move fast jump high

- curse of the Olympic favorite (Yulia Lipnitskaya 2014, Nathan Chen 2018, Ilya Malinin 2026, evgenia medvedeva 2018, Sasha Trusova 2022 (kinda?))

- A: artistic boy skater who can only do triple jumps vs B: little quad jumping bean and they both know A is the better skater but B has the better jumps. And they both know if the scoring system was different A would SWEEP

- two skaters in the top 10 fighting for podium spots and suddenly their rival drops out (heath / injury / etc) and suddenly winning isn’t fun anymore (ash wager / Gracie gold, Javier Fernandez / Yuzuru Hanyu)

- curse of the eteri girl: russian girls who have so much potential, pushed beyond their limits and in an abusive situation who burn so bright and so suddenly and then retire or disappear before they’re 20 (yulia lipnitskaya, Alina Zagitova, Sasha trusova, Medvedeva etc) (they literally changed the minimum age because this happened so much)

- two skaters from the same country always fighting for first at nationals and then fighting for gold at worlds and every competition is just A vs B. But you also train together and walk home exhausted together and sneak snacks from the vending machine in the lobby and you’re not supposed to be but when the other wins gold you’re SO PROUD of them.

- or two skaters from the same country who grew up skating together and always rooted for each other at practice but now it’s senior competitions and they’re pitted against each other and all that childhood love and warmth is ruined by medals and scores and you wonder where those two kids went

- friends to rivals to lovers: former pairs skaters with new partners fighting for the podium and they know ALL the tea about each other and use it to their advantage.

- the judges favorite in ice dance and the couple that’s objectively better not even getting on the podium because they’re racist or don’t like the way she smiles or something dumb

- two girls that yearn to ice dance together but the ISU is stupidly gendered so they’re not allowed to and they have to find boys to dance with but they hold hands and giggle together during gala practice

- doping and unfair judging and Russians get to phone it in with bad programs and get great scores whereas the Asian skaters have to work twice as hard and smile twice as bright and be PERFECT to even be contenders. But the skaters love each other and it’s not fair but it’s not the other persons fault and maybe there’s some guilt for winning when you know the other person was objectively better

Like, she was definitely a victim of racist judging. But, the backflip wasn't banned because of her. It was banned in 1977. When she was 3. 21 years before she did it in the 1998 Olympics.

Was she frustrated and upset about how she was being judged when she did the flip? Yes. But was the backflip illegal because she was a successful black woman (paraphrasing a number of comments I've seen on posts about Ilia's backflip)? No. It was banned after a white guy did it 20 years earlier. Also white boy Ilia Malinin wasn't the reason it was unbanned. It was Adam Siao Him Fa doing a flip (and it going semi-viral) that got them unbanned.

let me tell you what I wish I'd known when I was young and dreamed of glory

Or: all roads lead back to Hamilton

bonus shailinin:

bonus shailinin:

And this ISN’T including his awards fits that have progressively gotten more and more unhinged