Women's figure skating

The wild finish to the Olympic women’s figure skating final

Kamila Valieva, Russian score inflation, and a teammate’s full-blown temper tantrum.

When the dust settled at Capital Indoor Stadium in Beijing Thursday, presumed favorite Kamila Valieva did not win an Olympic medal for women’s figure skating, setting off a series of extraordinary events. The International Olympic Committee (IOC), probably breathing a sigh of relief, was allowed to conduct a medal ceremony for the top three finishers: Russia’s Anna Shcherbakova (gold) and Alexandra Trusova (silver); and Japan’s Kaori Sakamoto (bronze). Had Valieva qualified for a medal, the ceremony would have been postponed because of an investigation into her failed drug test.

But instead of relishing a moment of joy and accomplishment in winning a silver medal, Valieva’s training partner and teammate Trusova threw a temper tantrum (in Russian) saying she hates the sport, hates that everyone has a gold medal, possibly hates their teammate Shcherbakova, and hates their coach Eteri Tutberidze.

Trusova reportedly told Tutberidze, “you knew everything” in the moments leading up to the medal ceremony. Tutberidze has a history of skaters that have talked about her restrictive, even abusive coaching methods — she lectured Valieva after her free skate. 

Trusova left Tutberidze in 2020 to train with Evgeni Plushenko and left Plushenko in May 2021 to reunite and train with Tutberidze heading into the Olympics.

Under the cloud of Valieva’s doping controversy and Trusova’s post-medal fireworks, there was also skating that happened. Heading into Thursday’s free skate competition, there was an outcry from skating fans and experts about Tuesday’s short program and how Trusova and Valieva had been over-scored despite having made egregious mistakes in their routines. Here’s how it all went down.

Trusova dominated the free skate, Shcherbakova won gold, and Valieva crumbled

If skating was purely a jumping competition, which some critics say it’s already become, Trusova would have a right to be upset about not winning the gold. In her free skate, Trusova landed five quadruple jumps. That’s astonishing when you consider that before these Olympics, no woman had ever landed a quad in Olympic competition. (Nathan Chen landed five quadruple jumps in his free skate this year as well.) By landing these jumps, she amassed a huge technical total of 106.16 points: