What Changes Can Figure Skating Make After Beijing Olympics Mess?

What immediately comes to mind for many is the figure skating scandal, where Nancy Kerrigan was kneecapped by her ex-husband. The 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, had little impact on the sport. The Beijing Games may force the sport to rethink who its athletes are, and whether they have agency over their own careers.

Four years earlier, all of the key players in the drama were still competing. Tara Lipinski won surprise Olympic figure skating gold that year, and her youth and skillful inclusion of difficult jumping into her winning routine was a sign of what the sport would become down the road.

But first in 2002. There was a judging scandal at the Salt Lake City Games. Two French skating officials fixed the pairs skating event, voting for a Russian duo to win over an obviously superior Canadian team in exchange for a Russian vote for a French win in ice dancing. Lipinski and her husband produced a documentary about the scandal for Peacock.

The judging system used in skating was changed because of that scandal. The International Judging System was fully implemented by the 2006 Olympics. Skaters were ranked by judges with a complex points system on the 6.0 scale, but the ISJ replaced that with a simpler system. Skaters receive a base score for each technical element and a separate score for the presentation of the routine. The skater's final score is produced by the two numbers combined.

anonymous judging was introduced by the IJS. In an attempt to prevent a repeat of the 2002 incident, anonymous judging is said to have been to blame for a scandal at the Sochi Games, when Russian skater Adelina Sotnikova won the women's individual event by a suspiciously wide margin over her South Korean opponent. It was not possible to know for certain if Russian and Ukrainian judges inflated Sotnikova's performance marks or simply hewed more closely to technical elements in judging and less to the performance aspects. The wife of the head of the Russian Skating Federation was a Russian judge.

The judging in figure skating ended.

Skaters have mostly adjusted to the IJS. It has demanded technical risk at the cost of young skaters health. Lipinski had to have hip surgery when he was a teenager. Three years after winning a bronze in the team event at the Olympics, gold took time off to seek treatment for depression and eating disorders. In January, Gold placed 10th at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships.

A New York Times article detailed career-derailing injuries to three young Russian Olympic medalists, including Sotnikova, who was the center of the controversy in Sochi.

In Beijing, everything came to a head when a Russian teen was found to have tested positive for a banned heart medication. The positive test result was revealed last week, after Valieva led the Russian Olympic Committee squad to a win in the team event, but before she was to perform in the individual event. She was allowed to skate again despite the fact that she should not have done so. If Valieva could not compete, they said there would be irreparable harm to her. The World Anti-Doping Agency calls her a protected person because of her age.

Valieva ended her Olympics in fourth place after falling several times in the free skate. Her teammates, Anna Shcherbakova and Alexander Trusova, won gold and silver, respectively. The event was a mess. It was an embarrassment for the Olympics, which needs to take steps to make sure history doesn't repeat itself.

One way to make sure Beijing does not repeat itself in the future is to ban Russia from wearing Olympic-flag sheep's clothing until the country's drug practices are controlled. Russia carried out a lot of its drug practices on a grand scale and needs to be held accountable. It took covering up the statewide effort across dozens of sports. The punishments have not been very effective. After being implicated in scandals in 2002, again in 2014, and once again this past week, Russians continue to dominate the sport of figure skating. Figure skating and the young athletes who pursue it will be safer if Russia is forced to really reckon with the impact of their actions.

Valieva and the other Russian skaters competing in Beijing toil under the same coach, Eteri Tutberidze, who has been widely criticized for running a so-called skating factory at the Sambo 70 club in Moscow.

The New York Times reported that Tutberidze berated Valieva when she stepped off the ice. She has hidden her methods because almost no one stays with Tutberidze until the age of 18.

Both Lipnitskaya and Medvedeva left the sport after a brief period of elite competition.

The coaching problems in figure skating are not limited to Tutberidze or the Russian program.Coaches in other countries have been accused of abusive practices.

The problems do not stop with skating. Every sport has brutal coaching practices. The Larry Nassar scandal in gymnastics revealed a number of coaching problems, including those of the US Olympic team's former head coaches, and of the coach who was later suspended for eight years. According to the New York Times, a renowned running coach was banned from coaching after being accused of sexually abusing an athlete. Kaillie Humphries, who won a gold medal for the U.S. in the monobob in Beijing this week, stopped competing for her home country of Canada when she alleged that her coach was abusive.

The abuse of young athletes that has been pervasive in figure skating and gymnastics is particularly horrifying. The age limit for athletes should be raised from 15 to 18 due to concerns for their welfare. The Dutch delegation's proposal to raise the age limit to 17 was voted yes by the U.S. delegation to the International Skating Congress, but 39 other countries, including Russia, voted no and the item never reached the agenda for serious consideration.

Skaters should be allowed to mature and reach the age at which they can consent to their training regimen, their treatment by coaches and other officials, and to the medications and supplements that they take.

Skaters are able to stay in the sport longer in the U.S., where training is more expensive but less rigorous at a young age, and where domestic competition prizes clean execution over dangerous tricks thrown by tiny bodies. Two of the three US skaters in the women's individual event were adults. If that were the rule in skating, Alysa would have waited two more years to compete.

If the sport produces healthy adult athletes whose lives and livelihoods are not held hostage by the adults around them, it is worth a diminishing of risk. Beijing could be proud of that legacy.