BEIJING—The first peek at the next frontier of a figure-skating revolution was so unexpected that even some skating diehards weren’t in their seats in time to see it.
It happened 30 seconds into the long program of a Russian-turned-American named Artur Dmitriev Jr. at the U.S. championships in January. Half the people in the crowd didn’t believe their eyes. The other half had their minds blown. Dmitriev had attempted four-and-a-half rotations in the air from a distinctive forward-facing takeoff and more or less landed on his feet.
It was unambiguously a quadruple axel—which, for the last 30 years, has been nothing less than the holy grail of figure skating.
The judging panel ruled this one technically under-rotated, a few degrees short of what was needed for it to be ratified, but the symbolism of the moment was unmistakable.
Dmitriev’s historic jump was only the latest in a dizzying stretch of experimentation in figure skating. It came two weeks after Yuzuru Hanyu, the two-time reigning Olympic champion, tried a quad axel of his own at the Japanese championships. Hanyu has tantalized his legions of fans by promising that he will take another shot at the historic quad axel at the Beijing Games next week.
The American gold-medal favorite Nathan Chen has attempted a quad axel in public, though not in competition. A teenager in Virginia who’s given himself the aspirational name of “quadg0d” is threatening to give it a try, while hinting he could achieve something even more audacious. There is even a hungry skater in Italy who claims to have attempted quintuple jumps at his home rink.
The slew of intrepid attempts, clustered so closely together, makes for a clear message: We are about to live in a new era of formerly unthinkable jumps in figure skating.
It’s been a century since the six core kinds of figure skating jumps were established: toe loop, salchow, loop, flip, lutz and, of course, the axel, which demands another 180 degrees of rotation in the air on entry.
The jumps have progressed from one rotation to two to three to four. Now skaters are on the brink of four-and-a-half turns in the air—and they’re even inching closer to five rotations.
This is not just unimaginable to people who spend time teetering in a rink. Until very recently, it was dismissed by researchers as improbable, even as a theoretical proposition. They calculated that it wasn’t likely for anyone to spend that long in the air, or to rotate fast enough, to be able to sneak in any more turns.
But now some of the world’s greatest skaters are telling the scientists they’re wrong: There are ways it could happen—and soon it will.
“Absolutely. There’s no doubt in my mind that there will be quad axels done and there will be quints done,” said Chen, one of the greatest jumpers of a generation that normalized the quadruple. “I’m certain that people will try it and people will successfully do it.”
On the timeline of figure skating’s progression, it’s also due. Two-rotation double jumps emerged in the 1920s. The double axel was performed in competition in 1948 and the first triple jump in 1952. The other triples followed, including the iconic triple axel in 1978. Then came the first quadruple jump in 1988. The rest of the quads were conquered later—but not yet the quadruple axel.
The judges ruled that Dmitriev was really, really close, if technically under-rotated. It was so close that the popular skating analyst Jackie Wong reacted as if he’d just spotted a comet. Hanyu’s attempt in Japan, by contrast, was downgraded, declared short by more than half a revolution and officially scored as a triple axel.
Both attempts made Kurt Browning giddy. The skater who had the first quadruple jump ratified in competition described Dmitriev’s as a revelation.
“I saw that quad axel and I thought, OK, wait a minute, that looks like in my mind’s eye what a quad axel would really look like,” he said. “That’s getting exciting. Because now we have substantial proof that Sasquatch exists.”
Of all the signals that the quadruple axel is close, the clearest is the number of men who are seriously hunting it—including Hanyu, the Japanese legend, who’s already won everything there is to win twice over. “I’m like, honored to be alive at the same time as him,” Chen said this week.
Browning knows from personal experience how powerful a peer effect can be. When he was chasing the quad in his day, Browning saw Brian Boitano try it and made a decision: He wanted to try it, too.
It was the figure-skating equivalent of runners breaking the 4-minute mile once Roger Bannister did it and a generation of young basketball players stretching the limits of their sport because they have grown up watching Stephen Curry.
Back home, once everyone had left the rink for the day, Browning started trying a quad toe loop in secret. “I didn’t want to be embarrassed,” he said. “And I didn’t want to have to answer questions, ‘Well, who do you think you are trying a quad?’” Training in obscurity allowed him to keep failing until he was close enough to success to feel confident showing his coach.
He didn’t like the one he actually landed in competition to claim the first quad—there was a turn out on the landing—so he pulled off another in competition that he could feel better about.
A fantasy of his sport quickly became reality. Then it became familiar. Now it’s a necessity.
Hanyu was a quad pioneer. Then he had to do still more at the Pyeongchang Olympics to win gold in 2018 because Chen was trying to outdo him. These days it’s normal for Chen to rip quads in practice while wearing an N95 mask and for Hanyu to pursue every possible avenue to burnish his legacy.
The multiple skaters pushing the boundaries these days are taking strikingly different approaches to getting there.
Dmitriev worked on his quad axel by stringing together consecutive triple axels. “I did three in a row,” he said. “And then I got a thought in my mind: What if we go for quad axel?” So he did. It wasn’t even a specific goal of his. “It was just interesting,” he says.
It’s also interesting to Ilia Malinin, a 17-year-old from Virginia, who documents his progress on Instagram under the name “quadg0d.” His experiments have included a quadruple axel with a harness for support. But what skating nerds see when they watch his clips is something even more outlandish, the exact combinations that could be the building blocks for a quintuple jump: a triple toe loop followed by a quadruple loop, a quadruple toe loop followed by another quadruple toe loop, and then a quadruple toe loop followed by a quadruple loop.
Malinin, a silver medalist at the U.S. championships and tapped for the senior world championships in March, has been coy about his ultimate goal.
“I’ve also been working on some other stuff that will definitely surprise a lot of people,” he said. “I’m going to keep it a secret for now.”
But in what could be the biggest hint of all that it’s imminent, someone else has been audacious enough to say that he has the quintuple in his sights.
“I wanted to practice to be the first one,” said Daniel Grassl, a 19-year-old Italian. “That’s my goal.”
He’s been trying a quadruple loop with both arms in the air. He also tried back-to-back quadruple loops. Grassl even says he tried a quintuple lutz in a gala. (Video of this feat could not be obtained.)
He’s been laying off the quintuples before the Olympics. But there is one person who has no doubt that skaters will be trying them before long. He also happens to have years of experience stretching the limits of his sport.
“I personally think it will be done in the near future,” Chen says.
Write to Louise Radnofsky at louise.radnofsky@wsj.com and Ben Cohen at ben.cohen@wsj.com
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