Hey guys, Katie here. Thanks for letting me join the blog, I’m excited to share something with you all every 10 days. As many of you may know, I have a lot of special interests. I hope to share some of them with you here, and I also hope at least one strikes your fancy as remotely interesting. :)

Today, we take on the figure skating special interest. Enjoy!

Introduction

Just this past weekend, the figure skating world championship took place in Boston. Every four years around this time, figure skating re-emerges as a special interest of mine, just in time to engage with and watch the Winter Olympics.

Perception of figure skating as an event of art and beauty and boring snooze fest music is true, but over recent years the sport has absolutely transformed into one that pushes the boundary of human athleticism (and allows music with words, as of 2014). In particular, today I’d like to highlight the quad axel. If you’ll be tuning into skating next February for the Olympics, it is sure to be a hot topic.

What Does Quad Axel Mean??

If you wanna learn the boring blah blah blah of the history of someone really old landing this, check out Wikipedia. That ain’t this kind of blog post. I’m getting right into the big stuff here.

In competitive figure skating, there are 6 different types of jumps to be completed. We can separate them into 2 categories for our purposes today:

The Axel - Takes off forward facing, lands backwards. Looks different than the others because of this.
All 5 Others (Toe Loop, Loop, Salchow, Lutz, Flip) - Takes off backwards and land backwards, differences between these 5 being in how they take off (edge vs toe pick, blade assist vs not, etc). Hard to tell them apart unless you really know what to look for.

The Axel is generally considered to be the most difficult of all jumps as the forward take off adds a half rotation to the successful jump (i.e. The Triple Axel is actually 3.5 full rotations before landing).

Triple axels have become a standard part of men’s figure skating programs at the highest level since the 90s, and have continued to be a rare, impressive feat in women’s skating. If you’ve seen “I, Tonya” starring Margot Robbie, you know this.

(As a sidebar to this, check out Midori Ito’s triple Axel. The first woman to ever complete it in 1988 (only 25 have completed it since), and still the most impressive by a mile: https://youtu.be/ik3kW_k5wXQ?si=SzeKk3_IqXgsalaa)

But, the quad axel, with a staggering 4.5 rotations before landing, has eluded even the greatest jumpers of this generation, and as of today, only been landed successfully by ONE person.

Who Has Done It and A Look Ahead

Only three skaters have attempted quad axels in competition in history, the first of which was only in 2018. In this first attempt, the skater fell and the attempt was ultimately downgraded to a triple axel due to under rotation prior to the fall, so didn’t truly count. I don’t even know his name and idgaf.

The second skater to attempt the jump was Yuzuru Hanyu. He made this attempt at the 2022 Olympics as the 2-time defending gold medalist, determined to put his name in the history books again as the first to land the jump. Unfortunately, he fell during the attempt, but this attempt at least did count as a quad axel - no downgrade.

The attempt is at about the minute mark of his program: Hanyu Yuzuru's #Beijing2022 free skate ⛸

Though he fell on multiple jumps including this one, he still went on to place 4th overall in this event, very impressive in and of itself.

But, in September 2022, just a few months after Hanyu’s attempt in Beijing, 17-year old American Ilia Malinin became the first (and still the only) to successfully landed the quad axel in competition.

The jump is at about the 20-second mark: Ilia Malinin produces first Quadruple Axel in Figure Skating Grand Prix history! | Eurosport

Over the past three years, many in part to his impressive jumps, Ilia has become a leader in men’s skating. He is the first to land every kind of quad in competition. Now at 20 years old, leading into the Olympic skating season, he is the two time world champion - to secure both of these wins, he landed the quad axel.

2024 World Championship - 1:05 mark for the QA. No HQ vids of this skate because broadcasting hates to see people watch things on YouTube but he does skate to Succession music, I know y’all go crazy for that - Ilia Malinin Six Quads at the ISU World Figure Skating Championship in Montreal on 3/23/2024

2025 World Championship - 1:20 mark for the QA. This skate is to some cute lil emo song and at around 4:25 mark he also does a backflip (cool): Ilia Malinin lands 6 quads, backflip to defend figure skating World Title | NBC Sports

He is obviously the favorite for the 2026 Olympics in Milan and it really is his gold medal to lose with an advantage like a difficult jump no one else can compete. There are rumors of a few talented jumpers who are rumored to be training it, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they try to bring it out to help squash Ilia’s advantage with it.

Anyway, that’s it for me. Tune in next time for more special interests. Thanks for joining today!