BEIJING — The Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva’s performance in the women’s figure skating event this week was supposed to be a highlight of the Beijing Games.
As the sport’s breakout star here, she was expected to land quadruple jump after quadruple jump, just a week after the team event, where she became the first woman to land one at the Olympics. And Valieva, 15, would land those jumps with ease, like a bird floating onto a tree branch.
After it was made public last week that she tested positive for a banned drug, the question now is whether she can perform the way she always does, and that’s with near perfection, amid a doping scandal that nearly cost her the right to compete here. Arbitrators ruled on Monday that she could skate, but that no medals ceremony would take place if she finished in the top three because her doping case is under investigation. After Tuesday’s short program, she was in first place despite a stumble.
Valieva, trusty stuffed rabbit not far from her side, is ready to show off the quadruple jump that has helped lift the sport to another level. She is one of just 12 women who have landed the quad cleanly in competition, and she is expected to land several in Thursday’s free skate.
“Now you pretty much need a quad to medal at the Olympics,” said Mirai Nagasu, who in 2018 became the first American woman and third overall to land a triple axel at the Olympics. “To me that sounds crazy, but it’s true.”
In 2018, Nagasu’s triple axel was the coveted skill at the Olympics. Since then, the bar to succeed in the sport has soared into another stratosphere. The quadruple consists of four full revolutions in the air before the skater, less than a second later, lands on one foot. It’s a Russian specialty in the women’s free skate.
Valieva and her Russian teammates — Anna Shcherbakova, 17, and Alexandra Trusova, 17 — are capable of landing more than just one quad in their free skate, the only program in which women are allowed to perform quads. They land several of them.
They are so good at those quads that even the top male skater, the Olympic gold medalist Nathan Chen, said he did not want to compete against them.
“They are so awesome that I think they’d beat all of us,” he said with a laugh.
Men have been landing quadruple jumps for years, beginning in 1988 when Kurt Browning of Canada first performed one. But on the women’s side, the advent of the jump, and its necessity for success, is relatively new and has shaken up the sport.
In 2002, Miki Ando of Japan became the first woman to land a quad in international competition. For years, no one else landed the jump in an international event. But since the 2018 Olympics, 12 women, including nine Russians, have done so.
What sparked this quad era in women’s skating — now called the Quad Revolution — was a monumental leap Trusova took one month after the 2018 Olympics, when she was 13.
At the junior world championships, Trusova, now known as the Quad Queen, landed two quads — a toe loop and a salchow. Last fall, she landed five quads in one free skate, serving notice to her competitors worldwide: The points race was on.
If other skaters wanted to catch her, they needed to up their games because quads, even landed poorly, can be worth more points than other jumps. A skater who performed a clean quad could score more than twice the number of points she would earn with a triple.
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