#evgeni plushenko

[riverside--wren]

I've seen a lot of talk surrounding the figure skater Ilia Malinin in the most recent Olympic games as well as a lot of misconceptions, so I figured I'd share a basic timeline of events surrounding him (while trying to remain as fair and balanced as possible). Featuring: videos for illustration reasons.

1976 - At this point, the most rotations anyone has ever done in a competition is a triple axel (three and a half). Wanting to advance the athleticism of the sport, a skater and his coach, Terry Kubicka and Evy Skotfold, developed a new move, the figure skating backflip, and debuted it at the Olympics.

1977 - The International Skating Union bans backflips in competitions just one year after their debut. They cite safety concerns and claim they go against the spirit of the sport because they violate the principle of always landing on one blade. They remain popular in non-competitive showcases like the Ice Capades in the coming decades.

1988 - Kurt Browning lands the first quadruple jump in a competition. A quad axel (four and a half) is theorized to be mechanically impossible for a human to achieve without a ramp. Quads remain rare in competitions for the time being.

1998 - Surya Bonaly gets injured the day before her planned final skating competition before retiring: the 1998 Olympics free skate. Knowing she wasn’t going to win a medal anyway, she preformed an illegal backflip, intentionally landing on only one foot, therefore adhering to what the ISU considered the spirit of the sport while still knowingly getting points deducted for it. She did this both to give people “something to talk about” and to protest the way she had been unfairly discriminated against and disrespected as a black skater in an overwhelmingly white sport.

2002 - There is a cheating scandal where a Russian mobster strikes a deal with French judges so they will hand the win over to Russia instead of Canada, the favorites to win, in the pairs figure skating competition. After this is uncovered, the scoring system is changed in an attempt to make it more objective than subjective in order to prevent this sort of thing from happening again. Now, instead of giving an overall technical score for the performance combined with an artistic score, judges score each move individually, with a base value that each move is worth based on its difficulty, which is then combined with the artistic score. This pushes people to chase the more technically difficult moves worth more points, often at the expense of artistry.

2010 - Evgeni Plushenko of Russia loses Olympic gold to Evan Lysacek of the USA, despite Plushenko’s program including a difficult quadruple toe loop/triple toe loop combo, while Lysacek’s program did not include any quads. This leads to much public controversy, causing the ISU to change the point values to more heavily favor quads. The so-called “quad revolution,” is pushed into full-swing, wherein it becomes difficult if not impossible to place in the highest level competitions without at least one quad included in a skater’s program, with two or more often being needed. Many skaters start chasing them above all else, often letting artistic expression fall to the wayside.

2022 - At 17 years old, Ilia Malinin, already the self-styled “Quadg0d,” becomes the first person to land a quad axel in competition, and remains the only person to do so to this day. Later this year, he scores multiple top-3 medals in high-level competitions with his program, despite him being not very smooth or artistic, solely based on technical grounds.

2024 - Adam Siao Him Fa goes viral for his backflips in competitions, especially in the World Figure Skating Championships, where he wis bronze despite the point deduction. Due to this, the ISU finally unbans backflips after nearly 50 years of having them be illegal, along with many other somersaulting moves. However, they don’t have a specific point value attached to them like quads do, and are graded as a generic choreographic element. In the Grand Prix Final competition, Malinin shows off his newly-legal backflip and also decides to make every one of his seven allowed jumping passes a quad, which is virtually unheard of because of their difficulty. He takes second place, despite under-rotating all of his quads to some degree and falling on one of them.

2026 - Malinin preforms first Olympic backflips since they were unbanned, including one where he lands on one foot. Malinin gets second in round four of the team figure skating event, losing to rival Yuga Kagiyama of Japan, but defeats Japan's Shun Sato in round ten, earning the USA team enough points to win gold and knocking Japan into silver. The final point total from the ten combined events is 69 to 68. In the individual final, Malinin falls twice and makes two other major mistakes while trying to preform his quads, failing to earn himself a spot on the podium. Instead, gold goes to Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan, another fantastic jumper of quads. Silver and bronze go to Kagiyama and Sato respectively. Siao Him Fa performs one of own his signature backflips, but only achieves 12th due to numerous flubs on his program.

[raininyourblackeyes]

someone brave needs to tell yags to either kiss plushenko on the mouth or shut up because it’s been 20+ years

Picking Liza Tuktik for this duty

[theskatingarchive]

Евгений Плющенко Evgeni Plushenko (RUS)

2001 World Championship Free Skate

[figureskatingfanblog]

Yuma Kagiyama and Kaori Sakamoto join Evgeni Plushenko and Gillis Grafström with 4 Olympic medals.

Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir remain the only figure skaters with 5 Olympic medals.

[dafunzies]

there is always a ton of drama and gay in women’s figure skating but once a decade slavic men decide to hit the pentagon and take it all

[dandelionnox]

Is He Gay or European

Or how the westernised idea of masculinity brought on the downfall of artistry in sports

It had never occurred to me before how much of the harmful ideology surrounding masculinity had come through the globalisation of american media. The first time I was faced with this reality was, unexpectedly, in an episode of Heated Rivalry. Specifically, the one scene during the 2014 Sochi Olympics where a character hinted about how brave another character must be to perform as a male figure skater in Russia. To any seasoned fan of the sport, such as myself, the idea that a man would face any stigma in Russia just for being a figure skater would be laughable. After all, it's none other than Evgeni Plushenko, Russia's sweetheart, who had won gold at the team event in the very same discipline at the very same Olympics. However, it's not hard to imagine how someone unaware of these facts might come to a conclusion that a male figure skater might face persecution in Russia. Considering that Russia is, infamously, a deeply conservative and homophobic country, coupled with the western view of masculinity that attributes physical grace and artistry as a feminine trait. The scene works not only to reveal the danger of being a queer person in Russia, but also the shallow idea of masculinity prevalent in North American culture.

This toxic idea of masculinity has had real life consequences on the decline of artistry in sports. One of the first things I noticed when I had first gotten into figure skating is how you could distinguish how long a male figure skater has been competing by his costume. Seasoned skaters would favour more traditional tight, campy, glittery costumes that resemble dance leotards, while newer athletes tended to wear more conservative attire such as collared shirts. This shift in style is not necessarily bad in and out of itself. Not until it starts to result in reductionisim. Such as when every other figure skater had worn a white button up shirt as their costume in the 2022/2023 season. The costumes had always been an integral part of figure skating as an art form. They are a tool for the story telling of a well rounded program, so it is sad to see them lose their theatrical aspect.

You can always tell then a figure skater is trying his best to distance himself from being perceived as less masculine out of fear of being labeled "gay". Some of them are not even trying to be subtle about it. The self-proclamed "quad god" himself, Illia Malinin, the poster boy of male single's figure skating in the United States himself has publicly declared that he'd "have to be gay" to reach better results. Because of course showing delicate artistry is seen immasculating. (The irony of him performing to a recording of his own voice like it's not the campiest thing ever.) Opinions such as this one are slowly damaging figure skating as an art form. It is a product of a system that rewards flashy tricks over a well rounded program. Reducing male single's figure skating to a race of who can do the most quads rather than who can create a program that is rich in both technical skill and artistic expression. Of course, a large part of the problem is also the current scoring that does not award artistry as it does jumps, however, it is a reflection of the deeper issues surrounding the discipline. Not to say that figure skaters who can balance both technical skills and artistry don't exist - Adam Siao Him Fa and JunHwan Cha being few of the examples - however, the number of them is declining by the season. Male figure skating is slowly losing it's soul.

However, figure skating is not the only sport that is affected by this idea of masculinity. As recently illustrated by a declaration from one Thimothée Chalamet. In an pathetic effort to appeal to the male conservative audience, Chalamet mocked ballet and opera as being things that no one cares about. And by no one Chalamet of course meant men. Men do not care about things like that because they are beautiful and delicate and something that women like. They are entirely unmasculine and thus liken them would obviously makes you gay. However, the athletic ability required to perform as a ballet dancer is incredibly impressive and far superior to that of an average man. Ballet is - decidedly so - a sport. And men like sports. It is, arguably, the most masculine thing to ever exist. And yet ballet's identity as a sport is often rejected. Mostly do to it's proximity to women. And if women like something, it becomes offlimits to men. Because of course liking something girly is immasculating. Ballet is only one of many things that had been "ruined" because women like it.

The western idea of masculinity rejects artistry because it is seen as feminine. And liking feminine things is immasculating. So, in an effort to not have their masculinity questioned, men distance themselves from artistic expression, which causes the decline in artistry in sports such as figure skating or ballet.

[frostcrystals]

evgeni and evgenia as the king and queen at the sleeping beauty ice show in st. petersburg

[ice-princess-wadup]

Yeah