 and a 15 year old is the favourite to win gold. So what is the the common factor that caused all these skaters to retire at 17, 18, 19?

The answer? Eteri Tutberidze, a famous Russian coach with a monopoly on ladies’ figure skating. Her students, which include Yulia, Evgenia, and Alina, have won literally every single competition under the sun for the past few years. And one by one, without fail, all her students have broken their bodies by the time they reach 17-18. She has never been able to successfully coach a student over 18 years old, but she doesn’t need to, because when one girl gets too old, three will come to replace her. If you’re talking solely about results, then sure, Eteri is a great coach. When her students shine, they shine bright. They’re one-season wonders, winning everything. But they’re one-season wonders, so after a few seasons, they’re replaced by the newest girl, the girl who’s 15 at the right time, younger and less injured. Why is this? Why don’t these skaters have longevity?

Well, it’s because of the body type you need to have to land jumps in figure skating. In skating, there are jumps called triples (where you rotate three times in the air) and quads (where you rotate four times). Quads were practically unheard of in ladies’ figure skating until 2018. That’s how recent they are. A quad in ladies’ fs has never even been landed at the Olympics before. This is because quads are insanely hard to do, and normally they require a lot of muscle, strength and grit to power through the four rotations in the air. Before 2018, the last quad jump had been landed by Miki Ando in 2002. 16 years before the next quad.

Before 2018, the highest technical jumps women did were the triples. Then Alexandra Trusova (aka Quad Queen Sasha Trusova aka the one to root for in the 2022 Olympics) came along and fucked shit up landed a quad toe loop at the age of 13. Sasha is the first female skater to land the quad Lutz, quad flip, and quad toe loop jumps, the second to land the quad Salchow (after Miki Ando), and the first to land two and three ratified quads in a free skate. She started the Quad Revolution and basically ensured that all the girls competing with her had to have quad jumps or a triple axel in order to win over her. And they did. Anna Shcherbakova, Kamila Valieva, Sofia Akatyeva, Adeliia Petrosian, all started landing quads too.

And that’s all well and good and all, yay for technical advancements or whatever, except that the reason quads started booming in the ladies’ was because a certain coach had figured out that you don’t need to be made of muscle, or have years of training, or experience to land a quad.

No. You just need very, very low body weight.

Yeah. Now you see where I’m going.

Girls have started landing quads like never before. At the junior levels (>15yos), it’s become commonplace to see Russian preteen girls train quads as if they’re jumping machines. Teenage girls have the perfect body type to quickly rotate four times in the air- a slender frame, narrow hips and short height. And once they hit puberty, it’s over. Quads rely in pulling in all your body weight as closely as possible to your centre, allowing you to maximise your speed of rotation- but you can’t pull in hips or a chest. That’s why most female figure skaters lose their jumps after puberty, and why so far only teenage girls have managed to land quads. And how do you delay puberty as long as possible so you can keep winning for as long as you possibly can? Well, it’s simple. You just don’t eat.

Even before the Quad Revolution, Tutberidze’s skaters relied on their low body weight to do triple jumps so much that during the 2014 Olympics, 15yo Yulia Lipnitskaya had to subsist on a diet of entirely powdered substances. The girl did not eat a single tangible meal the entire time. And by the time the 2018 Olympics rolled around, Tutberidze had forbidden 18yo Evgenia and 15yo Alina from drinking water for fear that a few grams of water weight might affect their aerodynamics. Alina mentioned in an interview that they could only rinse their mouths out with water and spit it back out.

The thing about quads is that no one really knows the long-term effects they can have on these teenage girls’ health, as the oldest girl to land regular quads turns 18 this year in 2022. However, Evgenia Medvedeva only did triple-triple jumps her entire career, and she ended up with a broken foot and can’t even turn her back to the left. So. Whatever the long-term effects are, they’re going to be bad. 15yo Daria Usacheva was supposed to be a strong contender this year, but a hip fracture during practice at the NHK Trophy made her unexpectedly withdraw. Alena Kanysheva lands a quad at 14 and retires at 16. And still, still even younger girls will come to replace them and drive older skaters who can’t land quads anymore out of the sport. Ladies’ figure skating has turned into a sport where 15 year olds dominate for one or two seasons, and get traded in for newer and less injured skaters.

And it’s not like the girls themselves aren’t painfully aware of this- Sofia Samodelkina barely missed the cutoff age for the Beijing 2022 Olympics at 14 years old, and she revealed in an interview that she prays every night for them to be postponed to 2023 because she knows that when she turns 18yos in 2026, she won’t be able to compete with the younger and stronger 15yos. Evgenia knew that she couldn’t stay with Eteri once she turned 18, because the technique no longer worked, so she left Eteri to be coached by Brian Orser (but forgot to send Eteri flowers for thanking her for being such a great coach so Eteri went on a smear campaign against her and showed Evgenia ghosting her texts on Russian national television). Then judges started underscoring Evgenia just for the crime of training under the ‘wrong’ coach, so she had to return to Eteri.

So if everyone knows that this is going on- if everyone is aware that figure skating is built on the broken bodies of young girls who sacrifice their long-term health for the sport only to be cast aside at 17 years old- is anyone doing anything about Tutberidze’s borderline abusive training methods?

Well. The ISU (international skating union) gave Eteri an award for Best Coach, if that’s what you mean by ‘doing something about it’. Because apparently they don’t give a fuck that these girls are being used like products and discarded just as quickly as they come. They just care that her girls win.

And win they do. Enter: the 3A, the trio of elite Russian figure skaters Anna Shcherbakova, Aliona Kostornaia and Alexandra Trusova (nicknamed the 3A because all their names start with an a but everyone calls Alexandra as Sasha).

The 3A won every. Major. Competition. During the 2020 season. They didn’t let anyone else on that damn podium. They were playing musical chairs with those three podium spots. The main surprise when you watched fs wasn’t ‘omg who will podium’ but ‘omg in which order will 3A podium’. And if you recall, 2020 is the year our reigning Olympic champion Alina Zagitova turned 17, so she was already on her way out. Anna was 15, Sasha was 15 and Aliona was 16- optimal ages in figure skating. Aliona didn’t have quads, but she had a beautiful triple axel and artistry, while Sasha had pure raw athleticism and Anna fell somewhere in the middle. But unfortunately, they weren’t born in the right year. By the time the qualifiers for the Beijing Olympics rolled around, Anna and Sasha were 17 and Aliona was 18, and a new face entered and broke nine world records in her debut season alone- Kamila Valieva.

Kamila is, supposedly, better than all the girls who came before her. (Even though I still like Aliona better.) She has the artistry and consistency that Sasha lacked and the quads that Aliona lacked. She’s the full package of everything a skater should be, and she’s 15 years old in an Olympic year. She has it all, and tbh doesn’t really have any other competition. Anna and Sasha are still leagues ahead of everyone else but if they’re as unreachable as kings, Kamila is as unbeatable as a god. Kamila, Sasha and Anna are the three skaters representing Russia at Beijing (Aliona withdrew from this season due to a hand fracture she’s ‘not allowed to talk about’.). Anna is almost definitely injured nine ways to hell, Sasha is probably injured too, so Kamila is probably the only one who’s like. Even moderately healthy out of the Russian girls, if you discount the fact that she’s like severely underweight. Idk if she’ll be the one to break the cycle, but hopefully this monopoly on ladies’ fs ends soon and new rules are put in place to stop girls giving themselves chronic injuries by the time they turn 16.

Anyway, that’s the summary on the figure skating drama. Please cheer for Sasha and Anna! I want Sasha to be the first person to land a quad at Olys because she was the one who started this whole quad revolution so it’s only right that she should finish it. Wow this took me a long time to write and we only covered the tip of the iceberg. Hope you guys enjoy the Beijing Olympics btw happy cny 祝大家新年快樂, 身體健康 (god knows they need it) 心想事成 etc etc

The Olympics have wrapped up; the figure skating season is over. Sure, there'll be a world championships in a few weeks like there is every year, and many of the top skaters will go, but the point at which this whole season was aimed -- the Olympics -- is done, and for all substantive emotional purposes, so too is the '21-'22 figure skating season.

It's been a slow build to a meltdown. A lot of fucking around, so we could all find out at the Olympics. The season started with another of Eteri Tutberidze's junior phenoms, Kamila Valieva, entering senior competition. She put together a mildly shaky but technically advanced performance at the pre-season domestic review called the Russian Test Skates but was overshadowed by Alexandra Trusova's five-quad program. Only a few days later, Trusova failed to replicate her test skates blowout performance at the US Classic in Boston and was almost beaten by Korea's Yeongjeong Park. (Many people argued that she should have been.) Meanwhile, Valieva went to the Finlandia Trophy and set a new world record score in the free skate and total combined points to win gold at that event.

This pattern would continue throughout the season. Trusova never quite pulling it all together and Valieva... well, the judges were so mesmerized by Valieva that they kept leaving themselves very little room to score anyone more highly under the current scoring system.

Trusova went to Skate America and won, but fell on her 3A in the short and (unusually for her) managed to rein it in on a fractured foot by only attempting one quad (and landing it) in the free skate. In a rarity for a skater out of Eteri Tutberidze's Sambo 70 program, Trusova actually withdrew from the NHK Trophy because of her foot fracture. Apparently even Eteri wanted to have all her senior skaters ambulatory for the Olympics. (The same was not true for her skaters unlikely to make the Olympic team -- Daria Usacheva fractured her hip on on a jump in warmup and had to be carried out of the arena, her season over.)

Valieva on the other hand went to Skate Canada and got a world-record high score. She then went to the Rostelecom Cup and got another fresh world record. A subtext of the season was which Russian skaters would be named to the three spots on ROC's Olympic team, and Valieva was the only one that had a spot for herself locked down from the beginning of the season. After the Grand Prix final was cancelled because of covid, Valieva won both Russian Nationals and then the European Championships comfortably. She was the overwhelming favorite for the gold medal at the Olympics

Valieva's combination of a beautiful 3A in both her short and long programs and three solid quads in her long program was approachable (theoretically) only by Trusova, who despite landing 3As in practice could never pull one off when it counted in competition, and couldn't quite replicate her five-quad performance in her free skate. Nevertheless, Trusova landed enough quads at Russian Nationals and Euros to get herself an Olympic spot, along with Anna Shcherbakova, who had a two-quad free program and was absurdly overlooked even as the reigning world champion.

You will have noticed that I haven't mentioned any skaters from a country other than Russia, and that's because there were none that were even close to matching the enormous base-value programs of Valieva, Shcherbakova, and Trusova. The Japanese skaters Kaori Sakamoto and Wakaba Higuchi were having good seasons by every metric other than winning, since without a 3A or a quad (Kaori) or with just a 3A and no quad (Wakaba), there was no chance they would beat the Russian skaters no matter how well they skated.

Even before the Olympics, figure skating fans were looking at all this with a jaundiced eye. They knew from experience that Eteri Tutberidze deals in volume -- sending a ton of young girls out with extremely high tech content, waiting for one of them to hit it big each season despite fundamentally unhealthy training regimens, taking credit for that girl's success, and then quickly pivoting to someone else when that year's phenom inevitably got injured and was forced to retire much too early from the sport. Eteri was a 'winner' every year, even as the skaters whose glory she stole came and went: Lipnitskaya, Medvedeva, Zagitova, Kostornaia, and now Shcherbakova, Valieva, and Trusova. Real fans of figure skating saw this season progress and saw in Valieva just the most recent of one-and-done superstars who would never be able to compete in more than one Olympics because of prematurely shortened careers.

Meanwhile the bureaucrats that run the sport couldn't get enough of Eteri and her latest amazing skaters. Eteri was named the ISU Coach of the Year. Commentators Ted Barton, Tara Lipinski, Johnny Weir, and others gushed about the greatness of 15-year-old Kamila Valieva without once reflecting the widespread sentiment among many fans that this repeating pattern had a dark side. The judges kept handing out the 'Eteri bonus,' evidently unsatisfied with her skaters winning on high base-value technical programs, but also insisting that these same skaters be awarded the highest 'artistic' or program component scores (PCS) every time they set foot on the ice.

So then, the Olympics. The fucking around had been going on for a long time; would the finding out ever happen? Valieva beat Kaori Sakamoto like a drum in the team event free program by thirty something points enroute to securing the gold medal for ROC. The Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) which everyone had to call them because 'Russia' had been caught at the Sochi Olympics doing massive systematic doping. Obviously the name change wasn't preventing the Russians from enjoying their Olympics!

And then the medal ceremony for the team event was postponed because of, the organizers told us, 'legal reasons.' People speculated that ROC skater Mark Kondratiuk had been caught with weed. But, some people said, why would everyone be keeping secrets if it didn't involve the only skater young enough to be considered a minor and therefore a 'protected person' under the WADA code? Did Kamila Valieva get caught doping?

Soon enough as always happens, there were leaks. Yes, it was Valieva, caught with trimetazidine from a sample at the Russian Nationals.

Into action swung the bureaucrats whose job it was to keep the sport running smoothly, with one horrible decision after another. RUSADA lifted Valieva's automatic suspension under the doping code immediately upon learning of the positive result. The IOC immediately appealed that transparently self-serving decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), who had the bare-minimum dignity to insist upon a hastily-called 5-hour hearing after which they agreed that yes, nothing must stand in the way of Kamila Valieva competing at the Olympics, positive drug tests and the strict-liability provisions of the WADA code notwithstanding. It would, they announced, cause Valieva 'irreparable harm' to be excluded from competition, forgetting apparently about the harm caused to all the athletes that hadn't tested positive, and about the harm to Valieva herself who would have to stay in Beijing for practices and hide from the press when her coaches abandoned her and skate in front of the world with everyone knowing that if she won, her victory would be illegitimate. The IOC declared that if Valieva was on the podium, there would simply be no medal ceremony for anyone.

Ah, these bureaucrats are such wise people and they deserve to make the important decisions!

Valieva at first managed not to crack under the pressure and (of course) was in first place after the short program. Then she finally cracked in the free skate with maybe only one clean jump, falling to the ice and stumbling around, a far cry from the brilliance she'd displayed earlier in the season. She ended up finishing fourth, off the podium, relieving the bureaucrats of the scrutiny for an absent medal ceremony and (some suggested) dimming the spotlight on the people actually responsible for Valieva's doping, Eteri Tutberidze and her collaborators at Sambo70.

Kamila Valieva

Trusova, meanwhile, fell again on her 3A in the short program and fiercely told everyone who questioned the wisdom of continuing to try for this jump that 'my 3A is not negotiable' and that she would always do it. She was about eight points out of the lead going into the free skate, where she managed to finally land all five quads and become the first woman to ever do that in an international competition. Unfortunately for Trusova, the quads came at a cost, as she visibly abandoned any pretense of doing anything skating-skills wise between her monster jumps, and botching a non-quad combo, leaving the door open for Anna Shcherbakova, who landed two quad flips and won the gold medal by about five points. Very close; and so far away.

Alexandra Trusova

Anna Shcherbakova

Meanwhile, Kaori Sakamoto of Japan skated the living shit out her programs and climbed onto the podium for the bronze with solid triple jumps, the best 2A in women's skating, and demonstrably superior skating skills. Which, in this day and age, is just about the highest one could possibly finish in women's skating without any of the big jumps (the triple axel or quads) known as 'ultra C' elements.

As is befitting the shit-show that our beloved skating bureaucrats had served up, the aftermath of the women's individual event was 'really something.' Sasha Trusova melted down just as fiercely as she skates, saying she hated Eteri and would 'never skate again' through tears, literally facing into a corner and having to be talked into settling down and heading out to the ice for the podium ceremony. Valieva was hustled away, and poor Anna Shcherbakova was left standing by herself, thoroughly ignored after having just won the gold medal. Kaori did her best to enjoy herself and hugged Wakaba and generally tried to be normal. I hope she was having a good time.

What a goddamn mess

Right after Valieva finished skating, we were quickly shown the room were the top 3 skaters wait and because of the disaster of what we just witnessed, I almost didn't notice the fact the camera was zoomed on only 2 chairs: Shcherbakova's and Sakamoto's. Later I realized we didn't see Trusova because she had already left. She had seen Shcherbakova's scores.

So we had:

Trusova — silver medalist — crying because she felt cheated by her coaches (and oh, doesn't that remind you of a certain situation in 2018 between Zagitova and Medvedeva?),

Valieva — 4th at the goddamn Olympics at 15 — crying because she suffered from the pressure (and oh doesn't that remind you of a certain Lipnitskaya in 2014?), missed, and immediately got accusations from her coach while she was still one foot on the ice,

and Shcherbakova, alone, unable to enjoy her gold medal because of the whole situation (and it's my guess there, but probably trying to ignore the harsh words that might have been thrown her way in the heat of the moment by her fellow skater)

Once again, to all the adults in the figure skating world: was it worth it?

this is about a girl who has been nothing but second best for the past three years. this is about a girl who pushed this sport to a place nobody ever thought possible, a girl who did everything she could and skated lights out the best she has in her career. this is about a girl who cracked when she realized that no matter what she did, it was still not enough and she was still second best. and the ones who were meant to support her decided that they didn’t care because it wasn’t their loss anyways.

this is about a girl who got the one thing she was ever supposed to want and had nobody to celebrate with. a girl who feels nothing but emotionally empty on what was supposed to be the best night of her life - she won everything and has nothing at the exact same time. this is a girl who did everything she was ever meant to do and reached the dream she’s maybe always had, only to know that she took it from her best friend and there was never enough room on the top of the podium for both of them. and all she ever did was try her best but there were so many other girls broken along the way.

and this is about a girl who was at the top of the world, labelled the darling of the olympics, only for anything to come crashing down two days later. only for her to have the worst skate of her life on the biggest stage of her life. and only for her coach to say that she didn’t try hard enough. it’s about a girl who went from loved to hated overnight and it’s about a girl who blinked, lost everything, and has nobody to simply tell her it’s not her fault.

it’s about three girls, three abuse victims, three children - who all made it to the olympics, the one thing they all wanted, only for it to go to hell. we saw tears in practice and we saw tears on the ice, tears on the podium. this is about more than medals and podium spots. this is about more than a quad or two or five.

this is about three children who are victims of an abusive system that continues to go unchecked. this is about three children that deserve better.

It was like watching the fallout of years of abuse in slow motion go down right in front of our eyes. It's been hours and I'm still shaken from it.

It was Kamila Valieva completely falling apart in front of our eyes in her FS, looking like a shadow of herself, like she doesn't want to be there, like she's barely hanging on, and even the way she gestured with her hand after the FS was over was telling. Will she even see her compete again? Will she recover from this nightmare? From the damage that was done to her? From how she might be treated by her coaches and the Russian media?

It was Sasha Trusova having a complete meltdown because she didn't win gold. I don't think I've ever seen a skater react like that to a loss. She was crying and screaming on camera, refusing to talk to her coaches, refusing to go on the podium, saying she hates everything and that she hates the ice and the sport. She was told repeatedly that she can win if she will land 5 quads, then she did and she lost to a teammate of hers who only landed two. Then she was crying because she's been away from her mother and her dogs for over three weeks.

It was Anna Shcherbakova looking like she is attending a funeral after she won saying she feels "emotionally empty" after winning.

It was watching the post-event footage that Eurosport kept playing of Kamila sobbing and looking devastated, and Sasha sobbing and screaming because she "only" won silver (can you imagine if these girls were actually scored correctly?) and then of Anna sitting alone in the K&C looking shell shocked.

It was Kaori, the truly rightful medalist, sobbing and being shell-shocked herself while coming to terms with her win instead of feeling just elation.

It was watching Wakaba once again being robbed.

It's the thought about EVERY OTHER CLEAN SKATER who had to live through this nightmare and have their Olympic experience tainted by this mess.

It's the fear that things won't change after this.