I start with some historical data. All information is known, or easily available to those who do not know it. I summarize them to remind you that the number of medals awarded at the Games has not always been the same and that there have been several important changes for the sport.

The modern Olympic Games began in 1896. Figure skating became an Olympic sport in 1908, at the Summer Olympic Games. There were four disciplines: Men, Ladies, Pairs and Special Figures. The latter was a men’s competition that was part of the Games only in 1908. No ice skating competitions were held in the 1912 edition. The next edition was that of 1920, the disciplines Men, Ladies and Pairs. In 1924 the Winter Olympics were born, separating the winter disciplines from the summer ones. The last edition before the Second World War was that of 1936, the first after, that of 1948. Ice Dance became an Olympic sport in 1976.

For decades, the Summer and Winter Olympic Games took place the same year, then the Olympic committee decided to separate the two events. For this reason, after the 1992 Games there was an interval of only two years, with the next edition of the Winter Games being held in 1994. In 2014 the Team Event was held for the first time. As for the nations, there are strange situations with nations that have merged or separated, or even that for an edition they have not used their flag. Some situations skew the medal tally a bit, but looking at every single situation would take a long time.

Who has won the most medals?

If we add up the number of medals from Russia and the Soviet Union, and maybe even Unified Team – but Vikor Petrenko, who previously won a bronze for the Soviet Union, was Ukrainian – and Olympic Athletes From Russia, Russia would be leading. With the official denominations, the United States won the most.

The history of the Olympic Games is long, with 25 editions, and in my opinion it is interesting to look at what has happened over time, which nations were strong in the past and which nations are strong now. If for the first screenshot I took the image from Wikipedia and did not modify it, this time I added an information. When a nation has won one or more medals, I colored the boxes with three different colors, to highlight which was the most important medal that every nation won in that year.

The only ones who have almost always won at least one gold, at least since the postwar period, have been the United States and Russia, in its many incarnations. But for the United States the latest edition was particularly disappointing, with only two bronze medals. In the last 19 editions of the Olympic Games, only in three editions has they not won at least one silver, which they had succeeded in the previous eleven editions. I don’t think they liked it. And looking a little closer at the competitions, these are the results achieved by the American skaters. I look first at the couple disciplines and the Team Event.

I checked all the placings, highlighting the medals with colors. For many nations (including Italy) results of this type would be extraordinary. For the United States … They have been competitive in Pairs for a while, but this has not been true for years, and they have never won gold. In Ice Dance they have become competitive in the last editions and have won a gold medal, even if long speeches could be made about that competition. M.G. Piety wrote about this competition here and here. Next year they will be fully fighting for a medal, although in the role of main favorites will be the French and the Russian. And then there are the two team bronzes, with the prospect of improving in the next edition, given that at the moment Canada seems less strong than in the recent past. But these are not the medals that interest them the most. For them the ideal is to have a princess to adore, or alternatively a man to praise for his extraordinary athletic skills.

A note before the next table. Until the 1980s – I don’t remember the year exactly, I should look for it but I don’t even remember in which books I read the information, so I leave it so – any nation could send how many skaters they wanted to the World Championships (and I suppose to the Olympic Games too), then the increase in the number of nations prompted the ISU to set the maximum number at three, with precise qualification criteria.

Zero medals for the United States among Ladies in the last three editions, zero medals among Men in the last two editions, and they weren’t used to it. I don’t think they liked it. The American federation will not have liked it, the American public will not have liked it, and consequently the sponsors, and consequently the television. Let’s see the future prospects.

We have no idea who will be the three Russian skaters who will go to Beijing, but whoever they are, they could monopolize the podium. It is not said that it will surely happen, it could happen. It could happen even if to Beijing went not the first three classified in the Russian national championship, but the fourth, fifth and sixth. We all know that this is possible. Credible alternatives? The most important is Rika Kihira, Japanese. She has to be healthy and not injured, as she has been too often lately, and she has to skate well, but she certainly needs to be taken seriously. Other Japanese I doubt it, despite Kaori Sakamoto’s World Team Trophy. Elizabet Tursynbaeva, if she recovers from her injury, but she is Kazakh. The Americans? Bradie Tennell, Amber Glenn, Karen Chen, Alysa Liu, Mariah Bell? If Sakamoto skates well, she is ahead of all of them, and I already don’t think Sakamoto can win a medal, also because we know how the marks are awarded. Liu is very young, she could grow up quite a lot, but what we have seen in the last season is not encouraging. The chances of an American getting on the podium in the Ladies’ competition are less than that of an American dance team winning a medal other than bronze.

Remains the Men’s competition.

Some things I write here I already wrote months ago in Italian, even if I recently made some additions to that old post. Whenever I find something interesting that can make an old text more complete, I have no problem modifying what I had already written. The only thing I don’t do is change the meaning of what I’ve written.

I start with 1994. The women’s gold was won by Ukrainian Oksana Baiul ahead of the American Nancy Kerrigan. This is the competition that has been discussed a lot because Tonya Harding’s ex-husband – Harding finished eighth, but had won a world silver three years earlier, so she had to be taken seriously as a possible medallist – organized an assault on Kerrigan. Fortunately, the attacker turned out to be incapable and Kerrigan managed to recover to win the Olympic silver, but the media attention on the event was very high.

In the United States, when an American woman wins the Olympic, there is a huge spike in young athletes entering the sport for the first time. For example, after three Olympics in six years and the Harding-Kerrigan affair in 1994, figure skating became the second-most popular televised sport in the U.S., following only football.

Interested faded and leveled off with excessive and repeated TV esposure, and with teenage champions Tara Lipinski and Sarah Hughes peaking and departing before they became well-known. And as the 21st century began to produce more singles champions from Asia (women) and Europe (men), skating lost some reasonance in the U.S., where the wider public cares mostly about American athletes. (Steve Milton, Figure Skating’s Greatest Stars, pag. 119).

The book from which this quote comes is from 2009. The Asian Ladies had already begun to steal the show from the Americans, the Men still not. Takeshi Honda had won two world bronzes in 2002 and 2003, but no Olympic medals, and he had already retired. Daisuke Takahashi had won his first world silver in 2007, but the most important results, Olympic bronze and world gold, would only arrive in 2010. The others, Takahiko Kozuka, Yuzuru Hanyu, Tatsuki Machida, Shoma Uno and Yuma Kagiyama, and also Denis Ten and Boyang Jin, the only non-Japanese, would arrive later, so for Milton (a Canadian journalist) the Asian invasion had only occurred in the Ladies’ competition.

Sometimes even a non-American skater can be enough for the American purposes. Who were the favorites in the 1994 Men’s competition? In its presentation of the event, CBS focused on the three skaters who, altogether, had won the last six World Championships and the last two Olympic golds, the American Brian Boitano, the Canadian Kurt Browning and the Ukrainian Viktor Petrenko (who, after the Olympic gold, had moved to Las Vegas and had participated in the exhibition tour in the United States), and on two young skaters, Canadian Elvis Stojko, World silver medallist in 1993, and American Scott Davis, reigning national champion and sixth at the previous World Championship. Mentions for the Russian Alexei Urmanov, world bronze medal the year before and, unlike Davis, able to perform the quadruple toe loop, or for the French Philippe Candeloro, European silver medal the year before? None.

With the three old champions making mistakes, gold went to Urmanov ahead of Stojko and Candeloro. Davis finished eighth behind Petrenlo (4th), Browning, (5th), Boitano (6th) and French Eric Millot (7th).

with Urmanov winning both programs in contested victories over Stojko and Candeloro taking home the bronze medal, the media narrative became instead one of the proper direction that men’s figure skating should  take to capitalize on skating’s burgeoning popularity in the North American market.

In a post-prime time interview with Stojko, Pat O’Brien (CBS’s general sports anchor) remarked that “perhaps… figure skating is sending the wrong message, period. Because, here you are-you’re a great guy, outspoken, your name is Elvis, and you’re marketable and all that sort of thing. And Urmanov is a nice guy, I suppose, but he’s going to go back to Russia and we wont’see him until maybee the Nationals. You’re here and you could promote figure skating… (Ellyn Kestnbaum, Culture on Ice. Figure Skating & Cultural Meaning pag. 198).

For CBS that the winner was not American, or at least North American, was a wrong message, because the most important thing is that the skater remains in the United States for promoting figure skating. Promote it where? In the United States, of course, how important is what happens elsewhere?

In 1998 Tara Lipinski won the Olympic gold at 15 years and 255 days, to date she is the youngest individual gold winner. In 2002 Sarah Hughes won the Olympic gold at 16 years and 295 days. Only four Ladies (other than Lipinski they are Alina Zagitova in 2018, Sonja Henie in 1928 and Oksana Baiul in 1994) were younger than her. According to Milton, Lipinski and Hughes peaked and departed before they became well-known. The last American skater had a long career full of wins was Michelle Kwan. But Kwan has never won an Olympic gold. This is their career:

Kwan has won the hearts of Americans, as can be seen from the gifts that have been throw on the ice at the end of the free program in what would have been her penultimate national championship.

In 2002 Michelle Kwan, reigning world champion, was the favorite for the Olympic gold. And, a few days after the scandal caused by the confession of Marie-Reine Le Gougne that she preferred the Russian Pairs to the Canadian one because the president of her federation, Didier Gailhaguet, had pressed her in this sense, Rudi Galindo, world bronze medal in 1996, therefore someone that knew figure skating, answering the question of who, according to him, would win, was able to say

I don’t know. But I’m just going to go with Michelle [Kwan]. I’ll say that. Just because she might have the spirit of being in North America, in Utah, and I think it’s time for her to win. I think the ISU [International Skating Union], too, they understand that we need an American woman to win the Olympic gold, to help out with the ticket sales and the popularity of skating.

A minute of silence on these words. I was rooting for Kwan too, but Galindo’s words go far beyond just cheering. I think the ISU [International Skating Union], too, they understand that we need an American woman to win the Olympic gold, to help out with the ticket sales and the popularity of skating.

What does the sale of tickets, or the need for a federation that wins a certain skater, have to do with a sporting result?

Kwan made a few mistakes and had to settle for bronze, not that it reduced her popularity. The Americans loved her and continued to love her. However, the gold was won (by a very narrow measure) by an American figure skater. Unfortunately for the US federation, Hughes did not become a star, and the ratings of American television suffered.

In 2005 ESPN broadcast the Grand Prix competitions. The quotes are from Kelli Lawrence’s Skating on Air, a book I bought as an ebook, so I can’t indicate the page number. The

network executives were stunned by the abysmal ratings. Though the numbers had been sliding for years, the 5.2 and 5.4 earned by ABC back in 2003 and 2004 looked downright magnificent compared to the 1.24 ESPN got for the same event in 2005. Though they knew better than to think they’d ever come close to what ABC got with an “over-the-air” telecast, they’d hoped for about twice what they did get.

This is for the international competitions. And the national ones? Do you remember that the American press has extensively praised Nathan Chen’s fifth consecutive national title, even going so far as to compare him to Dick Button? True, no man has won five US national championships in a row since Dick Button, but how strong were Chen’s rivals? Chen is strong, ok, but I talked about the real value of his national titles here and here. Later I also checked the nationality of the skaters who, from the 2010-2011 season, have won at least one medal in the most important competitions: Olympic Games, World Championship or Grand Prix Final. Why Grand Prix Final and not European Championship or Four Continents Championship? Because everyone can participate in the first, regardless of their nationality. They just needs to be really strong. The other two competitions are entered according to nationality, and often their level is lower than that of a Grand Prix Final.

I could be wrong, but it seems to me that in only one country there have been so many strong skaters that the victory is difficult and therefore significant. Comparing Chen to Button… before 2026 seems a bit premature to me. But, regardless of the difficulty of the competition, for the Americans the national championship is an important event, which has always had high ratings.

Wait a moment. Always?

Meanwhile, ratings for U.S. Nationals—which continued to air on both ESPN and ABC through 2007—had been on a downhill slide for a decade. The numbers tell the story: what was a 7.2 rating in 1997 was a 4.9 by 2005. And even the luster of an Olympic year didn’t seem to carry the same weight of yesteryear: in 1998, prime time Nationals got an 11.5 rating; in 2006, it was just a 4.7. (Lawrence, Skating on Air)

For American television this is a huge problem.

people must’ve had a terrible time trying to sell ads for it; execs must’ve been looking at the contract wondering How do we get out of this … it’s a disaster!

No spectators? No sponsors. No sponsors? No money. No money? I suspect a lot of people don’t like this, so let’s get back to basics. They need spectators. And how do they find spectators? Remember Galindo’s speech? In America they need an American woman to win the Olympic gold.

While America looks for a champion, the competitions continue to be held. The 2006 Olympic Games were won by the Russian Evgeni Plushenko and the Japanese Shizuka Arakawa, the Europeans (men) and the Asians (women) mentioned by Milton. The Americans had to settle for Sasha Cohen’s silver and Evan Lysacek’s fourth place.

Cohen, if nothing else, won major medals for an entire four-year period collecting an Olympic silver, two silver and a bronze at the World Championship, and a gold and a silver at the Grand Prix final, so she was not exactly unknown. At both the Olympic Games and the subsequent World Championship she was the best in the short program, but imprecise free skate allowed her to win only one silver and one bronze.

Let’s imagine a little. An American – not the much loved one, Kwan, who withdrew from the competition due to an injury, but still a well-known figure skater, not an unknown one – is first after the short program. What do the spectators do?

on February 23, 2006, when the Ladies’ Final went up against the perennial ratings-topper American Idol and lost by a wide margin (23.5 million for Idol; 17.7 million for the Olympics). It had been a similar story about a week earlier—when the Men’s Final competed with Idol for viewers and was pummeled in the ratings, 27 million to 16.1 million—but since the Ladies’ Final often serves as the highest-rated event of the Games, the Idol loss was particularly shocking. (Lawrence)

A singing contest got better ratings than the Ladies’ competition at the Olympic Games. Not so encouraging, and not the best way to attract sponsors.

Cohen stopped competing at the end of the Olympic season, Kimmie Meissner, 2006 world champion, tried to go on but was tormented by injuries, the American champions with a long career and able to win started to run out. Especially the able to win part has started to fail. Mirai Nagasu, 2008 American champion when she was still a junior skater, participated in two editions of the Olympic Games, with a fourth place as her best, and in only three World Championships, with a seventh place as her best. Rachel Flatt, national champion in 2010, achieved a seventh place at the Olympic Games, and in three World Championships at most she finished fifth. As for Alissa Czisny, national champion in 2009 and 2011, she only made the fourteenth short program at the 2009 World Championship

Consequently, NBC opted to leave her free skate out of its broadcast altogether. It was the first time a reigning, present U.S. ladies gold medalist was not seen at Worlds by the TV audience. (Lawrence)

Over time, things have only gotten worse. In Push Dick’s Button, the American champion wrote

I don’t like that I couldn’t see the 2013 World Championship live on network television. That’s probably because the ratings in the U.S. have dropped into the cellar where the doggies are sent when they are bad. The 2014 World Skating Championship are held in March right after the big hoopla of the Olympic Winter Games and won’t be seen live, except as a two-week delayed summary show in April. (pagg. 224-225)

The problem is all here, the ratings that attract sponsors who bring money. Is it a purely American problem? No, not exactly. As Stephen Wade explained in this thread,

The International Olympic Committee is a sports business. Like NFL, NBA, it lives off selling broadcast rights. This is source of almost 75% of income

and

About 40% of all IOC income is from US network NBC. IOC and NBC in reality operate as partners.

If American viewers drop, it’s a problem for both the ISU and the IOC. Therefore, when a CBS executive wonders about the proper direction that men’s figure skating should take to capitalize on skating’s burgeoning popularity in the North American market, or Galindo says the ISU understand that we need an American woman to win the Olympic gold, to help out with the ticket sales and the popularity of skating, maybe we need to worry. In 2010

Flatt and Nagasu were considered to have skated exceptionally well at the Vancouver Winter Olympics (Lawrence)

and, despite this, they finished in seventh and fourth place. If there is no hope of winning a medal in the women’s competition, the Men’s can do it too, and in Vancouver the American hopes were on Evan Lysacek.

Returning to the comparison between skating and American Idol, according to producer and director Rob Dustin

American Idol does what we used to do with figure skating: tell stories about ‘nobodies’ that become ‘somebodies’ because of their talent, and create a storyline around that person

Tell stories about ‘nobodies’ that become ‘somebodies. Ah, this is something television can do, if they put themselves into it.

Skating commentators started playing up Lysacek’s marketing potential after he won his first national title in 2007. As an American skating blogger put it, ‘some in the media and U.S. Figure Skating feel very comfortable touting Evan Lysacek as the “meat and potatoes” man our sport, apparently, so desperately needs.’ Tall and conventionally good looking, Lysacek’s timing could not have been better in terms of marketing opportunities. As the reigning world champion in an Olympic year, he was a good bet for an Olympic gold medal. Also important to his ability to attract endorsement contracts was the fact that 2010 was the first time in decades that American women, who are generally among the most hyped athletes of the winter games, headed into the Olympics with no big names among them. Someone needed to fill the media void. The handsome Lysacek, who, as world champion, had already become a feature of celebrity gossip columns, was a promising candidate. (from Mary Louise Adams, Artistic Impressions, another ebook)

Lysacek won Olympic gold, although how he won it could be debated at length. I suggest to you to read also this article. After Lysacek, who retired just after the Olympig gold skipping also the World Championship a month later, the American men’s skating began to go through the same crisis as the women’s one. The crisis lasted less, and the American press did its best to attract public interest with what it had at its disposal.

I’ve read enough annoying articles, someone published before PyeongChang calling the strongest skater ever someone who hadn’t won anything at the time, or someone published later explaining how a skater who had won bronze in the Team Event was more famous of the skater who had just won his second individual gold. I could look for them if I felt like it. Along with the articles and serious analyzes, I also retain a certain amount of propaganda, you never know when it will be useful to remember that a part of the press has a very specific agenda and does not put the search for truth at the center of its interests. At the moment, however, I don’t want to dig into the mud, so I’ll stop here, with many worries about the fairness of the competitions that have taken place in recent years and that will take place in the near future. After all, we all know what American television needs.

One last thing, added a few hours after the publication of this post. Click on the links to Piety’s two articles and read them. I see the number of people who have clicked on the links, so I know if you have. The choice is up to you, but in this case not reading those articles makes you miss some really interesting considerations. Sure, Piety talks about the Ice Dance competition, and what she focuses on is the confrontation among Davis/White and Virtue/Moir. But… Here is just a passage from one of the two articles:

Davis and White didn’t need any help to win the gold was the constant refrain of most members of the group. They’ve been winning everything in the last few years. That is sadly true, but it begs the question of whether Davis and White needed help by tacitly assuming that they had not had help with these other wins.

Does it seem somehow familiar? I put again the links here: Yet Another Olympic Figure Skating Judging Scandal and Can Olympic Ice Skating Sink Any Lower?