A beginner’s guide to watching Olympics figure skating

Figure skating, with its beautiful lines, costumes, and daring elements, is one of the most anticipated events at the Winter Olympics.

But it is also a judged sport, which can lead to a lot of raised eyebrows. Why didn’t your favorite skater win?

Here is a breakdown of how to watch the Olympic figure skating events.

The quad axel! Two-time men’s Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu said his goal here is to be the first skater to land a quadruple axel. The reason it would be special is that the axel has an extra half rotation vs. all the other jumps. So far, the hardest jump landed in competition is the quad lutz, which is four rotations. The quad axel would be four and a half. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it has to be fully rotated without a second foot or hand down. Hanyu nearly landed it at Japanese nationals. Landing an element in international competition is what really counts.

Hanyu has said becoming a three-time Olympic champion is not important to him. The quad axel is what he wants.

Normally, skaters compete individually or in pairs. In 2014, the team event was added to Olympic competitions. Skaters from each country compete as a team. The governing body decides which skaters will compete. Different skaters can skate the long and short programs for each event (men’s, women’s, pairs, dance), but a team can repeat in two events. So perhaps Nathan Chen would skate both long and short in the men’s event.

Only the ones chosen to skate win medals rather than the entire Olympic team.

The United States won the bronze in 2014 and 2018. Russia and Canada were the other medalists both years (Russia winning in 2014 and Canada in 2018). Canada’s team isn’t as strong this year, so the United States has a better chance at winning the silver medal. Russia is all but a lock for the gold.

Pairs has the big jumps, throws, and lifts. Dance is almost entirely footwork and is based on ballroom dance. Dance is generally the most theatrical of the events.

The short program has a set of required elements that the skater must perform. They have some freedom within those restrictions. For example, if they are told to do a triple jump, they may choose any triple jump. Generally they choose the harder jumps, because they earn more points. But they may also choose the jump they do best.

If a skater misses a required element, they get a zero for it. For example, if a triple jump is required and the skater does a double instead, it is as if they didn’t jump at all.

In dance, the short program is called the rhythm dance. Every year a theme is chosen and a section of a set pattern dance must be included. For this year’s theme, skaters must choose at least two rhythms from the following: street dance, jazz, reggae, and blues. The pattern dance is the Midnight Blues, meaning all skaters will perform some of the same steps.

The long program has more freedom, but it still must be a “well-balanced program,” meaning a combination of elements covering the full surface of the ice.

The short program for singles and pairs is two minutes, 40 seconds, plus or minus 10 seconds. The rhythm dance is two minutes, 50 seconds, plus or minus 10 seconds.

The long program for all is four minutes, plus or minus 10 seconds.

The skating blade looks flat, but actually it is sharpened to a curve with two edges. The inside edge is toward the inside of the body. The outside edge is toward that outside of the body. If you got down to look on the ice, you could see the tracing of each.

Jumps take off from either the inside or outside edge. They also take off either from an edge (axel, loop, salchow) or from the skater tapping in their toe (flip, lutz, toe loop).

The axel is a forward entry but lands backward. All other jumps start and land backward.

The flip and the lutz are very similar toe jumps, but the flip is from an inside edge and the lutz from the outside, meaning the lutz requires slightly more rotation, and thus is given more points.

A common mistake is that a skater will aim to do one but change the edge at the last minute. Commentators often talk about that as a “flutz.” Skaters gets deductions for those jumps.

Another common mistake is a “cheated” jump, meaning the blade lands at least a quarter turn short of rotation. That also results in a deduction or sometimes even a downgrade, meaning an intended triple jump is called a double.

A twizzle is a bit of footwork that nearly all competitive skaters must perform. But it is most often talked about in dance, because ice dancers have longer sections of required twizzles. They are also more challenging for ice dancers, because the couples must match their twizzles in rotations, intensity, and on the music.

A twizzle is a series of turns that looks like a spin stretched out across the ice. It is skated on one foot. In dance, the skaters must do a variety of types of twizzles, on different edges, with different entries, and with different positions of the free (non-skating) leg.

In the women’s competition, Russia has a good chance of sweeping the medals. The three skaters are all coached by the same woman, Eteri Tutberidze, who is a controversial figure in skating. Her skaters are generally teenagers who can do the most impressive triple and quadruple jumps, but seem to be expendable. Different skaters rise to the top every couple of years and the previous ones are rarely heard from again. This year’s Russian team is Kamila Valieva (who will very likely win gold), Anna Shcherbakova, Alexandra Trusova.

The Japanese and Korean skaters are also usually in the mix for medals.

Americans Mariah Bell, Karen Chen, and Alysa Liu will likely skate well but not medal except in the team event.

Among the men, American Nathan Chen and Hanyu are the most likely champions. Another American, Vincent Zhao, is also in the mix, as well as Shoma Uno from Japan.

The third American, Jason Brown, is one of the most beautiful skaters to watch, but he only has one quadruple jump and it is not consistent. He is not expected to medal.

In pairs, it is likely between the Chinese and Russians. The Russians most likely to win are Anastasia Mishina and Aleksandr Galliamov, and the top Chinese pair is Sui Wenjing and Han Cong.

The Americans are Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier, and Ashley Cain-Gribble and Timothy LeDuc. LeDuc is the first openly non-binary athlete to compete at a Winter Olympics. They will likely skate well but not be contenders.

Dance has a more open field. The French team of Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron was expected to win in 2018, but were taken down by — of all things — a wardrobe malfunction. They are gold-medal contenders this time along with Russians Viktoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov. The top two American teams, Madison Chock and Evan Bates, and Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donahue, are also in medal contention, as are Canadians Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier.

This is Bates’ fourth Olympics, Chock’s third, and Hubbell and Donahue’s second.

The third American team, Kaitlin Hawayek and Jean-Luc Baker, will skate well but not medal. They are very likely to be U.S. champions next year.

People are also talking about Russian ice dance team Diana Davis and Gleb Smolkin. Davis is the American-born daughter of coach Tutberidze. Many people (including in Russia) think she and Smolkin qualified because of that reason more than on merit. They also suspect Davis and Smolkin will skate the team event, thus winning another honor for Team Tutberidze.

The judging system was changed after the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics judging scandal, where two judges allegedly colluded to make certain skaters champions. The 6.0 system was replaced by IJS, the international judging system, which defines how many points each element is worth.

The officials include judges and a technical panel. The technical panel determines an element — including whether a triple should be downgraded to count as a double — and the judges decide the quality of the element. A skater may be given a positive or negative grade of execution depended on how the element was performed. They are also given points for skating skills, transitions between elements, and performance. This is how a skater like Jason Brown, with fewer big jumps, can still do well. It is also how a skater with lots of impressive jumps but easier footwork may not win.