Ilia Malinin Brings Figure Skating To The Crossroads

Even in sports that do not literally hand out points for style, the matter of aesthetic value is of discursive import. The most dominant athlete or team in the world can be taken down a peg or two on the moral underpinnings of play style. There are hoops (ethical) and hoops (unethical). You can win, but what is it worth if you do not win beautifully? You can lose, but at least you suffered beautifully when it counted. The ugly victor is a goblin; the beautiful loser was too pure for this world.

What figure skating does as a sport is declare aesthetics an essential component for victory. The fundamentally subjective evaluation of how beautifully or, to borrow the favored technical term, artistically one skates is converted into a scored part of the performance. When the Olympic commentary puts in a snide aside about how a skater is "not an artist" or "doesn't have the artistry," it is, taken generously, a technical critique of the performance. Of the score each skater receives, a significant part of that is dictated by artistry.

Unfortunately for ethical, artistry-favoring figure skating fans, relatively recent developments in the men's event have proven that the small details like step sequences and spin quality and skating skill, still, can be rendered less important. Like many technical innovations in sports, said "quad revolution"—turning quadruple jumps into elements that can be consistently performed, pioneered by skaters like Yuzuru Hanyu, Nathan Chen, and Jin Boyang, the last of whom is participating in the 2026 Olympics—was a bit more fun in the beginning. It helped that in the revolution's early era, Hanyu was the most ethical of skaters: Not only did he push the technical limits of the sport, but he could perform. Chen faced criticism for only being a jumper, but at least he had both a rival in Hanyu and the decency to, on occasion, totally blow it, most notably at the 2018 Winter Olympics.