At upcoming ISU congress, results of important age debates may beg bigger questions about sport's future

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At upcoming ISU congress, results of important age debates may beg bigger questions about sport's future

How young is too young to compete at the elite level in figure skating?

And how old is too old to hold elective office in the sport’s international federation?

Will the answer to either question do anything to arrest the decline in the sport’s appeal, especially in North America and Europe (other than in Russia, now an international sports pariah for its unprovoked and horrific aggression in Ukraine)?

Those are some of the questions the International Skating Union will debate at its (normally) biennial congress this June in Thailand.

While the Congress agenda will not be finalized and made public until the end of April, I have obtained copies of the agenda in its provisional form.

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Kamila Valieva remains eligible to compete at worlds next month. Will she?

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Kamila Valieva remains eligible to compete at worlds next month. Will she?

As of now, Kamila Valieva is eligible to compete at the World Figure Skating Championships in late March.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport decision that allowed Valieva to compete at the 2022 Winter Olympics despite her ongoing doping case remains in force for all events, according to Travis Tygart, chief executive of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.

“While she is free to compete in all competitions, she could voluntarily step aside,” Tygart said in a text message. “Or WADA (the World Anti-Doping Agency) and the Russians should expedite her case to ensure a fair outcome prior to the World Championships and to avoid another media firestorm that neither she nor her competitors should have to endure.”

Even expedited action might not resolve Valieva’s case before Monday’s athlete entry deadline for the World Championships in Montpellier, France. The competition begins March 23.

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Figure skating at 2022 Olympics a trip - from sublime to absurd to sublime

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Figure skating at 2022 Olympics a trip - from sublime to absurd to sublime

It all started routinely, with a team event in which the medalists finished in the expected order (ROC-USA-JPN), and Russian Olympic Committee’s Kamila Valieva unsurprisingly became the first woman to land a quadruple jump in the Olympics.

After that, the 2022 Winter Olympics figure skating competition went from the sublime to the absurd to the sublime.

The team event was over only a day when the cancellation of its formal medal ceremony led to a week in which doping (especially Russia’s doping), pitiless training methods and the sad collapse of Valieva, the 15-year-old at the center of the story, turned into a firestorm as depressing as it was devastating.

Within a few hours of a story by Olympic specialist website Inside the Games that a legal issue about doping had prevented the team event medals from being presented, the website reported the case involved Valieva, the heavy favorite in women’s singles.

Valieva’s positive doping result from a December test, the bureaucratic laxity that followed, the decision that allowed her to compete in singles – it all brought recrimination, tears, anger and numbness as Valieva staggered under the weight of it, and the world watched in dismay.

How sadly bizarre was it that Court of Arbitration for Sport rulings on figure skating matters were as significant as nearly anything that happened on the ice?

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Chinese pair look golden from any perspective

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Chinese pair look golden from any perspective

You can look at the pairs skating final on the micro level, poring over the dozens of numbers on the score sheet, and you will find the mathematical differences that accounted for the outcome.

Or you can look at it on the macro level, seeing the forest instead of the trees, and you will find a poignant story of perseverant triumph over relentless adversity, a triumph made even more remarkable because it came in a Saturday competition with extraordinary skating.

The way Sui Wenjing and Han Cong of China won the gold medal at the 2022 Winter Olympics was, in a way, a microcosm of their lengthy partnership, a performance in which a big problem did not stop them. They had one big problem on a jump during Saturday’s free skate, but overcame it with surpassing excellence on everything else.

They had prevailed over doubters who said their body types did not fit into pairs skating. Over injuries that required two difficult foot surgeries for her and a hip surgery for him. Over the pressure of trying to win at home in a country brimming with nationalistic pride.

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In Olympic pairs short program, breathtaking excellence

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In Olympic pairs short program, breathtaking excellence

At its best, pairs figure skating is not only beautiful but thrilling, in a hold-your-breath kind of way.

It is a high-wire act of throws and twists and ever-more-complex lifts, moves that U.S. pairs skater Timothy LeDuc perfectly characterizes as right out of Cirque du Soleil.

Pairs skating was at its best in the short program at the 2018 Winter Olympics, where, as I wrote then, you could justifiably have exhausted a dictionary's supply of superlatives to describe the quality of the leading performers.

The quality of the top teams in Friday’s pairs short program at the 2022 Winter Olympics was even better.

Sui Wenjing and Han Cong of China, fire on ice, lead with a world record score. The next two finishers, Yevgenia Tarasova/Vladimir Morozov and Anastasia Mishina/Aleksandr Galliamov, both of the Russian Olympic Committee, each had season-best scores.

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