Winter Olympics: when it comes to figure skating it’s all a matter of age, but how old is too old?
- It pays to be a teenager if you have aspirations of winning gold at the Winter Olympics
- Reigning champion Alina Zagitova should know, she had yet to turn 16 when she triumphed in Pyeongchang in 2018
Tara Lipinski was a sprightly 15-year-old ballerina-on-ice when she won figure skating gold at the 1998 Nagano Olympics.
Sarah Hughes was but a year older when she did the same thing four years later in Salt Lake City.
In fact, six of the past seven Olympic champions in women’s figure skating were old enough to dangle a gold medal around their neck but unable to buy a celebratory bottle of champagne – at least in the US. That includes reigning champion Alina Zagitova, who had yet to turn 16 when she stood on the top step of the podium in Pyeongchang.
It all raises an age-old question in figure skating: How old is too old?
Of the three American women competing at the Beijing Games next week, 25-year-old Mariah Bell and 22-year-old Karen Chen are older than every gold medallist since 1932 save one: Japan’s Shizuka Arakawa, who had just turned 24 before the 2006 Turin Games. In fact, Bell and Chen are older than all three medallists from the 2018 Games.