Winter Olympics 2026
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Anonymous
His technicals were just so plain smooth. It was a beautiful watch. Deserved it all. I was so excited and hyped up about Ilia too. He is young, he will be back. |
Anonymous
This music rights thing is going to be a huge PITA for figure skating. |
Anonymous
The artist specifically pulled copyright clearance from him because he's Russian, 3 days before the short program. He wanted to use his last year's program, Dune, but also couldn't get that cleared. One of Gummenik's coaches is legendary Russian pairs figure skating coach Tamara Moskvina. At 84 years old, she had the brilliant idea to use AI to compose music similar to this year's short program, with the same accents where the jumps should be and everything. But Gummenik tried it out and didn't feel right about it. He's also a musician (did a gala performance to Bolero where he stops skating in the middle and accompanies himself on piano, hah) and didn't want to skate to artificial music, so he ended up finding a waltz from the same composer of his long program music. He had to prepare that in a day. And then because he has been banned from skating internationally the last four years, he had no world ranking, and automatically had to skate first in the short, and it's common knowledge judges hold back marks from skaters in early groups/lesser knowns. And with all that going against him, he still ended up 3 points out of the medals! Pretty impressive. |
Anonymous
It’s not everyday at the Olympics when you hear a Canadian Olympian tell a Swedish Olympian to f**k off in the middle of a match. |
Anonymous
Same! It reminded me a little of Lillehammer, when the favored veterans all stumbled (Browning, Boitano, and Petrenko) and Alexei Urmanov pulled off a stunning upset. The planets had to align just right. |
Anonymous
+1 Olympic athletes must have some level of confidence to keep them going — it’s what makes them Olympians. It’s unfortunate that nerves got to Ilia, but it also happened to the other top contenders. It just happens. I don’t fault him for having confidence. |
Anonymous
+2 It happens to many others, not getting the expected result, i.e. I heard Nathan Chen was in the audience. Lots of people seemed to live a charmed life, until something derails their plans. To the rest of us, these people can seem arrogant. But maybe they are just ignorant. Something forgivable in a 21 yo. Now going forward is the time for him to show what he is made of. |
Anonymous
And Alexei Urmanov is Mikhail Shaidorov‘s coach. He trains with him in Sochi. |
Anonymous
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I thought Ilia handled everything really well. the comment he made about Beijing - that was just him processing how severely the Olympic atmosphere had rattled him, and realizing it could have been much different. He was basically in shock at that moment.
He can come back from this but I really don’t like how we center a few Olympic “stars” and put massive pressure on them. Nathan, Ilya, Simone, etc - we give them an impossible situation where anything less than perfect is a disappointment. Figure skating and gymnastics are particularly rough and then athletes are very young. Ilia has a gold medal and is still the best at his sport. But I also think other skaters were more artistic and graceful in their presentation. Maybe he can use this experience to develop his artistic side and rely less on technical tricks. |
Anonymous
Not a political post, but as someone who loves figure skating, the Russian influence on the sport was everywhere at the 2026 men's Olympic event, even with the ban. So many in men's singles had Russian roots or training: Mikhail Shaidorov (Kazakhstan – 1st) – Trainsin Russia with Alexei Urmanov in Sochi and speaks Russian. Stephen Gogolev (Canada – 5th) – Has dual Canadian and Russian citizenship, started skating in Russia as a kid before moving to Canada. Petr Gumennik (Russia – 6th) – Russian competing as a neutral athlete. Ilia Malinin (USA – 8th) – His parents Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skorniakov were Olympic figure skaters from Uzbekistan/former Soviet Union. Andrew Torgashev (USA – 12th) – Parents were Russian figure skaters who toured with ice shows before settling in the US. Maxim Naumov (USA – 20th) – His parents Vadim Naumov and Evgenia Shishkova were the 1994 World Champions in pairs for Russia. Vladimir Samoylov (Poland – competed) – Born in Moscow, trained in the Russian system before switching to Poland. I know many of these skaters have left Russia or represent other countries, but the technical foundation and coaching tradition of Russian figure skating still clearly influences the sport. Also, even if Adeliia Petrosian lands a quad and triple axel in the women's event, will she podium, or will the judges give her a low enough component score to keep her out of the top 3? Her actual skating is much more entertaining than Kaori Sakamoto (I think she's so boring, personally, and prefer the other Japanese women to her). |
Anonymous
They underutilized him last Olympics and overextended him this time. As a result, he was instrumental in securing gold for the team and was left with nothing in individual event. |
Anonymous
Two more factoids about Gumennik: - He has an SAT score of 100% (Russia's SAT equivalent) - His father is an orthodox priest |
Anonymous
They had absolutely no business putting their A team into the team event. He burned it all there and there was nothing left for the individual event. They should either hold the team event after the individual meet or explicitly slot a different set of skaters into the team event. You cannot expect top level runthroughs of the same program so frequently. |
Anonymous
Two more to add to your list: -Diana Davis, ice dancer from Georgia, daughter of (notorious) Russian coach Eteri Tutberidze. -Anthony Ponomarenko, American ice dancer, son of Sergei Ponomarenko and Marina Klimova, Russian ice dancers and Olympic gold (and silver and bronze) medalists. |
Anonymous
Dp. And Diana's partner, Glen Smolkin, whose father is an actor and played the butler on the Russian version of the Nanny! |