Olympic figure skating has just hit the media! From Alysa Liu winning on her own terms to the shocking ice dance podium, the skating in Milano was one big story that had a lot of scandals, falls and amazing victories! Here is an olympic recap of the figure skating event in summary, and what’s to come next!
Team event: The team event was the most usual of all the competitions. The Men’s event went just as expected, with Ilia Malinin from Team USA winning by over five points. In ice dance, Madison Chock and Evan Bates from Team USA won by another high margin, Kaori Sakamoto won the women’s portion, and the pairs had an unshocking win by Team Japan with 155.55 points, beating Georgia in second place by 15.85 points. In the end, Team USA won the team event with 69 points, beating team Japan by just one point.
Pair skating: During the pairs short program event, every team was skating as well as expected. Then the favorites went on, Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara from Japan, who, during this program made a fatal mistake that led them to be fifth after the short program. During the free skate, though, the team came back stronger than ever, making their leap from fifth to first with a combined score of 231.24 points. In second place with 221.75 points was Anastasiia Metelkina and Luka Berulava from Georgia and third place was Minerva Fabienne Hase and Nikita Volodin from Germany with 219.09 points. It was a special win for the second place team, because it was the first ever Winter Olympic medal for Georgia.
Men’s singles: During the short program, everything was going as expected. Malinin was leading the short, followed closely behind Yuma Kagiyama and Adam Siao Him Fa. The short program also included the viral Minions themed program, performed by Tomas Guarino Sabate. The long program was where the game really changed. An extreme number of men fell during the long program, including Olympic favorite, Malinin, losing his two year winning streak. This huge loss on points made Ilia eighth overall. The podium had a shocking upset. Third was Shun Sato with 274.90 points, second was Kagiyama with 280.06 points, and first was Mikhail Shaidorov with 291.58 points. This win for Shaidorov gave Kazakhstan their first olympic gold medal in 32 years.
Ice dance: The ice dance event had three favorites to win; Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier from Canada, Madison Chock and Evan Bates from the USA, and Laurence Beaudry Fournier and Guillaume from France. In the end, in third was the pair from Canada with 217.74 points, second was the pair from the USA with 224.39 points, and first was the pair from France with 225.82 points. The scandal from this competition was between the team from France and the team from the USA. People on the internet were pointing out how France’s twizzles and steps did not match together compared to the USA’s team twizzles and steps, which looked perfectly in time. Another factor in this scandal was that the French judge on the panel of judges overscored the French, and underscored the USA by a lot of points. The U.S. figure skating association almost called for an appealment for the scoring, but it was turned down because the major issue in the scoring was not easily pointed out. For a score to be appealed, there must be an issue that can easily be spotted, for example a person gaining a positive grade of execution (GOE) on a jump they fell on.
Women’s event: The women’s event was a close call the whole competition. After the short program, the podium stood with Liu in third, Sakamoto in second, and seventeen year old Ami Nakai in first. An interesting thing that happened during the short program was Amber Glenn’s short, in which she scored her highest points ever for her triple axel, but the failure of two other jumps caused her to sit in thirteenth after the short. In the long program, though, Glenn came back stronger than ever, jumping up from thirteenth place to fifth. In the end, third place was Nakai with 219.16 points, second place was Sakamoto with 224.90 points, and first place was Liu with 226.79 points. People online have been speculating Alysa Liu’s first place as “scripted” because of how high she was scored compared to Nakai, who had a triple axel in her program, unlike Liu. Liu’s gold medal was team USA’s first gold in figure skating since 2002.
What’s next: If you are interested in continuing to watch figure skating past the olympics, this month is junior worlds from March 4-8, and also senior worlds from March 24-29. Throughout the year, there will be a number of national and international figure skating events that are available to watch.
Groves: Figure skating is not only on the streaming services, but also here at Groves! This year, all three figure skating teams made it to States, and will be competing later in March. If you feel like showing your school spirit, States are at the Novi Ice Arena on March 22, 2026.
