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the quad revolution is one of the most interesting things in figure skating where skaters push back against human limits, landing quads never to be seen before.
today we're going to take a deep dive into the quad revolution on exactly what is a quad, how hard it is, who are the main pioneers and what is the future of figure skating.
the basic definition of a quad is jumping in the air and spinning around 4 times and landing in one foot that's all skaters have only 0.65-0.7 seconds to complete on the rotation landing with a force 7 times their body weight. in order to achieve a quad you first need flawless triples, explosive powers AND I MEAN EXPLOSIVE POWER, fast snap like they're glued together in MILLISECONDS, tight axis straight, and very strong core force.
quads are very very difficult have to have a minimum of 10-12 years of training before ever coming CLOSE to landing a quad and even then the chances are slim in perspective a quad spinning is faster than a helicopter and imagine spinning so fast you can act as a human blender and humans cannot jump higher naturally than 0.7 seconds no matter what
safe to say people thought it was impossible and for good reason
The origins of the quad revolution can be traced back to canada's kurt browning who landed the first quad toe loop in competition in 1988 world championships safe to say it was insane even then I can probably count the number of male skaters that attempted quads with one hand so how did it end up today where skaters are now talking about fricking quints?
first in 2002 olympics in the pair skating had a judging scandal in which a the russian pair who skated impressively but made a mistake got gold and the canadian pair had a impressive and FLAWLESS skating in the end the russians got gold but the canadians got sliver then later it got found out that if the french judges voted for the russians later the russians would vote for the french during the ice dance segment so that basically was the deal but the most important part is the ISU judging system gave a transperant uncapped technical point to each jump which incentivized skaters to jump quads to build technical scores
in the 2010 quads were starting to creep up on skating as in 2010 olympics american evan lysacek won gold without completing any quads but russian evgeni plushenko did a quad triple combination and only won sliver he won by a narrow 1.31 points (same point difference as 2018 womens alina and evgenia btw just to add that) even with the quad advantage which was 9 points with the triple axel being just 8.2 points barely 0.8 points more it was wiped out because his second half of the program wasn't that good this continues the debate of who should win the quad jumper or the one with a clean jumps anyways, they held a general assembly and raised the points to 13 which made it so men had to jump quads to go the podium and with that it offical started
now 2016-present was the men quads as i like to call it the "quads arm race" and that was an insane time late 2015 boyang jin of china landed a quad lutz then shoma uno of japan landed a quad flip in april 2016 then yuzuru hanyu of japan landed a quad loop in september 2016 in just MERE months quads were landing left and right this forced the skaters to catch up and since now suddenly everyone was doing quads it forced them to add 2 then 3 then 4 then 5 or even 6 because quads are difficult they placed them in the front 2 minutes of the their program but the ISU combatted it by a 10% bonus rule so they did both this heavily changed how programs were design optimizing strength to land their mutiple quad program now we reach 2018 and we watched usa's nathan chen land a whopping SIX quadruple jumps in the pyeonchang olympics finally at 2022 usa's ilia malinin also known as quad god landed the infamous quad axel
now the woman's quad arms race from 2018- present miki ando of japan landed a quad salchow in 2002 but it was like basically impossibe to land another one for 16 years the person credited and traced back to the quad revolution is the russia's alexandra trusova and anna shcherbakova alexandra was named the quad queen she was the first woman to land a quad lutz and a quad toe loop anna followed after landing mutiple quad lutzes in competition by 2019 they used quads and were unbeatable in the senior realm infamous coaches like eteri tuberize saw this and added fuel to the fire building their training system on not power but low body weight targeting puberescent teenagers on building quads and quads not to be beaten russian skaters and skaters all over the world started training for quads in the iconic freeskate in 2022 beijing olympics alexandra landed FIVE quads in a single program and Anna landed two they both won sliver and gold following this adelila petrosian of russia was the first to land a quad toe loop and mao shimada of japan also lands quad salchows but post 2022 the women's field of quads has slowed down skaters opt for triples instead of quads in order to save themselves from injury, following the doping scandal of 2022 the isu raised the age limit of 15-17 as we mentioned girls quads are usually pre puberty so that quickly blocked out quads entering the senior curcuit and because the quad was centered in only russia's eteri tuberize camp the war in ukraine banning them quickly snuffed out international quads
what is the future for figure skating?
moving past quads now quints have entered the conversation the isu already have points made for possible quints with a score of 14 per quints or so american ilia malinin states his quint salchow and his quint toe loop are "pretty close" which is so insane like HELLO?? a quint btw a quint basically spinning five times in the air, 430 rpm, and impact of 15 times the body weight, and a quad has an impact of 7 times the body weight btw
anyways worried that the quads (and maybe quints) would turn an art form into a jumping contest they dropped the jumps of 7 to 6, falling in a jump you would basically only get 20% of the base value second excuetion of the same quad (and maybe quints) type like 2 salchows in a program scoring 70% of the base value
overall i think men's will usually only opt to do quads for flawless and clean programs and quints will probably be a one time thing for genetic anamolies like ilia malinin unless this somehow gets normalized too they will probably be just a history making rare weapon with only the amount of people i can count using my right hand unless this gets normalized too
as for the womens, most skaters are opting for flawless triples as of the seniors only to be around 17 of age focusing on maxing out GOE points and artistic excuetion
and that's all now you know all about quads.
ty for reading if you got this far
