The Most Astonishing Jumps You’ve Seen (or Might See) at This Year’s Figure Skating Competitions

Even though quadruple jumps are not required elements, no man can reach the top of the international figure skating standings without them. (Nathan Chen’s gold-medal-winning free skate last week included five.) Women traditionally did not attempt quads, which call for four full rotations in midair; their hardest jump was the triple axel, so risky that only three women—Midori Ito and Mao Asada of Japan, and Mirai Nagasu of the U.S.—had landed it successfully at the Olympics. But in the team event at the start of these Games, 15-year-old Kamila Valieva of the ROC became not only the fourth woman to land the triple axel but the first to land a quad at the Olympics. In fact, she did it twice, with a salchow and a toe loop. That accomplishment had taken 30 years; France’s Surya Bonaly, on home ice in Albertville in 1992, attempted a quad, but it was under-rotated, and she did not receive credit for it.

Valieva is not the first woman to land a ratified quad in competition: That distinction goes to Miki Ando of Japan, who landed a quad salchow at the Junior Grand Prix final in 2002. Valieva’s teammate Alexandra Trusova is the second woman to land that jump and has successfully landed the quad lutz, flip, and toe loop. World champion Anna Shcherbakova, the third member of the ROC team, has landed a quad lutz in combination with a triple toe loop. The current U.S women are less technically accomplished, but 16-year-old Alysa Liu, the youngest on the team in Beijing, has landed a quad lutz at the Junior Grand Prix. (No one has landed a quadruple axel in competition; Yuzuru Hanyu’s unsuccessful attempts and their resulting falls kept him off the podium in Beijing).

The Chinese pairs team Sui Wenjing and Han Cong has landed quad salchow throws and quad twists in competition. They were inspired by Zhao Hongbo and Shen Xue, the first Chinese pair to win World and Olympic gold; Zhao is now their coach. Sui and Han will be up against three formidable ROC pairs teams later this week: Anastasia Mishina and Aleksandr Galliamov (the reigning world medalists), Aleksandra Boikova and Dmitrii Kozlovskii, and Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov (fourth-place finishers at the 2018 Olympics).