At the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina, 20-year-old American Alysa Liu won gold in women’s singles. The only Russian entrant competing under neutral status, 18-year-old Adeliia Petrosian, finished sixth.
Novaya Gazeta Europe frames the result as a contrast between two training models. For years, the school of Eteri Tutberidze relied on an early technical peak: Lipnitskaya, Medvedeva, Zagitova, Shcherbakova, Trusova, and Valieva all reached the Olympics before turning 18. Their success rested on ultra-difficult elements and strict discipline, but their careers were often short and the cost of those victories remained controversial.
After the 2022 Beijing Games, where the emotional breakdowns of Alexandra Trusova and Kamila Valieva became a public flashpoint, criticism of those methods intensified. In 2024, the age limit in figure skating was definitively raised: skaters now remain juniors until 17. For a system built around mastering ultra-C elements before puberty, that change became a serious challenge.
In Milan, Petrosian was the only skater to declare quadruple jumps, but she performed them inconsistently. After the free skate, she told reporters it would be psychologically difficult to return to Russia and that she felt ashamed before herself, the federation, her coaches, and the spectators.
Asked about an injury, Petrosian said: “I’d better ask my coaches first. I don’t know whether we talk about that. I don’t know what I could get in trouble for.”
Liu’s path is presented as the opposite. After Beijing, where she placed seventh, she left the sport, enrolled at university, and later returned on her own terms. To prepare for the Olympics, she assembled an international coaching team and insisted on choosing her own music and costumes. Her coach, Massimo Scali, recalled telling her before the skate to imagine they were going to a club. Liu won gold and afterward kept saying she could not believe she had done it.