by Lauren Weiss
It’s still early in the Games, but the U.S. has seen one hell of a Winter Olympics thus far. Let me count the ways. One, seventeen-year-old snowboarder Chloe Kim performed a double 1080 in the halfpipe. Two, seventeen-year-old figure skater Vincent Zhou pulled off a quadruple Lutz – the first ever cleanly-landed quad Lutz in any Olympic Games. Three, twenty-four-year-old figure skater Mirai Nagasu landed the first ever triple axel by an American in the Olympic Games. Kim and Nagasu have spun their way to medals already.
It’s easy for onlookers – myself included – to misunderstand the significance of these feats for the competitors, especially in relation to ice skating. We may “ooo” and “ah” when athletes like Nagasu execute programs with incredible grace, landing multiple jumps along the way. But it’s difficult to comprehend the enormity of an achievement like a clean triple axel when we’re not the ones on the ice, exhibiting balance, strength, persistence, and dedication. Instead, we’re sitting in front of the TV with a beer and a stack of homework.
As someone who enjoys public skating but has never performed (and likely will never be able to perform so much as a bunny-hop on the rink), I struggled to grasp the immensity of these feats at first. So, at age twenty, I decided it was time to grasp the true complexity of the triple axel and fully empathize with Nagasu’s dedication to figure skating – a dedication that requires her to give so much of herself to the sport.
What’s so special about the triple axel? I consulted my roommate (who completed a biomechanics course) for the answer.
The triple axel is the only jump in figure skating with a forward-facing takeoff. The skater takes off from the left foot with the help of a springing motion from the right leg. In mid-air, the skater laces his or her right leg over the left and completes three and a half rotations before landing on the right foot. Imagine the complexity of learning this jump, before even gaining muscle-memory for the movement…
I’m going to talk physics for a moment, and hopefully it will make sense (if it does make sense, you can thank the aforementioned roommate as well as my fourteen-year-old brother). To complete the three and a half rotations after takeoff, a skater’s angular velocity must be considerably large. Without a large enough velocity, the skater cannot reach the proper height or maintain a position in mid-air for the proper amount of time to complete all the rotations. Then, in mid-air, the skater must tuck his or her legs together tightly (minimizing the body’s radius) to conserve momentum, thus maintaining velocity. To prepare to land, the skater must decrease his or her velocity (to avoid injury) by spreading their arms and maintaining crossed legs. Finally, he or she must bend the knees to increase the time of impact, therefore decreasing the average force of it.
The human body is incredible. Clean figure skating is incredible. The efforts of Mirai Nagasu are incredible. She won her first U.S. Figure Skating championship at age fourteen. She was the first female skater to return to the U.S. team after having been left off the prior Olympic team (in 2014). And, finally, she was the first ever American female skater (and third female skater overall) to land a triple axel in the Olympic Games. The amount of sheer grit it must’ve taken to get to this point is tremendous.
Let’s take a moment to appreciate the spirit that lives within Mirai Nagasu and within many other Olympic athletes from various countries across the globe. Humanity impresses me sometimes.
Images Courtesy of: Giphy and People.com