The Olympics are figure skating’s biggest event, and they are never complete without shock or scandal. The 2026 Milano Cortina Games mercifully did not have any major scandals, but it did have some unexpected podium finishes — in all disciplines.
These Olympics were exciting because some winners came as a legitimate surprise.
Japan, the United States, Canada and Russia usually take up the most space on the podium.
In recent years, Canada has not had a strong figure skating team. Russia’s ban from competition has left an opening for other countries.
The Grand Prix Final takes place before the Olympics and usually projects who will make the podium in the Olympics, but it did not give us a clear picture this year.
Team Event
The first figure skating event was the team event. This event wrapped up with gold for the U.S., silver for Japan, and bronze for Italy. It is typical for the U.S. and Japan to place well, but unusual for Italy — they had the home advantage on their side in this event.
Ice Dance
The first individual event was ice dance, where Canada’s Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier took home a bronze medal. This marked Canada’s first Olympic figure skating medal since the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics. Their performance to “Vincent” by Don McLean stood out to me among the others, filled with emotion and longing.
This was a full-circle moment for the pair who skated to the same song early in their skating careers together. They shone on the ice like the stars McLean sings about, putting everything into a final performance that could not have made Canada prouder. While the duo were thrilled with their results, the rest of the podium had an unlikely outcome.
The American pair, Madison Chock and Evan Bates, were projected to grab gold based on their top billing finish at the Grand Prix Final. This was the pair’s retirement year, and they were disappointed to go home with silver after such a strong season.
A new French duo, Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron, teamed up this year, and typically, the longer a pair has been together, the better the results they have. To everyone’s surprise, this pair swept in and took the gold medal home. Cizeron was the gold medallist at the last Olympics and made history by achieving back-to-back wins in the Olympics with a new partner.
Men’s Single Skating
The next event up was the men’s single skating. Everyone thought they knew how this event would end, since Ilia Malinin had remained undefeated in every competition for over two years. He shockingly did not skate well or make the podium in either the short or long program. This was Malinin’s first Olympics, and the atmosphere is vastly different from other elite competitions.
He seemed to crack under the pressure. His runners-up in almost every competition were Yuma Kagiyama and Shun Sato. After Malinin’s failures, they were expected to come out on top. Instead, Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Shaidorov claimed gold in a shocking turn of events. The results had Shaidorov in first, Kagiyama in second, and Sato in third.
Canada’s Stephen Gogolev also performed well. He placed fifth and is the first Canadian men’s figure skater to have landed two quad jumps in a program.
Pairs Skating
The podium consisted of Japan’s Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara in first, Georgia’s Anastasiia Metelkina and Luka Berulava in second, and Germany’s Minerva Fabienne Hase and Nikita Volodin in third.
Women’s Singles Skating
Women’s singles finished the figure skating events off, and it was out of the ordinary this year. When the scores are compared to those of the Beijing 2022 Olympics, this year’s gold medallist scored lower than last Olympics’ bronze medallist. As time goes on, scores tend to only increase. Kaori Sakamoto was projected to win since she was the Beijing 2022 bronze medallist, but she took home silver, just under the U.S.’s Alysa Liu, who triumphed with gold. On the third-place podium was Japan’s 17-year-old Ami Nakai.
This year was supposed to be Sakamoto’s year. She had a strong season and nearly had that gold medal in her hands. I think her skating was beautifully done with so much expression, power and grace. It breaks the skating world’s heart to see her retire without an Olympic gold medal, but her final performance is one to remember.
While Sakamoto arguably deserved gold, it is also remarkable to see Liu come out on top. It is rare and almost impossible for a skater to come out of retirement and perform as well as Liu did. She showed the world that one can love what they do while also excelling. To the disappointment of Canadian fans, Madeline Schizas did not qualify to skate her long program after placing 25th in the short program.
At this year’s Olympics, not a single podium finished in a way that anyone could have anticipated. As a viewer, I was disappointed with how low a lot of Canadian figure skaters were placing. I also wish we could have seen resilient athletes like Malinin and Sakamoto place higher. On the whole, I loved the performances and thought that all the skaters performed beautifully. There were disappointments and underdog victories, but each athlete represented their country well and made everyone back home proud.
Featured image from Olympics.com
