Kamila Valieva, 15 years old, made her Olympic debut in spectacular fashion. Valieva, a Russian figure skater awed everyone by showing her prodigious skating skills on Sunday night.
With her skating skills and prowess, Kamila Valieva holds the world records for the short program, free skate, and total score. Her score of 90.18 points in China’s indoor stadium was shy of her world record of 90.45 points at the European Championships.
In the game, Valieva opened with a triple axel (3A) with smooth jumping and landing. Immediately she performed a triple flip (3F) by taking off from the back and landed clean on the opposite foot. Kamila Valieva has become the first woman athlete to land a quadruple jump at the Winter Olympics.
Finally, she ended with a triple lutz-triple toe loop (3Lz + 3T), where her legs were clearly outside the edge before taking off. Likewise, she performed the rest of her program phenomenally. She even got a standing ovation from the American team for her spectacular performance.
With this amazing performance, she becomes the fourth woman to land a triple axel in Olympic history. After her win, she says “I was a little nervy, but along with that I know that the team always supports me, so it happened with this kind of neutral attitude.”
Likewise, Wakaba Higuchi of Japan came in second place with 74.73 points.
Along with Kamila, her teammates Alexandra Trusova and Anna Shcherbakova were all coached by Eteri Tutberidze. Eteri is known for raising hell-blazing Russian skaters. Like Kamila, both of her teammates can also perform phenomenal quadruple jumps.
How difficult is the triple axel (3A)?
The axel is the only triple jump in figure skating that’s performed by taking off forward. As all figure-skating jumps land in the backward direction, the forward take-off of the triple axel requires an additional half rotation in comparison to other triple jumps. Thus making it more challenging.
A triple axel lands with a force more than four times the weight of the skater. All of this force has to be absorbed gracefully while maintaining balance on the single metal blade as it moves backward on a smooth curve. Then there’s the matter of that extra half rotation.
Quad jumps are a staple of men’s figure skating, but it’s rare to see women do four rotations in the air. Only a handful of women have ever landed an official triple axel in international competition. Even fewer have ever mastered their own version of the triple axel in any form.
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