Figure Skaters at the 2026 Winter Olympics Are Pushing the Limits of What’s Possible

In 2021, famed Russian fig skating manager Alexei Mishin said that nary fig skater would ever beryllium capable to successfully execute a quad axel successful his lifetime. The pursuing year, two-time Olympic golden medalist Yuzuru Hanyu was grooming to maestro the jump, but erstwhile helium attempted it astatine the 2022 Winter Games successful Beijing, helium fell abbreviated of finishing the four-and-a-half revolutions successful the air. Mishin’s pronouncement, it seemed, had been validated.

“I thought I would spot a quintuple toed earlier I would spot a quad axel,” says 2002 Olympic bronze medalist Timothy Goebel, known successful his clip arsenic the “Quad King.” Goebel was the archetypal skater to execute a quad salchow leap successful contention each the mode backmost successful 1998, 10 years aft Canadian Kurt Browning did the precise archetypal ratified quadruple twisting jump, the toed loop, astatine the satellite championships, marking the opening of the quad epoch of men’s fig skating.

Over the consequent decades, much skaters, similar Goebel, would travel on and adhd much varieties of quads.(There are six main types of fig skating jumps, which are named aft their creators and distinguished by their takeoffs, whether by blade, edge, oregon toe.) By 2016, each quads had been successfully completed successful competition—save for that 1 axel that Mishin, Goebel, and others thought they’d ne'er see.

Then, successful 2022, Ilia Malinin did it. The Virginian, who was conscionable 17 years aged astatine the time, had already been calling himself the “Quad God” online earlier that year’s US International Figure Skating Classic, but landing the quad axel cemented the title. The American phenom didn’t marque the 2022 Olympic team, but successful the past 2 seasons helium has won the satellite rubric doubly and is the overwhelming favourite for the men’s singles golden going into the 2026 Winter Olympics based connected his method abilities alone. All of this has near the skating satellite wondering what mightiness beryllium adjacent for the jumping phenom, and for the athletics successful general.

The quint, a five-revolution jump, is the logical adjacent measurement successful this progression. Malinin, who has been called the “Simone Biles of fig skating,” hasn’t been coy astir his tendency to onshore 1 of these elements, reportedly going truthful acold arsenic to hole for a quint effort precocious past twelvemonth during signifier sessions. Recently, the Associated Press weighed successful and declared that a quint cannot beryllium done, stating “most sports scientists hold that the velocity and amplitude indispensable for five-revolution jumps is genuinely impossible,” though they didn’t punctuation immoderate naysayers directly.

The quint, however, is not arsenic intolerable arsenic the AP’s nonfiction would person you believe, and if anyone tin propulsion it off, it’s Malinin, a generational endowment who has already done generational-talent things. The quint volition people the culmination of decades of improvement successful the sport, from the judging strategy to its grooming practices to adjacent however the jumps themselves are defined.

“I bash judge it’s possible,” Malinin told CBS Sunday Morning.

If you watch aged fig skating programs, you mightiness announcement that, backmost successful the day, they jumped differently. “When radical would measurement up for a jump, [they would] person a monolithic delay, rotate connected the mode down, and person benignant of an unfastened position,” says Justin Dillon, main high-performance serviceman of US Figure Skating. This method created a precise pleasing arc successful the air; it had a floaty, ethereal quality.

“But that’s not businesslike erstwhile we’re talking astir these multi-rotational jumps, and that’s due to the fact that present you person a constricted magnitude of aerial clip erstwhile you tin really scope your highest angular velocity and past support it,” says Lindsay Slater Hannigan, adjunct prof of carnal therapy astatine University of Illinois Chicago and sports sciences manager for US Figure Skating.