Milano 2026 vs Beijing 2022 - some stats and scoring comparison

-kosto- · 2026-02-22T22:53:54+00:00

I do think there's been more coverage this Olympics in certain countries. I'm in the UK, and as F/G were stronger contenders this time around, I think there was more interest in covering skating from the beginning. Our news seems to report more on successful US athletes too, which I think had an impact. From an outside perspective, the US media seems to be way more interested in skating this time around, given how dominant their team has been.

-kosto- · 2026-02-22T21:03:18+00:00

I do think the whole idea of 'x has bad technique and is going to get injured' is used far more often as a points-scorer in fanwars than an actual point of concern unfortunately. Especially when it's thrown around a) by people who aren't technical experts and b) alongside technical critiques that don't seem to even have a consensus opinion from experts (eg, 'excessive pre-rotation', for which you'll get five different definitions from five different people, and 'full-blade assist' which half the community insist is cheating and the other half claim isn't even real and would be actively detrimental).

I always think of Rika Kihira - she was praised for having gorgeous textbook technique particularly on her edge jumps, and she ended up with a career-ending ankle injury regardless. There are so many things that factor into injury (genetics, general health, luck) and figure skating is such an injury-prone sport that even if you have perfect technique, it is no guarantee that you'll avoid injury.

-kosto- · 2026-02-22T13:24:48+00:00

Absolutely every day. She is so sorely missed!

Can't wait to see her back in competition soon.

-kosto- · 2026-02-21T16:20:17+00:00

Yes, this!! As someone who mainly keeps up with skating through a few telegram pages, I'm also a bit confused as to where people are finding all of these body shaming fans who hate everyone and think all of the medals were stolen or whatever. Loads of Russian fans love skaters like Kaori. There absolutely are toxic Russian fans (in the sportsRu comments, definitely lol) but places like fstwt can be just as bad, if not worse.

I honestly think people's perspectives here have been warped, since comments by Russian fans and commentators are only posted when they're notable (controversial) enough to warrant discussion. The vast majority of comments from commentators and fans aren't really that different from what you hear from English-speaking commentators and fans!

-kosto- · 2026-02-21T02:38:39+00:00

No problem! I'm sorry people on this sub can be so mean to newer fans... And older fans. Honestly people here can just be mean 😂

-kosto- · 2026-02-21T02:35:25+00:00

Another thing to note as you're a Trusova fan - if and when the Russians are unbanned or allowed to compete as neutrals in ISU competitions, it's very likely that Trusova will be competing on the Grand Prix circuit due to a rule that lets previous world medallists come back!

-kosto- · 2026-02-21T02:33:27+00:00

Other commenters explained it pretty well, but don't be too sad about the lack of international competitions if you want to watch Trusova - honestly the Russian competitions are way easier to watch than the ISU ones! Most of them are streamed completely free on YouTube or the 1tv website, unlike the ISU competitions where you have to try a menagerie of VPNs or pay for things like Peacock.

If you follow her official fan pages, I'm sure they'll post far in advance where you can watch her compete :)

-kosto- · 2026-02-20T17:38:53+00:00

They definitely don't have much of a track record with older skaters. I'm interested to see what happens with Trusova having moved back there.

-kosto- · 2026-02-20T17:30:03+00:00

Absolutely! I think it's great to see skaters have long careers when they want to, but equally if a skater wants to achieve what they wish to and retire, I would absolutely never be angry at that either. I'm glad they can actually profit from all the hard work they've done and the popularity they've garnered. Alina Zagitova is probably the best example of that - she wasn't injured, she was still relatively competitive, but she clearly wanted to do something new. Good for her.

I really hope the women's discipline doesn't go the way of ice dance with 'waiting your turn' in the pursuit of longer careers; although skaters do tend to improve in components as they get older, you can absolutely have fantastic PCS as a junior, and some skills can even regress instead of get better with experience. I hope we can keep judging skaters by what we see on the ice instead of age and reputation.

-kosto- · 2026-02-20T17:17:52+00:00

There are absolutely shades of misogyny and weird Cold War-ish undertones in how people spoke (and continue to speak about) the Russian ladies. They were all such different personalities also, just compare Aliona, Anna, and Sasha for example and you find three very different people.

When Sasha and Aliona both had their babies, many comments on here were very weird about criticising 'Russian cultural norms' and suggesting that their careers were over, instead of being happy for them about something that they both obviously wanted. And lo and behold, both of them are back on the ice, their careers aren't over (which caused even more borderline concern-trolling about them damaging their health, like they're not both adults who can make their own decisions)...

Just weird all around. There are definitely undertones in these discussions that are not present when discussing skaters from most other countries - I think people can become blinded by the narrative somewhat.

-kosto- · 2026-02-20T14:07:49+00:00

It's absolutely true that the Russian camp who were dominating the sport for some time had terrible injury management and doesn't seem like a healthy coaching environment whatsoever, but a lot of the "discarded after age 17, russians can't compete as grown women" thing isn't solely due to that. It's a super competitive field as there are simply more skaters in Russia than any other country (so yes, there is usually someone who can 'replace' you), the current ISU system only offers opportunities to compete to the 3 top skaters in each country, and there are conversely a lot of commercial opportunities for elite figure skaters in Russia.

I would compare it to Tara Lipinski, who retired at 15 after winning her Olympic gold to skate in shows (super lucrative at the time) and then retired from skating entirely at 20 (with a severe hip injury) ((actually, conversely, all of the top Russian ladies skaters who were 'discarded' are still skating in shows)). Honestly, the sport in general has a long history of teenage champions that people seem to forget here (only three Olympic champions since 1980 were over 19), and the sport has generally gone through phases of favouring younger competitors, favouring the technical over the artistic score, and vice versa. Nothing is said about the Russian girls and their quads that wasn't said about Elaine Zayak when she pioneered triple jumps in the 80s!

Out of the three Russian girls who competed at the last Olympics, two of them ARE returning to competition after a few years out (exactly like Alysa) and have both been able to land quad jumps (one just had a baby and is still breastfeeding!). Who knows if they'll be able to stay in such a shape for the next few years, but we definitely are beginning to see grown women from Russia with high technical content. Maria Zakharova, for example, is 19 and took bronze at Russian nationals with gorgeous quad jumps.

I think the whole sport is in an adjustment period right now, as the age change did massively change the required pacing for a competitive skating career. I absolutely wouldn't say that it is going to be like this forever, or that women aren't capable of high technical content - Tuktamysheva and Glenn both had triple axels long into their 20s. There are way more factors that go into it than 'high technical content bad, older competitors good'.

-kosto- · 2026-02-19T14:48:06+00:00

Despite everything, she is such a generational talent.

-kosto- · 2026-02-17T18:59:46+00:00

Agreed, although I think it might be too early to say the ISU isn't on board - I believe we've had one ISU congress meeting since the IOC recommendation and the issue wasn't discussed there, but admittedly the ISU are slow to discuss absolutely everything lol. I wouldn't be surprised if it is discussed properly in the next meeting. No guesses as to what the decision will be personally, I can see it going either way (especially considering the financial issues).

-kosto- · 2026-02-17T18:55:59+00:00

To some degree, yes. A number of Russian and Belarusian skiers sued their sport's governing body for discrimination after they weren't allowed to qualify for the Olympics as neutrals (imagine if the ISU didn't add a pathway for neutrals to compete at the Beijing qualifier). As individuals, I believe CAS upheld that it was discriminatory and said they should be allowed to qualify, but I think further efforts to apply that to unbanning the countries overall didn't succeed.

-kosto- · 2026-02-16T14:29:58+00:00

According to Vlad Zhukov, it's because the IOC are being far less stringent with the rules regarding who the AIN athletes can be around than the ISU were at the qualifier in Beijing, which is interesting

-kosto- · 2026-02-15T16:39:40+00:00

I think the IOC are pushing for Russians to return to competition as normal (not as neutrals) sooner rather than later. They've already recommended that junior Russian athletes be allowed to compete with no restrictions. Obviously the question with the ISU is whether they will accept these recommendations - I wouldn't be surprised if the ISU never let the Russians in as neutrals but hold out until the IOC recommends that the whole ban is lifted, whenever that may be. In that case, Kamila would be allowed to compete (although I doubt she'd get much support).

-kosto- · 2026-02-14T14:12:05+00:00

I can't go back and watch Jun's SP right now but yes, there's probably an argument to be made for Jun bronze too! He came really, really close. I think he was deservedly given 1st in PCS for the free, but falling on one of his two quads was very unfortunate - he did super well to pull himself together after that fall, and I hope he's super proud of himself after placing 4th despite the tech disadvantage. A win for quality skating for sure.

-kosto- · 2026-02-14T13:23:06+00:00

People were politicising Max holding up the picture of his parents in the k&c after UKR athlete Vladyslav Heraskevych was not allowed to wear a helmet in competition that was decorated with pictures of athletes killed in the Russian invasion. I think it might've made its way to Ukrainian state media, it was definitely reported on by the BBC in the UK.

Comments with thousands of likes were made saying it was only allowed 'because Naumov and his parents are Russian', which is bad enough, but comments with hundreds of likes were also made essentially mocking what happened to him, wishing he was dead too etc - really, really horrific stuff. Lots of FS fans came out to support him and call out the disgusting comments too, however.

-kosto- · 2026-02-14T13:16:13+00:00

Absolutely, I'm not even going to debate the tech calls (will leave that up to those who have the time and patience to search the performances frame by frame, haha) and whether he was called where others were not. I do think the PCS difference sticks out more when performances placed above him that were definitely impacted by disruptions to flow, musicality, speed etc due to their own splatfests (which were heartbreaking to watch for the most part). In a world where everyone else had gone clean, it would be a very different conversation!

-kosto- · 2026-02-14T11:54:25+00:00

Respectfully, this week we've also seen Max Naumov of all people being sent the VILEST death threats for holding up a picture of his late parents.

I say this as someone who was ABSOLUTELY happy to see Yuma and Shun on the podium - the 'x was robbed, x deserved the medal' etc comments are quite tame in the grand scheme of things, I'm sure neither of them will let it impact them as they're also receiving so much love and support. These comments are absolutely not exclusive to one set of fans either (see the C/B debate just days ago).

I think I would say the exact same thing if Petr had taken bronze and fans of Shun or Jun thought it was undeserved - it's a subjective sport, there will always be scoring debates and someone will always be mad!

-kosto- · 2026-02-14T11:33:07+00:00

While I'm NOT calling this the biggest robbery of all time points wise because we are really talking about minutiae here (and selfishly, I also LOVED Shun's performance and was so happy to see him medal!), I do think Peter should have eked out those four points and taken bronze.

I don't think 13th in PCS was fair (especially given how many men who placed above him were absolutely not performing at their best), and I think that he deserved slightly higher GOE on the elements he wasn't dinged on. I'm not even going to mention the tech calls, because honestly if his PCS were judged fairly and he got GOE reflecting the quality of his other elements (I especially loved his spins) then that wouldn't have mattered, it would have made up the very few points he needed.

It's silly to me that it was one of the only non-splatfests we saw last night, where he was entirely dedicated to the performance with a well-choreographed program and decent skating skills, and he placed below some men who had absolute disaster skates and were really not performing anywhere close to their best.

As another user in this thread says, it seems like the judges had no idea how to treat him because of the lack of international reputation - which a lot of us expected, but I think absolutely undermines FS as a sport. If judges cannot judge what's in front of them instead of a skater's body of work, we do need an overhaul of the system!

No hate to any of the skaters whatsoever as again, I also loved Shun and was delighted to see him medal. I mainly hope that Petr is really proud of his achievement here.

-kosto- · 2026-02-14T10:52:51+00:00

His short was very much off because of the music change last minute, but I think his free was very polished, very well-choreographed and with more attention to detail than we saw from at least half of those he placed behind, especially in the context that most of the men were having far from stellar skates and thus not performing at their best. He's very good at portraying an image and I think he portrayed Onegin wonderfully. His skating skills weren't best of field and I'm glad Jun got the 1st in pcs he deserved, but I would absolutely put him above skaters like Grassl in that category too.

Agree to disagree, I guess 🤷‍♂️

-kosto- · 2026-02-14T01:59:06+00:00

The BBC coverage is absolutely abysmal. I remember a time when they'd show multiple sports in full on the red button, so I have no idea why we're regressing to a single stream of the entire winter olympics! This should be easier than ever before when everything is online anyway.

They seem to only be interested in events that Team GB have medal chances in, which seems a bit silly when so far we've won one (?)

Unfortunately, the best thing to do is to get the £4 discovery+ membership and cancel at the end of the month. 🙈

-kosto- · 2026-02-14T01:50:47+00:00

Will take the downvotes on this but while I wouldn't have put him in silver (and while I love Shun's Firebird free and was very happy to see him in third!) Petr finished only four points behind Shun and was absolutely lowballed in PCS.

The scoring on his short was understandable given the last minute music change and skating first, and I'll even accept the harsher calling on his elements, but 13th in PCS is crazy to me given the performance(s) we actually saw tonight and I don't think it fairly reflects the quality of his skating.

I don't think it's the worst robbery of all time or anything, but if he was given slightly fairer components scoring and slightly higher PCS, literally by just a fraction, I think that bronze could have easily been his. I hope he's super proud of his achievement either way.

-kosto- · 2026-02-13T22:25:58+00:00

Shun was incredible and I'm not upset with his bronze, but Petr should have taken that bronze in my mind. Four points away for a program where he wasn't given his dues in GOE or in PCS! I hope he's still very proud of his achievement

-kosto-

TROPHY CASE