Figure Skating @ Milano-Cortina

[baron-pierreIV]

This is primarily for our Figure Skating expert (I think she lives in Oregon).  My question is: why are they holding the Olympic qualifiers now -- for the bottom of the barrel skaters?  Isn't it backwards?  They then pick the final placements after the leading countries have chosen and LOCKED in their FS candidates?  I mean, like the US National Champsionships (at which the Olympic entries will be decided) isn't happening until January 4 - 11, 2026?  While there are the leading skaters, NOTHING is official at this point.  ANything can happen -- so how can the ISU declare that XX athletes will NOT qualify in their national quotas, hence they were asked to compete at the "Olympic qualifiers" event in Beijing -- 6 months BEFORE the actual SOGs??  What is the logic or ILLOGIC of the move??? 

Edited February 3 by Sir Rols

[olympian]

the bulk of the slots were determined during boston worlds. the beijing qualification were for countries who hasn't qualified any slots or those who qualified additional slots in boston (ie: us pairs qualified for 3 slots but needed to secure the third spot in beijing). 

[olympian]

in the past the olympic qualifier was nebelhorn trophy but starting this olympic season a separate olympic qualfier was created with beijing hosting. 

[Karenina]

On 9/23/2025 at 3:42 PM, baron-pierreIV said:

This is primarily for our Figure Skating expert (I think she lives in Oregon).  My question is: why are they holding the Olympic qualifiers now -- for the bottom of the barrel skaters?  Isn't it backwards?  They then pick the final placements after the leading countries have chosen and LOCKED in their FS candidates?  I mean, like the US National Champsionships (at which the Olympic entries will be decided) isn't happening until January 4 - 11, 2026?  While there are the leading skaters, NOTHING is official at this point.  ANything can happen -- so how can the ISU declare that XX athletes will NOT qualify in their national quotas, hence they were asked to compete at the "Olympic qualifiers" event in Beijing -- 6 months BEFORE the actual SOGs??  What is the logic or ILLOGIC of the move??? 

Sorry been busy and just now popped in here and saw this.  As @Olympian said - most of the spots were already allocated based upon the results of Boston Worlds 2025 this past March.  The only countries who have "locked in" their candidates are Russia & Belarus - because those athletes are competing as AINs, so the spots they earned go to the athlete specifically rather than the national federations who establish their own criteria for selecting their Olympians.

The way the allocation process works is there are 24 of 29 spots for Men & Women respectively, 16 of 19 spots for Pairs, and 19 of 23 spots for Ice Dance which are determined at Worlds of the preceding year (in this case Boston 2025).  There's a somewhat complicated formula and allocation process (all outlined in this doc - https://stillmed.olympics.com/media/Documents/Olympic-Games/Milano-Cortina-2026/qualification-system/Qualification-System-for-Figure-Skating.pdf) that determines how many spots different country's national federations earn in each discipline at Worlds.  

3 spots outright = Top 2 placements total 13 or less plus all 3 entries make the Free Skate
2 spots outright + 1 entry at the Olympic Qualifying Event (called Skate to Milano this year) = Top 2 placements total 13 or less and 2 entries make the Free Skate
2 spots outright = Top 2 placements total 14-28 points and 2 entries make the Free Skate 
1 spot outright + 1 entry at the Olympic Qualifying Event = Top 2 entries placements total 14-28 points and 1 entry makes the Free Skate OR Sole entry places in the Top 10
1 spot outright Men/Women = Sole entry makes the Free Skate
1 spot outright Pairs/Ice Dance = depends on the # of multiple entries earned outright by different countries & not every country that makes the Free Skate/Free Dance will earn an entry because there are 20 teams that qualify for the Free Skate/Free Dance at Worlds but only 16 & 19 spots allocated at Worlds

The remaining 5 spots in Men/Women, 3 spots in Pairs and 4 spots in Ice Dance are then allocated at the Olympic Qualifying Event in the fall.  The ISU decided 4 years ago to make this a standalone event instead of holding it as a competition within a competition at Nebelhorn Trophy.  I actually like this decision because holding it as part of Nebelhorn meant that entries for one of the significant early season Challenger competitions were limited which isn't ideal.

The ISU hasn't declared that any athletes will or will not qualify in their national quotas - the only control the ISU has from this point onward now that the final spots have been allocated is setting the minimum technical standard which must be achieved for any entrants (called the CTES = Combined Technical Elements Score).  The ISU sets the CTES for all ISU Championships & the Olympics - Worlds is higher than Europeans/4 Continents/Olympics and Jr Worlds is the lowest.  As long as a federation has earned a quota spot and has a skater/team who've earned the CTES minimum, they can use that spot.  If a country does not have anyone who meets the CTES minimums (the deadline for earning these is Jan 26, 2026) then they will, of course, have to relinquish their quota spot and it will go to the next country in line based upon the results of the Olympic Qualifying Event from last month. 

As of this moment, the only quota spot earned from Worlds or the OQE that looks like it will definitely be relinquished is Uzbekistan's pairs spot because their only pairs team, who earned the spot in Boston, split up over the summer - he has retired & she's rumored to have a new partner who last competed for Spain last February which means he isn't eligible to compete for another country until next February after the CTES deadline has passed.  If UZB relinquishes the spot then the first alternate is France and they'll definitely use the spot.

There are a few quota spots earned that MAY wind up being relinquished because the only skaters/teams with CTES minimums do not have citizenship yet (Finland's second ice dance spot, Australia's pairs spot, Latvia's second men's spot) or because the NOC has set a higher score standard which hasn't been achieved yet (Switzerland's second women's spot, Netherlands' pairs spot) - in case you're wondering, why, yes, I do have a spreadsheet tracking this, lol.

At this point in time, there are some countries where their Olympic spots have already been announced.  The most notable example of this is Spain.  As soon as the OQE was finished and they successfully earned a 2nd ice dance spot, their fed announced that it had been determined during the late spring that the skaters/teams who earned the spots (Tomas Llorenc Guarino-Sabate in Men at Worlds and Olivia Smart/Tim Dieck in Ice Dance at Worlds and Sofia Val/Asaf Kazimov at the OQE) would be their Olympic team despite having at least 1 other dance team that has the CTES mins.  There are a lot of countries where there is only one skater/team who have the CTES mins - Mexico's Donovan Carrillo, South Korea's Hannah Lim/Ye Quan, etc - so those skaters/teams are, obviously, going to be named to the Olympic team, provided there aren't any injuries.  If there was an injury and the skater/team couldn't use the spot, it would just be relinquished by the federation and the ISU would then reallocate it to the next one in line.

For larger countries like the US, Canada, Japan, etc - most have moved to a "Body of Work" selection process where their Nationals results aren't the final arbiter of who makes the team.  We're well into the figure skating season at this point, so there's a lot of data already being accumulated & tabulated. 

- Italy has a somewhat complicated calculation for their team selection and the FISG has given themselves some wiggle room to basically do what they want and ignore the calculations if they want for their Olympic team selections. 
- Japan's process is also rather complicated - and I'm not sure I've seen the JSF's Olympic selection doc yet, but if it's like their Worlds selection doc from recent seasons, only the Nat'l Champ is guaranteed a spot on the team and if someone else is the highest ranked Japanese skater at the Grand Prix Final, they're also guaranteed a spot, and a 3rd spot is left up to their Int'l Committee to decide. 
- South Korea has a ranking competition in late November/early December and Nationals in January and the combined results of both will determine who makes the Olympic team. 
- China announced a couple weeks ago that they will add the scores from Cup of China (2nd Grand Prix event which just wrapped up earlier today) and their Nationals and the highest cumulative scoring skater/team will get their 1 Olympic spot in each discipline. 
- The USFS has a fairly complicated calculation that determines 5 of the skaters/teams who are eligible for selection based upon (mostly) this season's results, but there are other ways to make one's way into the Selection Pool - and, ultimately, the USFS' International Committee makes the final decision of who will be on the team. 

At this point, most educated skating fans would tell you that there are certain skaters who are already "locked" for their countries' Olympic teams - Japan's Kaori Sakamoto, Riku Miura/Ryuichi Kihara; USA's Ilia Malinin and Madison Chock/Evan Bates; etc, but nothing's set in stone until December/January for most countries after they've held their National Championships.  Since we're just on the 2nd weekend of the Grand Prix Series, there's still a lot of skating and opportunities for skaters to make their own cases for consideration - the women's fields for USA, JPN and KOR are all super-intriguing with multiple contenders for the spots each country has.  

Also, the Team Event selection process is a different animal begat of the individual event quota allocation process.  The Team Event qualification process awards points to countries based upon their highest result in each discipline at Worlds (or Euros/4CCs if no points earned from Worlds, or Jr Worlds if no points earned from either Worlds or Euros/4CCs) and the Grand Prix Series (or the Jr Grand Prix if no points earned from the Grand Prix).  This only matters if there are more than 10 countries with spots in at least 3 disciplines.  Right now, there are only 10 countries who have earned spots in at least 3 of the 4 disciplines (USA, JPN, GEO, ITA, CAN, FRA, GBR, CHN, KOR & POL), so it's pretty likely that those 10 countries will be the ones participating in the Team Event; but if the quota reallocation process goes deep enough into the alternates lists then Poland (in the 10th position right now) could be knocked out because they have the lowest amount of points. 

I hope this helps explain how the Olympic allocation process works and the ISU's role, as well as where we are in the selection process for most countries.  You are indeed correct that there is still a lot to be decided.  All that's really been determined, right now, are which countries are "in" and where countries are on the alternates list for quota reallocation.

[baron-pierreIV]

Whew!!  Thanks, AK, for that very detailed explanation.  And I thought judging a triple salchow and GOE was difficult!! 

What if the ISU's computers overload the weekend before Milano opens?? 😀

[Karenina]

So, just to follow up with an update on which countries have relinquished quota spots in each discipline:

Ice Dancing - Finland relinquished their 2nd spot as neither the #2 or #3 ice dance teams have full citizenship.  The spot went to Sweden and the SOK have chosen to use it after Milla Ruud Reitan, who is Norwegian, received her Swedish citizenship earlier this month.  Reitan and partner, Nikolaj Majorov, have been named under the Future Athletes criteria as they're quite a promising ice dance team.  Majorov was a singles skater until a few years ago and represented Sweden in Men's Singles in Beijing four years ago.  

The ice dancing field is now set with 23 teams and a battle for gold set up between the USA's Madison Chock/Evan Bates (3-time & reigning World Champions) and France's Laurence Fournier-Beaudry/Guillaume Cizeron - she formerly represented Denmark & then Canada with her significant other, Nikolaj Sorensen, who is appealing a 6-year ban for sexually assaulting another skater in 2014 and, of course, Cizeron is the 2022 Olympic Champion & 2018 Olympic Silver Medalist with his former partner, Gabriella Papadakis, who has written & just released a memoir which serves as a window into the very toxic world of ice dancing.  The translated excerpts I've read do not paint their training center, Ice Academy of Montreal, or Cizeron in the most flattering light.  

There is also a real contest for the bronze between Canada's Piper Gilles/Paul Poirier (2024 & 2025 World Silver Medalists), Great Britain's Lilah Fear/Lewis Gibson (2025 World Bronze Medalists) and Italy's Charlene Guignard/Marco Fabbri (2023 World Silver Medalists, 2024 World Bronze Medalists).  And Netflix has a 3-part documentary produced by the same team that gave us the Simone Biles' documentary before & after Paris 2024 called "Glitter & Gold" featuring Chock/Bates, Fournier-Beaudry/Cizeron and Gilles/Poirier debuting Jan 26th.  Being an American, I'm naturally rooting for Chock/Bates - I also think they have one of the best free dances of the season to a paso doble/flamenco arrangement of "Paint It Black" by Ramin Djawadi.  

Pairs - We haven't heard official word but Uzbekistan's new pairs team is unable to compete internationally yet, so France will pick up that relinquished spot.  All of the other teams that had question marks about citizenship or minimum scores have been confirmed by their NOCs.  That leaves the pairs field set with 19 teams of which there are seven medal contenders including Canada's Deanna Stellato-Dudek/Maxime Deschamps (2024 World Champions), China's Wenjing Sui/Cong Han (2022 Olympic Champions & 2018 Olympic Silver Medalists), Georgia's Anastasiia Metelkina/Luka Berulava (newly crowned 2026 European Champions), Germany's Minerva Fabienne Hase/Nikita Volodin (2025 World Silver Medalists & 2024 World Bronze Medalists), Hungary's Maria Pavlova/Alexei Sviatchenko (2026 European Bronze Medalists), Italy's Sara Conti/Niccolo Macii (2023 & 2025 World Bronze Medalists) and Japan's Riku Miura/Ryuichi Kihara (2023 & 2025 World Champions).  Pairs is my favorite discipline and I'm rooting for Conti/Macii to win at home.

Men - To the best of my knowledge, all of the countries who qualified spots at 2025 Worlds and in September at the Olympic Qualifying Event have confirmed the use of their spots. Latvia was the only one in question but their 2nd man from Worlds last year who earned the 2nd spot received his Latvian citizenship last month and they have a 3rd man who has earned the CTES minimums, so there doesn't seem to be any hurdle to them using both spots.

The heavy favorite for gold is the USA's Ilia Malinin, aka the "QuadG0d", two-time & reigning World Champion.  About the only thing that will stop him from winning is himself, but it's the Olympic stage, so I'm superstitious enough to never say never but also crossing my fingers & praying that I'll be able to let go of the grudge I've been holding against US Figure Skating for the last 4 years since they left him off the 2022 Olympic team after his spectacular 2nd place finish to Nathan Chen at Nationals that year.  Experience matters.   

Silver & bronze favor Japan's Yuma Kagiyama and Shun Sato.  On paper, Kagiyama, the 2022 Olympic Silver Medalist, should be able to repeat, however he has struggled with delivering clean programs all season & clean skates from Sato could best him in Milano-Cortina.  Similarly, on paper, Sato should bring home a 2nd medal for Japan in the men's event for the 3rd Olympics in a row.  If either of them falter, look to Georgia's Nika Egadze (newly crowned 2026 European Champion), France's Adam Siao Him Fa (2024 World Bronze Medalist), Italy's Daniel Grassl, Korea's Junhwan Cha (2023 World Silver Medalist) or even AIN (Russia) Petr Gumennik as dark horses.  Word of warning - there's a saying in figure skating these days "the men are menning" which means the men are HIGHLY inconsistent from competition segment to competition segment. There is almost always a lot of movement between the short program standings and the final standings; additionally, apart from Malinin, clean short programs almost always are a precursor to a messy AF free skate, and vice versa.  Buckle up because the men's Olympic competition is going to be a WILD ride.

Women - There are still two spots that could be reallocated - Switzerland's second spot.  The Swiss OC and Swiss Ice Skating are supposed to meet later this week to decide whether or not Livia Kaiser will be named to the team after helping to earn the spot at Worlds last year.  They set an incredibly high minimum score for their women to achieve & Kaiser has been battling back from injury all season so she hasn't been able to achieve the score minimum.  If that spot is relinquished, it will go to Cyprus.  There was some question about Israel's spot because their top skater doesn't have Israeli citizenship yet, but news today is that the bureaucratic snafu has been resolved & she should have her passport expedited in time for the Olympics.  If, for some reason, it doesn't happen, the second alternate is Norway.

There are seven medal contenders in the women's event - Estonia's Niina Petrokina (2025 & 2026 European Champion), Japan's Kaori Sakamoto, Mone Chiba & Ami Nakai, and the USA's Alysa Liu, Amber Glenn & Isabeau Levito.  No, I'm not including AIN (Russia) Adeliia Petrosian.  She's been dealing with injury since last spring and even before her injury, the rotations on her quads & triple Axel looked suspect, not to mention, she's got the pressure of the entire nation on her to continue Russia's streak of Olympic Champions in the women's event dating back to Sochi 2014.  Beyond that, the Japanese and American women have been on an entirely different level than the rest of the world this season until Petrokina's return from injury to defend her European title this past weekend where she skated brilliantly.  If anyone is going to prevent the Olympic medals from being split between Japan & the USA, it would be Petrokina.  I'll go through the Japanese & American women in order of least likely to most likely to medal. 

Least likely - Nakai (2025 Grand Prix Final Silver Medalist) & Levito (2024 World Silver Medalist).  Nakai has an inconsistent triple Axel and while she's beaten Sakamoto earlier in the season, she's also been known to succumb to pressure situations.  Levito has the lowest score ceiling of the six women, but she's a really lovely skater who has been known to skate up in pressure situations, plus Milano is her mother's hometown & her Nonna lives just 12 minutes away from the arena, so she's going to have nearly as much crowd support as Italy's own Lara Naki Gutmann.

Mid likely - Chiba (2025 World Bronze Medalist) & Glenn (2024 Grand Prix Final Champion).  Chiba's usually a fairly steady competitor, but she's sometimes prone to jump rotation calls and struggled at both the Grand Prix Final and Japanese Nationals with laying down clean free skates, so the pressure of the Olympic season seems to be getting to her a bit.  Glenn has faltered in the short program with her triple Axel in major competitions during the past two seasons and found herself having to come from behind. 

Most likely - Sakamoto (2022-24 World Champion, 2025 World Silver Medalist) & Liu (2025 World Champion & 2022 World Bronze Medalist).  There probably aren't enough superlatives to describe these two women.  Both come in with a wealth of experience to draw upon.  Sakamoto has struggled recently with inconsistency in the short program but she's managed to claw her way back onto the podium every time.  Liu is as cool under pressure as they come and has become the most consistent women's skater competing today.  During US Nationals, Tara Lipinski commented, slightly under her breath, during Liu's free skate, that she thought Alysa would win the Olympics and, I gotta say, I agree with her.  Liu just seems to shrug off pressure and expectations in a way I haven't in a long time. 

If I had to make a wager right now, I'd tell the rest of you to put your money on Liu, Sakamoto and...  I don't know.  They are all FANTASTIC skaters and between them and a bunch of refreshingly great sportswomen like Petrokina, Belgium's Loena Hendrickx & Nina Pinzarrone, Gutmann, Switzerland's Kimmy Repond, Korea's Jia Shin, Canada's Madeline Schizas, and Georgia's Anastasiia Gubanova, you're going to experience a far different event from the one we lived through in 2022 and it just makes me smile to see how the women's discipline has healed itself during the Russia ban.

Team Event - Ten countries and lots of intrigue & a very competitive race to see which countries qualify for the Free Skate/Free Dance Segment as well as who brings home the medals.  Gold is a two-country neck-and-neck race between the USA & Japan.  Right now, my handicapping has Japan winning in a tie-breaker, that's how close it is.  Georgia & Italy will be battling for the bronze and that may come down to whether it's France or Canada that takes the fifth spot in the FS/FD portion.  Korea would be competitive for the FS/FD portion if they had a pairs team, but they don't, so they're just there to throw a monkey wrench in the Men's & Women's TE SP rankings with their skaters. Same with China, except they have a pairs team - Sui/Han - who will throw the monkey wrench in the Pairs TE SP rankings; and also for Great Britain, whose top dance team - Fear/Gibson - will be shaking up the Ice Dance TE RD rankings.  Poland is only there for the fun, but both their pairs team, Ioulia Chtchetinina/Michal Wozniak, and their woman, Ekaterina Kurakova, have the potential to also play spoiler.

[Sir Rols]

This is a bit tough after their star turn on Paris’ OC…

Figure skater forced to scrap Olympic routine after Minions music copyright dispute

[baron-pierreIV]

/\ Was also just going to post about that issue now.  Wow; so the licensing companies are now getting into the Act.  I thought the ISU could get a blanket clearance for the competitions.  

[Sir Rols]

So silly. Surely this is the type of exposure that can only help their sales and downloads?

[baron-pierreIV]

Turns out the music in question is from THE MINIONS (Paris 2024 opening?) --which is owned by Universal, which owns NBC and Xfinity (or vice-versa), so no problem for Guarino's short program now.  Matter resolved.  On with the Skating!!! 

[Sir Rols]

Yeah, issue resolved. Though apparently there’s a few others having music rights issues as well

Figure skater saved from scrapping Olympic routine after Minions music copyright dispute

[Karenina]

On 2/2/2026 at 6:09 PM, baron-pierreIV said:

/\ Was also just going to post about that issue now.  Wow; so the licensing companies are now getting into the Act.  I thought the ISU could get a blanket clearance for the competitions.  

It's a massively complicated issue for figure skating (and will likely also be just as complicated for WAG, artistic swimming & dressage during the Summer Olympics in the future) because there are two different sets of rights that need to be obtained from what I understand.  One is the underlying right to use the music then there is an additional clearance to edit the music from the original recording - which is something that happens frequently in figure skating to help amplify the beat or certain sections, as well as transitions from one piece to another or even adding a few extra seconds to get to the program length required.  There are a some artists that refuse to allow for ANY alteration of their compositions (the Czech dance team of Mrazkova/Mrazek had to change their Free Dance last season because of this issue and, apparently, another skater this season also had to select different music because the artist, again, refused to issue any clearances), and quite famously, Canadian skater Kevin Reynolds had to change one of his programs a week or two before NHK Trophy several years ago because the Japanese composer refused to issue a clearance.

All of that is further complicated by the fact that copyright & intellectual property laws vary from country to country - so what may be approved for use in one country could fall afoul of another country's copyright laws.  The ISU has been trying to work through the issue with major labels & publishing houses but, hopefully, this issue spurs the IOC to step in and help facilitate some sort of global clearinghouse for athletes in sports which rely upon music for some of their competitions.

[baron-pierreIV]

Just learned of ANOTHER bizarre ruling that can only happen to Olympic Figure Skating. 

So Japan--currently #2 in the Team competition--can compete fully even though they don't have a couple in the individual Ice Dance category, can bring in their top Ice Dance couple who failed to make the 22 Olympic spots but can now dance on Olympic ice -- just so they have enough bodies to complete a Team.  So, Karenina, if that is allowed, can say, Iran or NoKor -- with NO qualifying skaters in any of the individual categories, whip together a bunch of skaters who did not qualify for the WOGs, but put together, can qualify for a TEAM Spot??  I mean, going by what Japan is doing now?? 

Edited February 8 by baron-pierreIV

[Guilga]

So! Today was wild, isn't it?

Gold for Kazakstan at the Men's Free Skate after the final group felt the overbearing pressure!

Mikhail Shaidorov stands glorious

[Faster]

Pretty remarkable considering the absolute sh!tshow Torino's mens competition was as well. 

[baron-pierreIV]

I just had this feeling that Ilia would collapse.  History always repeats itself.  It happened to that first Jumping Jack - Nathan Chen.  He blew it at his first Oly in Pyeong Chang 2018 and then claimed the gold in Beijing.  Ilia's doing the same thing.  He could peak for FA 2030 when he will only be 25 -- but not unless he will have so many hairline fractures in his feet bones after doing all those jumps and back-flips that he will retire from the sport before 2030.  He should have Simone Biles as his psychiatrist.  She knew when to back away in Tokyo 2020/1 and then return in Paris.  

For the women, I think either Alyssa or Amber will collapse.  I think Kaori who is very consistent and more elegant than Alyssa or Amber, might take the gold.  I wouldn't mind if Isabeau for the bronze!  She is also truly elegant.  The other 2 are big girls -- with big bones.  

[Faster]

It is just amazing to see how amazing Hungary and Georgia are at figure skating all of a sudden. I wonder when Azerbaijan is gonna start really being competitive.

[Guilga]

Alyssa really did put up a party in Milan, huh?

[baron-pierreIV]

On 2/17/2026 at 2:24 PM, Faster said:

It is just amazing to see how amazing Hungary and Georgia are at figure skating all of a sudden. I wonder when Azerbaijan is gonna start really being competitive.

When the expat Russians (both athletes and coaches) get their Azerbajiani papers and the local Azerbajian FS circles accept the Russians.