THE WORLD witnessed one of the biggest scandals in the history of figure skating when it was revealed that Kamila Valieva, a 15-year-old skater representing the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC), failed a doping test at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Often revered for its thrilling combination of athleticism and artistry, figure skating has continuously captivated countless spectators around the world. However, beyond the enchanting ice performances and athletic glory lies a wide array of institutional failures by the International Skating Union (ISU), the highest governing body in figure skating. Valieva’s case—although unfortunate—became the impetus for the disclosure of various problems hidden in figure skating’s dark underbelly, putting an end to those years in which their crippling effect on the sport have been obscured from the limelight.

Harmful coaching and minor abuse

   Valieva’s Olympic dream ended once word spread that she had tested positive for trimetazidine, a heart medication that was banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) as it has proven to boost an athlete’s performance[1]. The media had once hailed her as the next Olympic champion but quickly turned against her after the revelation. However, it was her support team that got the shorter end of the stick, particularly Valieva’s coach Eteri Tutberidze. Tutberidze made a name for herself as Russia’s top figure skating coach by producing rows of female champions and frequently delivering podiums of Russian sweeps at major skating events. She also “revolutionized” women’s figure skating by introducing young protégées capable of consistently landing quadruple jumps, often outperforming male skaters. There had been murmurs of concern for her overly harsh, controversial coaching methods for a long time, but she had never been openly called out before this year’s Olympics. Throughout the years, Tutberidze never shied away from telling the press how she subjects her students to extreme diets and emotional pressure at her Sambo 70 training camp in Moscow, where tensions already run high due to intense competition[2]. In 2014, she informed the media that her first star pupil Yulia Lipnitskaya—who at the time was 15 years old, just like Valieva is now—often only consumed powdered nutrients while training for long hours. At age 19, Lipnitskaya announced her retirement from the sport due to anorexia[3]. Despite the dangers these practices posed, Lipnitskaya’s high scores prompted Tutberidze to continue using the same approach, which would set a precedent for Tutberidze’s coaching methods for the next decade. Tutberidze prefers to keep young girls severely underweight because it makes them jump higher and spin faster. However, this method relies heavily on pre-rotation, a cheating move performed by rotating a jump before leaping into the air[4]. This move also puts an excruciating amount of pressure on the back, rendering skaters who consistently use it unable to compete in the field for long. Evgenia Medvedeva, an Olympic silver medalist and Tutberidze’s former protégée, suffers from chronic back pains and cannot rotate to the left; she was only 20 years old when she retired. Tutberidze admitted that she does not aim for the longevity of the athletes’ careers but rather focuses on procuring the best results from her skaters in a short amount of time[5]. Essentially, skaters in her camp are forced to retire at a young age due to severe injuries, a predestined result of being treated as replaceable products. Tutberidze and the Figure Skating Federation of Russia (FFKR) can maintain this “ditching strategy” because they always have another batch of young girls ready to be trained and bring in more gold medals.

   This pattern of abuse has always been in plain sight, but the ISU remained purposely blind to it and neglected its rightful responsibility. In fact, instead of condemning Tutberidze and her team before the doping scandal broke out at the most important sports event of this year, the ISU praised and validated her exploitative coaching methods. The organization even titled her Coach of the Year in 2020 during its inaugural Skating Awards[6]. Tutberidze’s receival of prestigious accolades sent the message that there is no space left for adult women skaters since their developed bodies cannot fit into Tutberidze’s unhealthy criteria that enable the execution of high-difficulty jumps that are worth more points. Pushing physical boundaries leads to evolution in sports but doing so at a cost where minors sacrifice their health and face exploitation begs the question: is a gold medal worth it?

A long history of corruption

   The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) lifted Valieva’s suspension from the women’s singles, citing the fact that she was a Protected Person[7] and could suffer “irreparable harm” if denied a chance to compete[8]. The court obviously had not considered the resounding impact its decisions would have on other skaters who had to compete knowing one skater had an unfair advantage when it authorized this grievous decision. Not only did the court disrespect the other contestants, but it also demonstrated arbitrary handling of a doping controversy. In 2012, Italian Olympic bronze medalist Carolina Kostner was banned from competitions for 16 months after her boyfriend tested positive for doping. Meanwhile, Valieva, who herself failed the same drug test, was cleared to compete[9].

   Valieva’s doping scandal revealed that past suspicions about the ISU’s differential treatment of skaters based on their respective skating federations were well-founded. In the past, skaters representing Russia, especially those from Sambo 70, were often overscored even if they had made mistakes during their performances. On the other hand, skaters from smaller federations that have less power in the ISU would usually receive lower scores even if they showcase stellar performances with zero mistakes. For instance, during this year’s Olympics, even after Valieva stumbled on a triple axel, she still managed to receive first place in the women’s singles short program. Yet Wakaba Higuchi, a Japanese skater who performed the same jumps Valieva did and even successfully landed a triple axel, placed fifth. The judges identified mistakes on two of her jumps, but the playback video clearly showed that Higuchi had executed all of her jumps flawlessly. Moreover, Alexandra Trusova, another skater from Russia who won silver at the Olympics, fell on a triple axel and performed the same jumps as the aforementioned skaters but still placed one spot higher than Higuchi during the short program. The large technical score difference between the Russian competitors and the rest of the skaters—with most of the skaters having the same jumps and some even executing those jumps better than the Russian skaters—raises doubts about the judges’ fairness and can possibly be seen as favoritism towards skaters from certain countries. Pre-rotations, under-rotations, and incorrect takeoff edges are all already cheats and mistakes that have consistently been observed among the Russian women skaters especially when they execute quadruple jumps, but the judges have rarely called them out. This trend of warped judging seems to have begun around the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics in Russia as the Russian government started massively funding the sport[10]. It was also the event where Russian skater Adelina Sotnikova controversially won the gold medal over defending champion Kim Yuna from South Korea despite Sotnikova’s mistakes and Kim’s perfect execution of every element. It is not hard to see why figure skating is brimming with corruption as skaters receive an automatic advantage based on their federation and judges can just return to the judging panel after being banned for cheating[11]. 

A broken scoring system

   Figure skating’s controversial scoring system makes score manipulation low-hanging fruit. The official ISU judging guideline’s evaluation criteria are full of ambiguity, which is only one part of the problem. The positive bullets that determine each element’s Grade of Execution (GOE)[12] require judges to look out for “very good height and very good length” for jumps and “good speed” for spins[13]. These criteria leave fans wondering what exactly constitutes “very good” in each case. The ISU does not provide any specific measurements that clearly dictate at what height, length, or speed a jump or a spin can be declared well executed. As the guidelines do not use decisive terms to define what a good jump or spin is, the definition of a greatly executed element remains subjective, which facilitates score manipulation by judges. The most recent adjustment to the GOE system was made in 2018 with the intention to “have more possibilities to evaluate the quality of elements,” according to the ISU. The organization expanded the range of the GOE from ±3 to ±5, which should have provided more room for careful and comprehensive evaluation. In reality, this change instead created an opportunity to increase the gap between skaters favored by the judges and other competitors, leaving the latter with less of an opportunity to catch up with skaters with inflated scores and decreasing their chances of winning.

   The scoring system also prioritizes risky and advanced technical elements more than artistry, offering more base value for more challenging jumps. Figure skating is not solely about the pursuit of exhilaration that comes from pushing the human limit by accomplishing increasingly difficult elements. This sport also appreciates a skater’s presentation, fluidity, and musicality. In an interview with Sport Express, Latvian figure skater Deniss Vasiljevs explained that the emotional content of figure skating, which is an artistic aspect, is just as important as the execution of complex jumps. In a sense, the current scoring system encourages skaters to chase more difficult jumps so that they can glean a “wow” effect from the audience and attract more views. With the way the scoring system emphasizes jumping, “it’s more fun to call [figure skating] aerobics on ice,” Vasiljevs said sarcastically. If this continues, figure skating might turn into a jumping contest and cease being an artistic sport. 

The takeaways

   The problematic issues in figure skating appear even more distressing because the solutions to these problems are quite accessible and simply require special administration from the ISU’s part. Skating competitions have already been using motion sensors and cameras to determine the height of each jump[14] but with judges, not the machine, calculating the scores. The ISU chose not to adopt this technology that could create a new system of fair scoring that lets Artificial Intelligence (AI) determine the scores based on the pre-set algorithm in the system. Top figure skaters have also voiced their support for the implementation of new, sophisticated technology to judge the performances. Yuzuru Hanyu, a double Olympic champion from Japan, wrote a graduation thesis on the utilization of wireless inertia motion capture systems in figure skating. Hanyu introduced a Dutch company called Xsens that developed wearable technology capable of tracking body movement without optical assistance, which the company already uses to replicate body movement in video games. Xsens’ highly precise motion sensors would not interfere with the device wearer, meaning that skaters would be able to compete without any physical hindrance while sensors deduce the position of each joint as they perform different elements on the ice[15]. The recent escalation in the technical levels of figure skating jumps has made it increasingly challenging for the human eye to accurately analyze the jumps within a short time frame. Utilizing advanced technology would not only lift the burden off the judges but also eliminate score manipulation. If the judges are unable to be completely unbiased, it is only reasonable to let AI handle the scoring. Thankfully, in February, 2022, the ISU announced that a special team is now in charge of developing AI dedicated to capturing the accurate number of jump rotations, but how soon this technology will be ready for use and whether it will be implemented at all is still uncertain[16]. 

   In order to create a fair environment, ISU members need to be overhauled and the organization’s workings reevaluated, but even such measures will not be enough to stop a chain of corruption since biased officials can always appear again. Currently, aside from informal networks, no entity is specifically dedicated to investigating corruption in sports or figure skating. Although the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) established a Programme on Safeguarding Sport from Corruption and Crime in 2017, the division’s primary focus revolves around fighting overall crime and corruption in the world, not just in sports[17]. Ultimately, each sports organization is left to its own devices since the scope of corruption in each sport is too immense for one investigating body to comprehend and deal with thoroughly. In order to properly combat and prevent corruption in figure skating, a separate organization consisting of independent experts needs to be created to overlook the ISU and topple any signs of corruption at its roots.

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   The recent doping scandal opened more eyes to the long-existing issues within figure skating. Most fundamentally, after Valieva’s downfall at the Olympics, demands to raise competitors’ age limit from 15 to 18 have increased. In the meantime, skaters are forced to comply with a corrupted system that does not appreciate their efforts and talents. It is unclear whether the ISU will take meaningful action to resolve these concerns. However, one thing is certain: as long as the ISU remains complicit in perpetuating problematic coaching and unfair judgment, these problems will persist and ultimately destroy the credibility of figure skating.

[1] AP News

[2] The Cut

[3] Aleteia

[4] Figure skaters must complete all jump rotations only after taking off the ice; The degree of acceptable pre-rotation varies by jump, but skaters must keep it to a minimum degree according to the rules of execution for each type of jump in order to showcase good jumping technique and earn more points. 

[5] Vox

[6] International Skating Union

[7] Protected Person: Athletes who qualify for legal protection due to their age or a lack of legal capacity; Valieva is under the age of 16 and falls under this code’s protection.

[8] Court of Arbitration for Sport

[9] Reuters

[10] National Public Radio

[11] NBC News

[12] Grade of Execution: The number of points a judge adds to or subtracts from each move’s base value

[13] International Skating Union

[14] Axios

[15] Waseda University’s Journal of Human Sciences

[16] Match TV

[17] The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime