Figure Skating After 2026 Winter Olympics: Sport Transformed [2025]

Figure Skating After 2026 Winter Olympics: How Drama and Controversy Are Reshaping the Sport

Figure skating at the Olympics has always been theater on ice. But the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Games didn't just deliver drama—it delivered a reckoning.

The sport walked into these Games with a clear narrative: Ilia Malinin, the self-proclaimed Quad God, would dominate. Madison Chock and Evan Bates, the American husband-and-wife team who'd waited years for their moment, would finally claim gold. The storylines were set. The heroes were chosen. Then everything got messy.

Malinin fell twice despite his legendary quadruple axel. Glenn stumbled when it mattered most. And when the free dance results came in, the team that many thought deserved gold didn't get it. The judging controversy that followed wasn't just another Olympic debate—it exposed fundamental questions about how figure skating values artistry, athleticism, and integrity.

What happened at Milano Cortina wasn't a blip. It's a watershed moment. The way judges score programs, the way skaters train, the way the sport prioritizes certain elements over others—all of it is under scrutiny now. And the changes coming could reshape competitive figure skating for a generation.

TL; DR

• The 2026 Olympics exposed judging inconsistencies that sparked appeals and debate about subjectivity in free dance scoring
• Ilia Malinin's struggles showed that quad attempts don't guarantee success, challenging the "more jumps equal more points" mentality
• Alysa Liu's comeback gold proved resilience matters more than past failures, redefining what Olympic comeback means
• The free dance controversy highlighted how rules prioritize specific elements over creativity, stripping magic from performances
• Figure skating's future depends on balancing technical difficulty with artistic expression, a tension the sport hasn't resolved

Comparison of proposed judging systems shows a trade-off between flexibility, objectivity, and bias risk. Estimated data based on qualitative descriptions.

What Actually Happened at Milano Cortina: The Drama Nobody Expected

The 2026 Winter Olympics were supposed to be straightforward. Instead, they became a masterclass in how quickly narratives collapse under pressure.

Ilia Malinin entered the Games with legitimate expectations. He's the only skater in the world who can consistently land a quad axel—a jump so difficult that most male skaters won't even attempt it. His technical credential was undeniable. He helped the US win team gold, which should've been a confidence builder heading into his individual event.

Then came the short program, and suddenly the Quad God looked human.

He skated well enough to place, but he wasn't the dominant force everyone expected. More telling: in the free skate, he scaled back his quad attempts. He fell twice. The unbeatable skater who'd built his entire Olympic narrative around technical superiority suddenly looked vulnerable. It wasn't a collapse, exactly—it was something more interesting. It was a skater facing the reality that one jump, no matter how impressive, doesn't win Olympic gold.

Meanwhile, Alysa Liu's story was the opposite. Liu had qualified for the Beijing Olympics in 2022 as a teenager, then stepped back from competitive skating. She didn't compete for years. Her return to elite competition felt like a long shot, a nostalgia play more than a genuine medal contender. Except she won gold. Not silver, not bronze—gold. Her comeback wasn't gradual. It was complete. It redefined what a comeback looks like at this level.

Amber Glenn's story was the painful inverse. Glenn, a US skater, had also stepped away and returned to competition. In her short program, she missed one jump and scored zero on it. That single error essentially ended her Olympic medal hopes. The margin between gold and finishing out of the medals had become razor-thin, where one miscalculation in a program lasting three minutes could erase years of training.

But the real earthquake came in the free dance competition.

The Free Dance Controversy: When Judging Became the Story

The free dance at Milano Cortina pitted three teams against each other: Madison Chock and Evan Bates from the United States, Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier from Canada, and Guillaume Cizeron and Laurence Fournier Beaudry from France.

Chock and Bates had been skating together for roughly 15 years. This was their opportunity—maybe their last realistic opportunity—to claim Olympic gold. They'd trained relentlessly. They'd built a program that many observers felt was technically superior and emotionally resonant. They were American. The narrative machinery was spinning in their favor.

Cizeron and Fournier Beaudry arrived with baggage. Fournier Beaudry's boyfriend and former partner had been suspended from skating following sexual misconduct allegations, which he denied. Cizeron's former partner has accused him of being controlling. There were real questions about whether these skaters should even be competing together. The controversy wasn't tabloid fodder—it was substantive.

When the free dance ended, the French team won gold. The results sparked immediate debate. In the program, some observers noted visible errors from the French team—technical mistakes that should've resulted in deductions. Yet their grades of execution came back high. Their scores edged out Chock and Bates.

The US team considered filing an appeal. They ultimately decided against it, but the conversation that followed was brutal. How do you score the most subjective skating discipline fairly? How do you compare two different programs, two different interpretations of ice dance, and declare one objectively better?

The judging system itself became the villain. And that's where things get deeper.

Execution consistency and artistic impression are as crucial as technical difficulty in figure skating success. Estimated data reflects the balance needed for Olympic victories.

How the 2004 Judging Reform Changed Everything

To understand what went wrong at Milano Cortina, you need to go back twenty years.

In 2002, the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City hosted a pairs figure skating competition that became a judging scandal. The French judge appeared to have voted for the Russian pair in exchange for support for the French ice dance team. The entire sport was tainted. Public trust evaporated. Something had to change.

In 2004, figure skating introduced the International Judging System, also called the Code of Points. The idea was simple: eliminate the old 6.0 system, which was essentially judges voting on overall quality. Replace it with something more mathematical. Break down skating into measurable technical elements and assign them point values. Score program components separately. Let the numbers do the talking.

In theory, this made figure skating fairer. In practice, it changed what skaters optimize for.

Under the old 6.0 system, judges rewarded artistry, musicality, presence on ice, and overall performance quality. Yes, you needed to nail your jumps, but if you made a mistake and then delivered something emotionally powerful, judges could still score you highly. The system rewarded risk and creativity. Skaters would attempt unique jumps, experiment with unconventional program structures, and prioritize how they made the audience feel.

The new system prioritizes specific technical elements. To get the highest scores, skaters need to hit a narrow set of jumps and spins. The rules are designed around what works—meaning skaters who attempt the same jumps, in similar structures, get the highest technical value. Individuality becomes liability.

It's the equivalent of replacing an essay exam with a multiple choice test. Yes, it's more objective. But you're no longer testing the same things. You're testing whether someone can check boxes, not whether they can think creatively.

The problem compounds when you combine this with the Program Components Score, which judges award for things like presentation, choreography, and skating skills. PCS is subjective. But because TES is so regimented, skaters assume that maximizing TES is the path to winning. So they all start doing similar things.

When Amber Glenn missed her jump in the short program, she got zero points for it. Not a deduction. Zero. That's the system working as designed—an element that doesn't complete doesn't get scored. But it also means a skater can execute a technically flawless program except for one missed element and drop significantly in the standings. It's punitive in a way that older judging systems weren't.

The Milano Cortina free dance controversy was essentially a clash between what the judging system is designed to measure and what observers actually valued.

Ilia Malinin: When Technical Dominance Isn't Enough

Ilia Malinin's performance at Milano Cortina told a story about the limits of technical superiority.

Malinin is generationally talented. His quad axel—a four-and-a-half rotation jump that's both incredibly difficult and, until recently, considered nearly impossible—became his signature. He'd landed it more consistently than anyone in the world. It should've made him unstoppable.

Except it didn't.

Why? Because attempting the quad axel is risky. Land it cleanly, and you get a massive technical value boost. Fall, and you get zero points for the element. Worse, judges deduct for falls. So Malinin had to make a calculation: keep attempting the quad axel and risk falling, or scale back the technical difficulty and play it safer.

He chose safer. And by doing so, he essentially admitted something the sport has been resisting: pure technical difficulty, without flawless execution, isn't enough to win.

This matters because for years, the narrative around men's figure skating has been "whoever lands the most quads wins." That's not entirely false—landing clean quads is incredibly valuable under the current judging system. But Malinin's struggles showed that the narrative is incomplete. Artistry, program construction, consistency—these still matter. A single jump, no matter how difficult, doesn't win Olympic gold.

His falls weren't devastating—they didn't end his Olympic career or anything. But they shifted something. They suggested that figure skating might be moving toward revaluing the parts of the sport that the 2004 judging reform accidentally deemphasized.

Alysa Liu's Gold: The Comeback That Redefined Expectations

Alysa Liu's victory was the opposite story.

Liu competed at the Beijing Olympics in 2022 as a teenager. She didn't medal. Then she stepped away from elite competition entirely. Comebacks in figure skating are rare. Athletes usually return because they still have unfinished business—a medal they didn't win, a record they didn't break. Liu's comeback felt different. She wasn't chasing something. She was proving something.

When she won gold at Milano Cortina, it wasn't surprising because she wasn't a threat. It was surprising because she shouldn't have been in contention at all, given her years away from elite competition.

Her win suggested something subtle but important: in women's figure skating, consistency and presence matter more than the steepest technical difficulty. Liu's program was solid, her execution was clean, her presentation was strong. She didn't attempt the most difficult jumps on the women's side. She skated smart.

In a sport increasingly focused on who can land triple axels and quad jumps, Liu's path to gold was old-school: be present, be accurate, execute your program cleanly, trust your artistry.

This is the tension within modern figure skating: the scoring system rewards specific technical elements, but the judges still score program components, and those components can swing competitions. Liu proved that mastering both simultaneously—being technically competitive while maintaining artistic presence—still beats pure technical difficulty with shaky execution.

Ilia Malinin faced unexpected challenges, Alysa Liu made a remarkable comeback, and Amber Glenn's hopes were dashed by a single mistake. Estimated data based on narrative.

Amber Glenn: When One Jump Ends Everything

Amber Glenn's short program was a microcosm of everything that's changed in figure skating judging.

Glenn missed one jump. Just one. Everything else in her program was technically sound and executed well. But because she didn't complete that element, she received zero points for it. More than that, the judges deducted for the fall. The combination dropped her technical score significantly, and even though her program components score was decent, she couldn't make up the gap.

She finished fourth, just off the podium.

In the old 6.0 system, Glenn's performance would've been evaluated holistically. Yes, she fell. But she recovered. The rest of her program was solid. Judges might've given her a 5.8 or 5.9 on a 6.0 scale. It would've been a respectable score reflecting a mixed performance.

Under the current system, a single missed element can erase an otherwise strong program. It's mathematically clean. It's fair in the sense that everyone's judged by the same criteria. But it's also punitive in a way that's harsh, especially in sports where athletes are performing while exhausted after an intense short program and dealing with Olympic pressure.

Glenn's near-miss told a story about the brittleness of modern figure skating. There's no forgiveness built into the system. You're executing a technically difficult program under extreme conditions, and one mistake can cost you everything.

The Netflix Effect: How Documentaries Are Changing Figure Skating

Netflix's documentary "Glitter & Gold: Ice Dancing" didn't just capture the drama of the 2026 Olympics. It changed how people consume figure skating and, more importantly, how the sport thinks about itself.

Before the Milano Cortina Games, most people only watched figure skating during the Olympics. They'd tune in for a few events, see the highlights, and move on. The documentary changed that by telling the human stories behind the skaters. It showed Madison Chock and Evan Bates preparing for their shot at gold. It showed the controversy surrounding Cizeron and Fournier Beaudry. It made the sport personal.

By the time the free dance actually happened, viewers weren't just watching a competition. They were watching the culmination of narratives they'd already invested in. The drama was amplified because people felt connected to the skaters.

That's powerful for the sport's viewership. It's less comfortable for the sport's institutions. Because when judges make a controversial decision, they're not just scoring a program anymore. They're potentially contradicting a story that millions of people watched unfold over a three-hour documentary.

This creates pressure. It also creates accountability. Judges can't just score based on criteria anymore. They have to know that millions of people will scrutinize their decisions through the lens of narratives they already understand.

The documentary effect is reshaping competitive figure skating. It's making the sport more transparent, more human, but also more contentious. When judging decisions contradict a narrative that's been told and retold, the decision feels wrong—even if it's technically defensible under the scoring system.

The Subjectivity Problem: How Free Dance Is Judged

The free dance is the most subjective skating discipline, and it's also where the biggest controversies happen.

Unlike the short program, which has a required set of elements that every skater must perform, the free dance allows creativity. Skaters design their own programs. They choose their music. They decide what jumps, spins, and sequences to attempt. In theory, this should reward artistic interpretation and creativity.

In practice, it's complicated.

Every jump has a technical value assigned to it. A triple Lutz is worth X points. A quad Salchow is worth Y points. So even though skaters can design their own programs, they're incentivized to choose jumps that maximize technical value. This converges everyone toward similar programs, because the same jumps are always the most valuable.

Then judges score the program components: presentation, choreography, skating skills, interpretation, composition. These are subjective. But because technical value is so mathematical, skaters focus on that. Program components become secondary.

The result is that free dances, which should be the most creative skating discipline, often feel like competitions over who can perform the same difficult jumps most cleanly. The artistic element gets compressed.

This is what happened in the Milano Cortina free dance. The French team and the American team both skated programs with very similar structures, technical elements, and difficulty levels. The difference came down to whose execution was cleaner and who the judges deemed to have better presentation.

But because the programs were so similar, the difference was marginal. And marginal differences in subjective scoring create arguments.

The question the sport is now grappling with is: how do you design a judging system that makes room for creativity and artistry while still being objective enough that judges can compare different programs fairly?

The Milano Cortina judging controversy essentially came down to GOE disagreements. The French team had some visible errors, but their GOE scores were high. The American team had cleaner execution, but their GOE scores were lower. Which view was correct? That's the tension.

Under the old 6.0 system, Amber Glenn might have received a score of 5.8, reflecting a more holistic evaluation. In contrast, the current system's focus on technical precision resulted in a lower score of 4.5 due to a single missed jump. Estimated data.

What Adam Rippon Sees: The Inside Perspective

Adam Rippon won bronze in the team event at the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics. He's spent his post-competitive career as a commentator, strategist, and voice for figure skating. His perspective on Milano Cortina is worth examining.

Rippon has known many of the Milano Cortina skaters for years. He watched them train, compete, struggle, and succeed. His assessment of the free dance controversy was nuanced: both teams were talented, but he felt Chock and Bates skated a cleaner program. However, he also understood why judges might've scored the French team higher under the current system.

More importantly, Rippon articulated something about how the sport has changed. He noted that the judging system has increasingly stripped away the magic of figure skating by forcing skaters to optimize for specific elements rather than create unique performances.

This is the conversation happening inside figure skating right now. The sport built a judging system designed to be more objective than its predecessor. But in pursuing objectivity, it accidentally made the sport less creative. Skaters now ask: "What combination of required elements will score highest?" instead of "What performance will be most memorable?"

Rippon's voice in this conversation matters because he's lived both systems. He's competed under the Code of Points. He understands what judges are trying to do. But he's also watched a generation of skaters grow up optimizing for the system rather than for art. And he sees the cost.

The Quad Explosion: How Men's Skating Became About the Most Jumps

Men's figure skating has become increasingly jump-focused over the past 15 years, and Milano Cortina showed both the appeal and the problems with that trajectory.

Twenty years ago, landing three clean quads in a free skate would've been enough to win most competitions. Today, skaters attempt four, sometimes five quads. They're trying to maximize technical value because the judging system rewards difficulty.

Malinin's quad axel was the logical extension of this trend. If quads are valuable, what's the most difficult quad possible? The axel. And Malinin was the first to master it consistently.

But his Milano Cortina performance suggested that this arms race might be reaching a limit. Landing five clean quads while maintaining program components quality is phenomenally difficult. Skaters have to choose: go for maximum technical value and risk errors, or skate more conservatively and maintain clean execution.

Malinin chose somewhat conservatively. His performance was strong, but not as technically dominant as expected. He essentially decided that attempting fewer quads cleanly was better than attempting more quads and potentially falling.

This might signal a shift in men's figure skating. The quad explosion might be peaking. Skaters might start prioritizing clean execution of slightly fewer quads over maximum technical difficulty with execution risk.

It's not a pendulum swing back to artistry. But it's a recognition that pure technical difficulty has limits, especially when the execution cost is so high.

The Women's Game: Where Technical Difficulty Meets Longevity

Women's figure skating at Milano Cortina told a different story than men's.

Alysa Liu's gold medal came without an attempt at the most difficult jumps on the women's side. The triple axel—a jump that requires three and a half rotations in the air—is becoming the benchmark jump for elite women competitors. Many skaters attempt it. Liu skated a program that prioritized consistency and artistry over the absolute most difficult elements.

This suggests that women's figure skating might be slightly ahead of men's in moving away from pure technical difficulty arms races. Judges seem slightly more comfortable rewarding solid, consistent programs without the most extreme difficulty.

But that's still only slightly. The pressure to attempt difficult jumps is still intense. Skaters who can't land triple axels or quad jumps are at a competitive disadvantage, even if their programs are technically clean otherwise.

The real story in women's skating at Milano Cortina was Amber Glenn's tragic near-miss. She came back after years away from competition, made it to the Olympics, and one missed jump ended her medal hopes. It was a brutal reminder that in modern figure skating, perfection is essentially required at the elite level.

What's emerging is a two-tiered system: there's what you need to do to win (land the difficult jumps cleanly), and there's what the judging system says you should do (balance technical difficulty with artistry). The gap between these two things is shrinking, but it's still there.

Figure skating attracts significant viewership but also faces high controversy due to subjective judging, unlike swimming. (Estimated data)

The Judging Scandal: Why the Appeal Didn't Happen

The most telling part of the Milano Cortina free dance wasn't the final result. It was what didn't happen next.

After the judges announced the French team as winners, there was immediate speculation that the US team would file an appeal. Under international figure skating rules, teams can appeal judging decisions if they believe there was a material error in scoring.

The US team ultimately didn't appeal. Why?

Rippon addressed this directly: appealing a free dance judging decision is essentially appealing subjectivity. When you look at both programs element-by-element, there's an argument for either team. The free dance is designed to allow artistic interpretation, which means judges have latitude in how they score presentation and program components.

When you file an appeal, you're saying judges made an error. But in the free dance, there isn't a clear-cut error. There's a judgment call. And appeals committees, composed of other judges, aren't going to overturn a judgment call unless it's egregiously wrong. It probably wouldn't have succeeded, and attempting it publicly might've damaged relationships with the international judging community.

So the US team accepted the result. And that acceptance, paradoxically, is more revealing than fighting would've been.

It suggests that everyone involved understands the underlying problem: the judging system for free dance isn't designed to eliminate subjectivity. It's designed to make subjectivity defensible. As long as judges can justify their scores with reference to the rules, their decision stands. And they almost always can.

This is the real crisis in figure skating judging. It's not that judges are corrupt. It's that the system is designed in a way that makes almost any reasonable score defensible.

The Controversy Around Cizeron and Fournier Beaudry: When Personal Issues Become Judging Questions

Cizeron and Fournier Beaudry's gold medal came with legitimate controversy attached. The questions about their partnerships—about whether they should even be competing together—didn't go away when they won.

Fournier Beaudry's boyfriend was suspended from figure skating following sexual misconduct allegations. Cizeron's former partner has accused him of being controlling. These aren't small issues. They speak to interpersonal dynamics that could've affected their skating, their preparation, their mental state.

Some people wondered: should the sport's judging take these factors into account?

The formal answer is no. Judges score programs, not personal circumstances. The judging system is designed to evaluate what happens on the ice, not what happens off of it.

But practically, this is complicated. When people know the story behind the skaters, when they've watched a documentary that details the controversy, can they really score purely on the program? Or does context inevitably color perception?

Rippon was thoughtful about this. He acknowledged that Cizeron and Fournier Beaudry are exceptional skaters, regardless of the controversy. Their programs at Milano Cortina were well-executed. But he also acknowledged that there was legitimate emotional baggage.

What happened at Milano Cortina was that the sport's institutions (the judges, the skating unions, the Olympic committee) decided to separate the skaters' personal issues from the judging of their programs. But the public didn't make that separation. The documentary had made the human story too real.

This tension—between institutional separation of skaters' personal lives from competitive judging, and public expectation that everything should matter—is going to define how figure skating evolves.

The Future of Judging: What Needs to Change

The Milano Cortina Games exposed the core problems with figure skating's judging system. But the solutions aren't obvious.

One option is to move back toward a more subjective, holistic judging system like the old 6.0 scale. The advantage would be flexibility—judges could reward creativity, artistry, and unique performances. The disadvantage is that this is how the Salt Lake City scandal happened. Subjective systems are vulnerable to bias and corruption.

Another option is to make the judging more mathematical. Assign point values to more elements, reduce the subjectivity in program components scoring, use artificial intelligence to evaluate execution consistency. The advantage is objectivity. The disadvantage is that you're essentially removing the human element from a sport that, at its core, is about human interpretation and artistry.

A third option, which some people in the sport are exploring, is to create a separate scoring track for creativity and artistry—almost like a bonus system that rewards programs that break the mold. This would give skaters incentive to innovate rather than optimize for the same elements everyone else is doing.

None of these solutions is perfect. And Milan Cortina made it clear that the sport needs to make a choice soon. The current system isn't broken enough to require radical change. But it's broken enough that it's generating constant controversy.

The 2004 judging reform shifted focus from artistry and creativity to technical elements and consistency, altering the competitive landscape of figure skating. Estimated data.

The Streaming Effect: How Documentaries Changed Everything

Netflix's "Glitter & Gold: Ice Dancing" did something that traditional Olympic coverage has never done: it made figure skating intimate.

Traditional Olympics broadcasts show the competition. Documentaries show the preparation, the doubts, the sacrifices. By the time viewers watched the free dance, they'd already spent three hours getting to know the skaters as people.

This changed the experience of watching the competition. When Chock and Bates didn't get the gold they'd trained for, it wasn't just disappointing. It was personally disappointing. Viewers had invested in their story.

Similarly, when Cizeron and Fournier Beaudry won despite the controversy, viewers weren't just evaluating a sporting result. They were processing a narrative twist that contradicted what the documentary had set up.

Moving forward, Netflix and other streaming platforms will likely create more sports documentaries leading up to Olympic competitions. This means that future Olympics will be watched with pre-loaded narratives, pre-existing emotional investment, and higher expectations for plot resolution.

Figure skating's judging system will have to account for this. When decisions contradict stories that millions of people have already invested in, the decisions feel wrong—even if they're technically sound.

The Milano Cortina Games might be the last Olympic figure skating competition where the judging doesn't have to compete with a major documentary narrative. That era is ending. The sport needs to prepare for a future where the human story is as important as the technical score.

What Milano Cortina Means for Younger Skaters

The Milano Cortina Games sent specific messages to the generation of skaters who will compete at the 2030 Olympics.

First message: Technical difficulty alone isn't enough. Ilia Malinin's struggles proved that. You need consistency, artistry, and clean execution across your entire program.

Second message: Comebacks are possible, but risky. Alysa Liu proved that stepping away from competition and returning at an elite level is achievable. But Amber Glenn showed that one mistake can cost everything. There's little margin for error at the Olympic level.

Third message: Judging is subjective, and subjectivity creates controversy. Younger skaters watching the free dance controversy should understand that even if they skate a perfect program, they might not win. And that's partly because the judging system doesn't have a definitive answer to what "perfect" means.

Fourth message: Your personal story matters. The documentary effect means that skaters' lives off the ice are increasingly relevant to how people perceive their competitive success. This creates pressure, but also opportunity for skaters who can tell a compelling story.

The Broader Sports Picture: Figure Skating's Place in the Olympics

Figure skating is one of the most-watched Olympic sports, but it's also one of the most controversial in terms of judging consistency.

Compare figure skating to, say, swimming. In swimming, winning is objective: the fastest time wins. There's no subjectivity. No controversy. The judging issue doesn't exist because there's nothing to judge beyond the clock.

Figure skating lives in a different category of sport—one where technical difficulty, execution, and artistic interpretation all matter. This creates legitimate disagreement about what deserves the highest score. It also creates persistent controversy.

Milano Cortina showed that the public's appetite for figure skating is real. Millions watched the events. The documentary was hugely popular. People care about the sport. But they also care about fairness, and the current system doesn't always deliver obvious fairness.

This creates a sustainability question. If judging controversies keep happening, if the system keeps generating arguments that can't be definitively resolved, the sport could lose public trust. The Salt Lake City scandal happened in 2002 and nearly destroyed Olympic figure skating. Milano Cortina didn't come close to that level, but it's a reminder that the sport operates on borrowed credibility.

The Quad Revolution and Its Limits

The quadruple jump revolution in figure skating has been the dominant story for the past decade. More and more skaters have learned to land quads. Competition has increasingly become about who can land the most quads cleanly.

Malinin's quad axel was the logical endpoint: the most difficult quad possible, landed consistently.

But Milano Cortina suggested that this arms race might be approaching a plateau. Malinin didn't win gold. His quad axel dominance wasn't enough. This means that younger skaters watching Milano Cortina will probably conclude: quads are necessary, but they're not sufficient. You also need everything else.

That's a different message than the sport has been sending for the past ten years. It's a message that might actually be healthier for the sport long-term. An arms race in quad attempts is unsustainable—eventually you run out of people who can physically land multiple quads. But a competition that balances technical difficulty with artistry, consistency, and presence could sustain itself longer.

How Figure Skating Could Evolve After 2026

The Milano Cortina Games created pressure for change. The judging controversies, the subjectivity debates, the questions about what the sport values—all of these are forcing conversations about the future.

Here's what might actually happen:

First, the International Skating Union might introduce new rules for the free dance that explicitly reward programs that break from convention. This would incentivize skaters to take creative risks, knowing they won't be penalized for not doing what everyone else is doing.

Second, the sport might experiment with reduced judging panels. Instead of nine judges scoring a program, five judges might do it. Smaller panels reduce the impact of outlier scores and make judging more consistent.

Third, the sport could introduce more transparency in how judges arrive at scores. Right now, judges see other judges' scores and can see where they stand. This creates groupthink, where judges adjust their scores based on what others have given. More transparency about scoring criteria might help.

Fourth, the sport might embrace the narrative-driven future by giving judges explicit instructions to evaluate programs in context. Rather than pretending that personal stories and documentary narratives don't matter, acknowledge that they do and find ways to account for that.

Longer term, figure skating might move toward a hybrid system where technical value is still mathematical, but program components are scored more rigorously using explicit criteria rather than vague notions of "presentation."

None of these changes are guaranteed. But Milano Cortina made it clear that the status quo isn't working.

The Comeback Narrative: Alysa Liu and What It Means

Alysa Liu's gold medal at Milano Cortina was surprising because she shouldn't have been in medal contention. She'd been away from elite competition for years. She was competing against skaters who'd been training continuously at the highest level.

Yet she won.

What does this mean? On the surface, it suggests that taking time away from competitive figure skating doesn't irreversibly damage your career. You can step back, train more casually, and return to win at the highest level.

Deeply, it suggests something about what matters most in figure skating. Technical difficulty is important, but so is everything else. Liu's program wasn't the most technically difficult on the night. But it was solid, clean, and well-executed. And that was enough.

This is counterintuitive in modern figure skating. The prevailing assumption has been that you need to be pushing technical boundaries to win. Liu proved you don't. You need to execute a strong, consistent program with good artistry.

For younger skaters and coaches, Liu's win is a permission slip. It says: you don't have to be chasing the most difficult jumps. You don't have to be training at maximum intensity every single day. You can take a break, maintain your skills, and come back to win.

It's a more sustainable approach to the sport. And Milano Cortina showed that it works.

The Salt Lake City Precedent: Will Figure Skating Learn?

In 2002, the pairs figure skating judging scandal at Salt Lake City nearly destroyed Olympic figure skating. The public lost trust. The sport's credibility was shattered. It took years to recover.

Milano Cortina wasn't Salt Lake City. The judging wasn't corrupt. The decisions might've been controversial, but they weren't provably wrong. Yet the fact that questions are being raised is significant.

Figure skating can't afford another Salt Lake City. The sport relies on the assumption that judges are fair and impartial. If that assumption breaks again, the sport loses its foundation.

The Milano Cortina free dance controversy should be a wake-up call. The current judging system creates conditions where reasonable people can disagree sharply about what the right decision was. That creates vulnerability. It creates the space for scandal.

The sport needs to address this before another Olympics happens. Whether that means reforming the judging system, introducing more transparency, or making other changes is an open question. But the need is clear.

What's Next: The 2030 Winter Olympics and Beyond

The 2026 Olympics are in the rearview mirror. The 2030 Olympics are four years away. What will figure skating look like then?

The sport will probably have a new generation of skaters, many of whom trained while watching the Milano Cortina controversy unfold. They'll have absorbed the lessons. They'll probably focus more on consistency and artistry, and slightly less on extreme technical difficulty. Or maybe not—maybe Malinin's struggles will be seen as an anomaly, and younger skaters will double down on quads.

The judging system might be different. The ISU will have had four years to implement reforms. Or it might stay the same. Change in international sports governance happens slowly.

But one thing is certain: streaming documentaries are here to stay. Future Olympics will have Netflix shows (or competitors' equivalents) telling the human stories behind the skaters. This means future judging controversies won't just be technical arguments. They'll be narrative arguments. They'll play out on social media. They'll involve millions of people who've already invested emotionally in a story.

Figure skating needs to prepare for that future. It needs a judging system that can handle the pressure of being watched by millions of people who care deeply about the human stories, not just the technical scores.

Milano Cortina was probably the moment the sport realized that its old assumptions no longer apply. What it does with that realization will determine whether figure skating thrives or declines over the next decade.

FAQ

What was the main judging controversy at the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics?

The free dance competition sparked significant debate when the French team of Cizeron and Fournier Beaudry defeated the American team of Chock and Bates for gold, despite many observers feeling the American team skated a cleaner program. Some viewers and analysts noted visible errors in the French team's execution but questioned whether their grades of execution were appropriately high. The US team considered appealing but ultimately decided against it, recognizing that the free dance's subjective nature made a successful appeal unlikely.

How did Ilia Malinin's performance change expectations about technical difficulty in figure skating?

Malinin's struggles despite his legendary quad axel suggested that maximum technical difficulty isn't automatically sufficient for Olympic success. He scaled back some of his planned quads and fell twice during the free skate, showing that consistent execution of moderately difficult elements can beat attempted maximum difficulty with errors. This shifted the narrative away from "whoever lands the most quads wins" toward "balanced excellence across all skating components matters most."

Why is the 2004 judging system reform so important to understanding Milano Cortina?

The 2004 Code of Points was designed to eliminate subjective judging by assigning mathematical point values to technical elements. However, by prioritizing specific elements, the system incentivized skaters to perform similar jumps and program structures rather than create unique performances. This convergence meant that by Milano Cortina, free dance programs looked increasingly alike, making judging differences more contentious because they came down to subjective program component scores rather than technical differences.

What does Alysa Liu's gold medal tell us about modern figure skating?

Liu's victory proved that you don't need to attempt the most technically difficult jumps to win at the Olympic level. Her program featured solid, clean execution, good artistry, and consistent presence throughout. Her success suggested that the sport might be moving slightly away from pure technical difficulty arms races and toward valuing balanced excellence across all skating elements.

How is Netflix's "Glitter & Gold: Ice Dancing" changing figure skating?

By telling intimate human stories about the skaters competing for gold, the documentary created massive public emotional investment before the competition even happened. This changed how viewers experienced the free dance results and judging decisions. When judges' decisions contradicted narratives viewers had already absorbed, the decisions felt wrong even if they were technically defensible. Future Olympics will likely follow this model, meaning figure skating's judging system must account for the reality that millions of people will have pre-loaded emotional investment in the skaters' stories.

Why didn't the US team appeal the Milano Cortina free dance judging decision?

Apppealing a free dance judging decision essentially requires proving that judges made a material error. However, because the free dance is designed to allow artistic interpretation, judges have legitimate latitude in how they score presentation and program components. When looking at both programs element-by-element, there's an argument for either team. An appeal likely wouldn't have succeeded, and attempting it would have damaged relationships with the international judging community without producing a different outcome.

What is the difference between Technical Value Score and Program Components Score in figure skating?

Technical Value (TES) is mathematically calculated based on the difficulty of jumps and spins performed and the quality of their execution. Each jump has a pre-assigned point value, and judges award deductions for execution issues. Program Components Score (PCS) is subjective and covers presentation, choreography, skating skills, interpretation, and composition. Because TES is so mathematical, skaters focus on maximizing it, which incentivizes everyone to perform similar elements.

How does the Grade of Execution affect figure skating outcomes?

Grade of Execution, or GOE, is the subjective score judges award to technical elements based on how cleanly they were performed. GOE can range from -5 (severe issues) to +5 (perfect execution). A single element with low GOE versus high GOE can swing a skater's score by several points. This is where much of the subjectivity and judging controversy happens, especially when comparing two programs with similar technical difficulty but different executions.

What message did Milano Cortina send to younger figure skaters?

The Olympics suggested that technical difficulty alone isn't sufficient for success. Consistency, artistry, and clean execution across an entire program matter equally. Comebacks are possible but risky, with little margin for error. Personal narratives and stories are increasingly relevant to public perception of competitive success. Mental resilience and the ability to handle Olympic pressure are essential factors in competitive outcomes.

Could there be significant changes to figure skating's judging system after Milano Cortina?

The International Skating Union is likely to consider reforms, potentially including: introducing bonus systems that explicitly reward creative programs, reducing judging panels from nine to five judges to improve consistency, increasing transparency in how judges arrive at scores, and creating more explicit criteria for program components scoring. However, sports governance changes slowly, and any reforms would likely be tested for several Olympic cycles before becoming permanent.

The Road Ahead: What Figure Skating Needs Now

Milano Cortina showed us a sport at an inflection point. The judging system that worked for 20 years is generating persistent controversy. The streaming documentary effect is creating new pressures on how judging is perceived. The arms race in quad jumps is showing signs of plateauing. And younger skaters are watching, learning lessons about what's valued and what's not.

Figure skating doesn't need a revolution. It doesn't need to abandon the Code of Points entirely. But it does need evolution. It needs a judging system that can accommodate creativity and artistry without sacrificing objectivity. It needs to acknowledge that narratives matter, while maintaining institutional independence from those narratives. It needs to figure out how to value technical difficulty without allowing it to completely dominate what skaters optimize for.

The sport has four years until 2030. That's enough time to implement meaningful reforms, test them, and iterate. But it requires recognizing that Milano Cortina wasn't a blip. It was a warning. The pressures that created those controversies aren't going away. They're intensifying.

Figure skating at its best is magic. It's an athlete performing at the absolute peak of human difficulty and artistry, right at the edge of what's physically possible. When that magic happens, it transcends sport. It becomes art. It becomes what people remember for decades.

The judging system should facilitate that magic, not constrain it. Milano Cortina showed that the current system is increasingly constraining. The question now is whether the sport will address that before the next Olympics, or whether it will wait for another controversy to force action.

History suggests the sport tends toward the latter. But Milano Cortina showed that patience might be running out.

Key Takeaways

• The 2026 Milano Cortina free dance judging controversy exposed fundamental design flaws in figure skating's scoring system, where subjective program components create persistent debate despite mathematical technical elements.
• Ilia Malinin's struggles despite his quad axel dominance proved that maximum technical difficulty isn't automatically sufficient for Olympic success, signaling a potential shift away from pure technical arms races.
• Netflix's 'Glitter & Gold' documentary showed that narrative-driven storytelling changes how audiences experience and judge Olympic outcomes, creating pressure on judges to align with pre-loaded viewer expectations.
• The 2004 Code of Points reform designed to eliminate subjectivity paradoxically removed creative diversity by incentivizing all skaters to perform identical technical elements for highest scores.
• Figure skating's future depends on resolving the tension between technical objectivity and artistic subjectivity, a challenge requiring system reform before the 2030 Olympics to maintain public trust.

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