History

During the Cold War (1947–89), judges tended to vote in East-West blocs, a practice that influenced the outcomes of some close competitions. The Soviet Union, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Austria often voted as a unit, while the United States, Canada, Japan, Great Britain, and Italy often showed support for athletes from their countries. However, not all the judging that was alleged to have been politically motivated was necessarily so; some preferences were simply a matter of taste. For instance, judges from the Eastern bloc countries have long displayed a preference for classical music and balletic choreography over music and dance that contained more pop-cultural themes. Although this situation has moderated since the early 1990s, some voting along political and cultural lines continues.

The evolution of increasingly difficult jumps continues to be a hallmark of the sport. Triple jumps, for example, became significant for men and women in the 1980s, and quadruple jumps became increasingly more important for men in the 1990s. The triple axel, the most difficult triple jump, was first landed in competition by Canadian Vern Taylor at the 1978 World Championships in Ottawa. Eleven years later, at the world championships in Paris, Midori Ito of Japan became the first woman to complete the jump. Canadian Kurt Browning, the first person to complete a quadruple jump, landed a quad toe loop at the 1988 World Championships in Budapest. Elvis Stojko, also a Canadian, holds two records with respect to the quad; he was the first to land a quad in combination with a double toe loop (at the 1991 World Championships in Munich) and with a triple toe loop (at the 1997 Champions Series final in Munich). Timothy Goebel, an American, completed the first quad salchow in 1998 at the Junior Grand Prix finals. He also was the first to land three quads in one program, two quad salchows and one quad toe loop at the 2001 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Boston.

The 1990s were a tumultuous decade for figure skating. The elimination of compulsory figures from competition in 1990 gave an advantage to the more athletic freestyle skaters. Until the late 1980s, skaters who were good at figures could win competitions without having strong freestyle-skating techniques, since compulsory figures were the most important part of the sport. They constituted 60 percent of the total score at national and international championships held in the 1960s but had been reduced to 50 percent by 1968. The short program was introduced in 1973, and at that time figures were reduced to 40 percent of the score. Over the next 17 years, the ISU continued to reduce the weight of figures until they were eliminated completely from international competitions after the 1990 World Championships in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Proponents of figures said they developed fine edge control, balance, and footwork, while critics thought them boring and mundane, compared with the athleticism and beauty of freestyle skating.

Another change occurred in the 1990s with the rules dividing professionals and amateurs. Since then the ISU has allowed amateurs, even at the lower levels of novice and junior, to earn money from endorsements and in ISU-sanctioned events. The ISU created a new system of eligibility: skaters who were “eligible” for ISU-sanctioned events, including worlds and the Olympics, and those who were not (“ineligible”). Ineligible skaters, buoyed by high television ratings, entered professional competitions with prize money and starred in their own professional ice shows.

Television became very significant for skating. Nowhere was that more evident than in 1994 when skater Nancy Kerrigan was clubbed in the leg by an associate of Kerrigan’s main competitor Tonya Harding at the U.S. nationals in Detroit. International interest in the situation translated into high television ratings at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway. The women’s short program was watched by millions of spectators as Harding competed against Kerrigan, the eventual Olympic silver-medal winner.

Explore a timeline of the attack on Nancy Kerrigan

As figure skating entered the 21st century, the level of athleticism continued to rise, with more men performing quad jumps in both the short and long programs. Increasingly, the world-level women’s champions were expected to have triple-triple jump combinations (two consecutive triple jumps) in their long programs. However, the top skaters achieved success only by combining difficult jumps with artistic and elegant skating.

Figure skating in the 21st century

One of the biggest changes in the history of figure skating came in 2004, when the sport abandoned the controversial and highly subjective 6.0 judging system with the International Judging System, which was intended to more transparently and objectively judge the skating. The change came as the result of a judging scandal at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City that became known as Skategate. The pairs figure skating competition was dominated by scandal when Canadian skaters Jamie Salé and David Pelletier, who skated a flawless final program, scored lower than Russians Yelena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze, who had made several errors in their performance. After the competition, a French judge admitted that she had been coerced into voting for the Russian pair by a skating official but later recanted her story. The resulting uproar led to the Canadian pair being awarded gold medals as well.

But the new scoring system did little to avoid another infamous controversy at the 2014 Sochi Olympics when Russia’s Adelina Sotnikova won gold over South Korea’s Kim Yuna. At the time Olympic judging was anonymous, but the panel included a Ukrainian judge previously suspended for trying to fix a competition and a judge who was married to a member of the Russian skating federation. In the wake of the controversy, anonymous judging was ended in 2016.

Japan’s Hanyu Yuzuru took Olympic gold at the 2014 and 2018 Olympic Games, with a mastery of athleticism and artistry rarely seen in the sport. His back-to-back Olympic golds were a feat that had last been achieved by the legendary Dick Button at the 1948 and 1952 games.

American Nathan Chen went on to dominate the sport, winning three world titles (2018, 2019, and 2021) as well as the gold medal at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. He earned the nickname Quad King for landing five, and then six, quadruple jumps in a single program.

The focus on quad jumps was not the sole domain of male skaters, however. In 2002 Japan’s Ando Miki became the first woman to land a quadruple jump in competition. Twenty years later, it was considered de rigueur for a woman seeking an Olympic medal, as American figure skater Mirai Nagasu told The New York Times in 2022: “Now you pretty much need a quad to medal at the Olympics.” Nagasu made history by becoming the first American woman to land a triple axel at the Olympics in 2018. At the 2022 Olympics in Beijing, 15-year-old Russian Kamila Valieva became the first woman to land a quad in Olympic competition. Her feat was negated when she was disqualified for taking an illegal heart medication, but two of her fellow Russian skaters, Anna Shcherbakova and Alexandra Trusova, also landed quads in their routines, taking the gold and silver medals, respectively.

If Nathan Chen was dubbed the Quad King, his successor seems to be Ilia Malinin, the Quad God. Entering the 2026 Winter Olympic Games, the American and two-time world champion was the prohibitive favorite for the gold medal. Malinin is the only skater to successfully land a quadruple axel in competition, as well as the only athlete to land seven quad jumps during a performance.

In 2022 Canada became the first country to allow same-sex couples to participate in pairs and ice dancing competitions. It was followed in 2025 by Finland and was set to be allowed in England for the 2026–27 season. As of 2025 international competitions were still limited to couples comprised of one man and one woman.