The ISU has officially recognized six types of jumps. In order of base value, they are toe loop, salchow, loop, flip, lutz, and axel. While jumps were initially not essential in figure skating competitions, rotations increased over time, with the transition from single jumps to doubles, triples, and quadruples, and their importance grew steadily. In men’s figure skating, now results are primarily tied to the number of quadruples successfully completed during competitions. But who was the first skater to land the various types of quadruples? And what impact did the quadruple jump have on their careers?
Toe loop (T)
The first quadruple to be officially recognized by the ISU was the quadruple toe loop landed by Kurt Browning at the 1988 World Championship. It’s not the first quadruple attempted in competition. In 1986, Jozef Sabovčík landed a quadruple toe loop at the European Championship, but the ISU didn’t recognize the jump because Sabovčík touched the ice with his free foot. Brian Boitano, the reigning world champion, attempted a quadruple toe loop at the 1987 World Championship, fell, and lost the title to Brian Orser. Would Orser still have won if Boitano hadn’t fallen? It’s possible. What’s certain is that Boitano took a huge risk that didn’t pay off.
Kurt Browning was a young and promising skater in 1988. The year before, he had competed in the World Championships for the first time, finishing fifteenth. No one expected him to achieve a major result. He wasn’t in contention for medals at the 1988 Olympic Games, when he attempted his quadruple toe loop and fell. He ultimately placed eighth (11th in the compulsory figures, 7th in the short program, 6th in the free skate). At the 1988 World Championships, he wasn’t in a better position after placing 12th in the figures and 7th in the short program. He attempted the quadruple toe loop again, and this time he completed it. With the third free skate, he climbed to sixth place. The following year, Browning would win the first of his four world gold medals. The quadruple toe loop was what brought him fame.
In this table, I’ve listed all of Browning’s Olympic and World Championship appearances, along with the results. I’ve highlighted in green the event where Browning landed the first quadruple toe loop. First came the jump, and then the champion.
Browning never landed a quadruple toe loop combination, he never even attempted it. The first to land a quadruple toe loop combination (4T+2T) was Elvis Stojko at the 1991 World Championship, his second appearance. Stojko finished that competition in sixth place. His first medal, a bronze, came a year later. He, too, built a reputation for his jumps before he started to win.
Salchow (S)
The first skater to land the quadruple salchow was Timothy Goebel. Once nicknamed “Quad King,” Goebel landed the jump for the first time in 1998 in a junior competition, the Junior Grand Prix Final. And, just to be sure, he immediately performed it in combination. After adding the quadruple toe loop to his program, in the fall of 1999 at Skate America Goebel became the first skater to complete three quadruple jumps in a free skate. His three most important medals, the Olympic bronze and two World Championship silvers, came between 2002 and 2003, so years after he landed his quads for the first time.
In the table I also decided to indicate other significant changes regarding the jumps, such as the increase in the number of quadruples included in the layout, another change Gobel made before winning the medals. For Goebel the quadruples were something he needed to compete with the best skaters (Goebel won his Olympic bronze behind Alexei Yagudin and Evgeni Plushenko, skaters who could perform the quadruple toe loop in combination).
Lutz (Lz)
How many people remember the name Brandon Mroz? As a lot of skaters of his era, Mroz landed the quadruple toe loop a few times, but that jump clearly wasn’t enough to get results. In his first senior season, Mroz won silver at the US National Championships, which earned him a spot at the World Championships. There Mroz placed eighth. The two following National Championships, however, didn’t go well; a sixth- and seventh-place finish prevented him to be sent to the major competitions. If Mroz wanted to get results, he had to change something. What did he do? He added the quadruple Lutz to his programs.
He landed the 4Lz with a positive GOE only at the Colorado Spring Invitational, a local competition of minimal importance with only three participants. However, after watching the video of the jump, the ISU ratified it. Mroz attempted the 4Lz three more times, at the 2011 NHK Trophy and at the 2011 Rostelecom Cup. The first time, he was a bit off-balance, nothing terrible, but he still had a negative GOE. The other two times, he fell on underrotated jumps. End of attempts. As for Mroz’s career, with three placings—14th, 9th, and 9th—at the National Championships, he never returned to the World Championships. It’s no coincidence that I listed a single World Championship and then a series of National Championships in my table, to explain why there aren’t other World Chanpionship results.
Mroz added a new quadruple jump to his program in an attempt to achieve some results, but all he got was a quick mention in the history of figure skating jumps. Better than nothing, but he was never a champion.
As for the 4Lz in combination, the first to try it (and, while he was at it, land it with a positive GOE) was Boyang Jin at the 2015 Cup of China, his first senior international competition. The combination was important for Jin’s reputation before the results arrived, two world bronze medals in 2016 and 2017.
Flip (F)
The first skater to land a quadruple flip was Shoma Uno, in a competition that felt much more like an exhibition than a real competition, even though the ISU sent judges and there is an official protocol: the 2016 Team Challenge Cup.
Up until that point, 18-year-old Uno, in his first senior season, had won a bronze medal at the Grand Prix final, but had also finished seventh in his only appearance at the World Championships. Even at the Four Continents Championships, where he had competed twice (the first time when he was still competing in the junior category), he had failed to reach the podium, finishing fifth and fourth. The quadruple flip put him on the figure skating map and gave him the chance to compete for major medals.
By becoming the first skater to complete the 4F Uno entered the medal contention, but despite of the increased number of quadruples, he could only gain prominence once stronger skaters of his era left the competitive stage.
The first skater to attempt (and complete) a 4F combination was seventeen-year-old Nathan Chen in 2017, in his third senior competition. For him, too, quadruples were essential to starting to achieve results.
Loop (Lo)
The first skater to complete a 4Lo was Yuzuru Hanyu in 2016. In 2014, Hanyu had won back-to-back Grand Prix Final, Olympic gold, and World Championship. What motivation could he have had to keep going? The number of skaters who retire immediately after the Olympic success is incredibly high, though I’ll get back to that another day. Hanyu kept going. In 2015, after overcoming a season in which he faced enormous physical problems, in two competitions, in the span of two weeks, he broke six world records. He didn’t just break them, he literally shattered them. What motivation could Hanyu have had to keep going, to learn difficult things, to risk injury, or to risk ruining his image as a champion with falls and—perhaps—inferior results compared to the past?
Hanyu was 21 at the time. How old were the skaters I’ve mentioned so far? Browning was 21, at a time when they were older when they won because it took years to learn how to correctly draw compulsory figures; Stojko was 19 (and he too started competing during the compulsory figures era); Mroz was 20; Goebel, Uno, and Chen were 17; and Jin was 18.
Hanyu found within himself the motivation to continue despite his extraordinary successes, and the courage to do so when everything, from his age to several very concrete reasons, told him it would be easier not to. We can’t know the future, but in 2015, with a free program that included only two quadruple toe loops and a quadruple salchow, Hanyu twice achieved a higher score than he would have needed to win Olympic gold in 2018. The 4Lo was not necessary for him to compete with the best. He was the best, and precisely because he was the best, he felt the desire to venture into uncharted territories and bring something to figure skating that hadn’t existed before, a new quadruple jump.
From the table, we see that Hanyu had already won about half of his total medals (including his first Olympic gold medal and his first World Championship gold medal) before landing that quadruple loop. But for him that wasn’t enough. Even before attempting the quadruple loop, but after his first Olympic and World Championship gold medal, Hanyu had added a quadruple loop to his free skate (and one to his short program), demonstrating a rare desire to improve even when he was already at the top.
After landing the quadruple loop, he added another quadruple loop to his free skate (actually, the two things should have happened simultaneously, but he made some mistakes in the first competition). Then he won his second World Championship gold medal and his second Olympic gold medal, learning a fourth type of quadruple jump between those two medals (I didn’t include the 4Lz, which Hanyu completed in the fall of 2017, in the table).
He could have retired. It would have been easier. Anyone else in his place probably would have done so. He kept going, continued to climb the world podium, and presented a program with five quadruples.
Is that enough? No, between the end of 2021 and February 2022, he attempted the quadruple axel. He couldn’t complete it, but he tried anyway. He was 27 years old.
How many skaters attempt a new jump—one that no one has ever landed before, by the way—at 27? There is Artur Dmitriev Jr., I haven’t forgotten about him. Dmitriev tried the 4A exactly at 27 (in fact, he made his first attempt in a Russian domestic circuit competition when he was still 26).
Dmitriev has never competed in the World Championship or the European Championship. The best result in his three Grand Prix competitions was a ninth place. Dmitriev knew that if he wanted to leave his mark on the history of figure skating, he could only do so by becoming the first skater to complete a certain jump. He was the first (and still is the only one) to complete the 3Lz+3F combination, but that wasn’t enough for him. In his case, the 4A was just to get people talking about him.
Hanyu could have landed a 4Lo or a 4Lz at the Olympic Games had he wanted to, and I’ll probably have to talk about his Olympic layout one day. A third gold medal was at stake, and, in the worst-case scenario, a third medal. Hanyu tried the 4A on the biggest stage. He had the courage to take the risk, because for him, discovery, trying something new, has always been more important than settling for the safe.
Daniel Grassl is currently the only skater to have landed a 4Lo combined with a positive GOE in international competitions. He did so twice in the 2021-22 season (4Lo+1Eu+3S). Grassl’s best results so far are two seventh-place finishes, at the Olympic Games and at one World Championship. Hanyu could have done it if he wanted to. During SharePractice, he landed a perfect 4Lo+3T combination, and on three occasions he posted videos of himself landing the 4Lo+3A sequence in the paid area of his channel.
However, in the 2018-19 season, after winning his second Olympic gold medal, when he no longer had to prove anything to anyone, Hanyu became the first skater to land the 4T+3A sequence (and is still the only one to have done so, although Ilia Malinin landed the 4S+3A sequence in the 2024-25 season). And, in the 2019-20 season, Hanyu became the first skater to land the 4T+1Eu+3F combination. Even after winning everything (twice), he continued to raise the bar. No one like him.
Axel (A)
The first skater to land the quadruple axel (and still the only one, even considering national competitions) was Ilia Malinin. Despite all the practice videos that some skater occasionally post, so far only two other skaters, Dmitriev (four times) and Hanyu (twice), have attempted the jump in competition.
When did Malinin first land a 4A? In a minor competition (a Challenger Series) in his first senior season, after finishing ninth in his only World Championship appearance. Malinin, like all skaters except Hanyu, stood out for his jumps, and only then did he start winning. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s important to note Hanyu’s exceptional career.
In his first World Championship, in 2011, Hanyu was the one who obtained the highest score from the jumps, ahead of Patrick Chan and Javier Fernandez. At the 2012 World Championship (at age 17), he not only obtained the highest score from the jumps, but he also had the highest TES. This is normal in itself; it takes time to hone the interpretation and skating skills, but Hanyu was already at a very high level in this area at a very young age. He continued to perfect it, and at the same time, he perfected his jumps even when he didn’t need them. Just because he wanted to. And that’s extraordinary.
After his first world medal, a bronze, Malinin became the first skater in history to land all types of quadruples, and only then did he win his first world gold.
I conclude with two tables. The first summarizes the data I listed above. On the left, we see all the results achieved at the Olympic Games and World Championships by the six skaters I mentioned before landing their first quadruple jump of each type. On the right, we see their results after landing the jump. Hanyu is the only one who didn’t need a jump to get people interested in him, and he continued to achieve results even afterward.
The second is dedicated to the skaters who have won at least one Olympic or World Championship gold medal since the first quadruple jump was landed. Almost all of the skaters stopped to improve after winning and maintained their level. Only one continued to work to improve because he wanted to.
As I wrote, Hanyu always stands out. No one like him.
