Figure skating is the most glamorous sport in the Winter Olympics and fans can’t wait to see which women’s and men’s singles, pairs, and ice dance teams win 2026 gold medals in Milan-Cortina.
The United States is set to send a strong team likely led by men’s star Ilia Malinin, women’s sensation Alysa Liu and ice dancers Madison Chock and Evan Bates — and the U.S. figure skating championships start on Jan. 7 in St. Louis, Missouri. But watching the ice skaters succeed isn’t all that’s intrigued viewers through the years. In and around past Olympic Games, there has been major drama surrounding figure skaters worldwide.
A 1990s media firestorm erupted when Tonya Harding was implicated after her rival Nancy Kerrigan got whacked in the knee. Other odd incidents include judging scandals, wardrobe malfunctions, a Russian doping issue, and sore losers!
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Read on to find out more as Parade.com explains the 13 craziest figure skating moments.
In the biggest ice-skating shocker of all time, top U.S. figure skater Nancy Kerrigan got clubbed on the knee with a police baton in Jan. 1994. The story got much more staggering when it emerged that Kerrigan’s attackers were hit men hired by the ex-husband of rival American skater, Tonya Harding!
Kerrigan recovered from the attack to win a silver medal at the 1994 Winter Olympics while Harding finished eighth. Harding maintained she didn’t know about the attack until after it had taken place, but eventually pleaded guilty to hindering the prosecution by failing to report the assault.
Kerrigan, now 56, went on to personal appearances and philanthropy. After Harding, 55, was banned from skating, she briefly competed as a boxer. Strangely, both former ice stars later appeared on separate seasons of Dancing with the Stars!
Related: The Tonya Harding, Nancy Kerrigan Scandal Turns 20: Is Harding a Victim, Too?
#2 Kerrigan melts down at Olympics
In a twist in the Kerrigan-Harding saga, some people turned on the victim. Critics ridiculed Kerrigan for her dramatic cries of "Why?" after the assault and then her 1994 Lillehammer Olympics behavior. After losing the gold medal to the Ukraine’s Oksana Baiul, Kerrigan was caught on camera complaining about the delay in the awards ceremony starting. Kerrigan, the silver medalist, believed Baiul was holding things up in order to apply makeup after her joyful tears. "Oh come on, she's going to get up there and cry again," Kerrigan snarked. "What's the difference?" Kerrigan later explained that she didn’t know Olympics organizers were scrambling to find the Ukrainian national anthem, but the damage to her good girl image was done!
From left to right: Ukraine's Oksana Baiul, USA's Nancy Kerrigan, and China's Chen Lu are pictured together at the 1994 Winter Olympics.Related: Who Is Oksana Baiul’s Ex-Husband Carlo Farina? Inside Their Split and Why She Lost Custody of Their Daughter
Babilonia and her figure skating pairs’ partner, Randy Gardner, were favorites to win the gold medal for America at the 1980 Winter Olympics. He suffered a groin injury before the couple traveled to the Games in Lake Placid, New York, but it was improving. Unfortunately, Gardner aggravated the injury spending hours in the cold during the Olympics’ opening ceremony. After the pairs skater fell during warm ups, he and Babilonia had to withdraw from the competition. Babilonia couldn’t shake off the Olympic curse and attempted suicide at age 28 after substance abuse struggles. She later came to terms with things, turned her life around and pursued motivational speaking. Today, Babilonia and Gardner remain good friends.
#4 Olympic judging scandal exposed
As Mental Floss reported, during the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, a Canadian ice dancing judge, Jean Senft, secretly tape-recorded a Ukrainian judge who was trying to pre-determine the results.
The Ukrainian judge, Yuri Balkov, received a one-year suspension. Soon after, Senft also suffered a six-month suspension for allegedly favoring a Canadian pair, though she claimed the suspension was retaliation against her. The competition’s final results didn’t change.
Related: Battle for Milan: How to Watch the 2026 U.S. Figure Skating Championships
Incredibly, judging controversy wasn’t done after 1998. At the very next Winter Olympics in 2002, Canadians Jamie Sale and David Pelletier delivered a flawless free skate in Salt Lake City but only earned the silver medal. A judging conspiracy involving Russian and French votes was revealed that gave the gold to the inferior Russian pairs’ team, Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze. Sale and Pelletier were later awarded the gold while the Russians also kept their gold medal. After the scandal, new rules in the figure skating judging system were instituted.
#6 Surya Bonaly does an illegal backflip
French figure skater Bonaly, who competed at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, injured her groin and knew she didn’t have a chance to win a medal. Instead, Bonaly decided to put on a show, performing a backflip and landing on one blade in her free skate routine. It was a controversial move as backflips were then banned in skating as dangerous. Judges dinged Bonaly with a horrible score, but she was the first skater to perform a backflip in competition. In 2024, the international skating union removed the backflip ban. Although backflips don’t earn technical points, American men’s star Malinin does them often in international competition.
#7 Costume controversy creates dress code
At the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics, a male Canadian coach, Peter Dunfield, claimed that East German figure skater Katarina Witt wore a costume that was “bizarre and indecent…The real provocative side is the back. But in the front, you’ve even got cleavage.”
Katarina Witt skates at the 1988 Olympic Games.Dunfield implied that Witt’s sexy costume could be a ploy to score with the judges, but the skater (who won gold) claimed that her attire just worked with her Broadway-themed music.
Still, the dustup caused the International Skating Union to adopt a new dress code that required all women to wear skirts that covered their hips, bottom, and midriff. In 2003, the rule was relaxed, but the ISU still says skaters must wear costumes that are appropriate.
Sometimes skating scandals occur off the ice. As Fox News reported, Liu discovered while competing at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics that she and her family were being spied on by the Chinese government. Because of her father Arthur’s involvement in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests against the government before he fled his native country, China targeted the family.
"It's so …crazy," Liu said in recalling the incident last year. Liu, who was interviewed by the FBI, said, “In a weird way, I was like, 'Am I like in some prank show?' Like, is this world real, like I must be some movie character.” Liu was given tight security at the last Olympics and finished sixth, the highest placement by a U.S. woman singles skater. Her experience in the 2026 Olympics should be a lot less harrowing!
#9 Russian doping scandal rocks Olympics
Russian women's singles figure skater Kamila Valieva’s status caused havoc at the 2022 Beijing Olympics after it was discovered she had tested positive at the Russian national championships for the banned heart medication trimetazidine. It’s a drug commonly used to treat angina which can reportedly enhance endurance by increasing blood flow to the heart.
Valieva, 15, continued to skate at the Olympics after rulings that didn’t hold her responsible as a minor. Under pressure, the nervous skater fell in her free skate and finished fourth while her Russian teammate, Anna Shcherbakova, won the gold medal.
More drama came when viewers saw sobbing Valieva’s coach, Eteri Tutberidze, coldly criticizing the youngster afterwards. And amid the train wreck, Shcherbakova got little attention for actually winning!
Almost two years after the competition in 2024, Valieva was disqualified from the 2022 Olympics and the skaters behind her officially advanced up one spot.
Ice queen Wagner raged that she was “furious” when she wasn’t picked for the 2018 Olympics squad going to Pyeongchang, South Korea after finishing in fourth place at the U.S. Nationals. A 2014 Olympian who expected to go again, Wagner was seen as a sore loser to Bradie Tennell, Mirai Nagasu, and Karen Chen.
After she dissed the judges, Wagner, then 26, got the big chill from former ice skaters such as Sandra Bezic, who wrote in a text message to an ice-skating website, "She is to blame for not making the team. She underestimated how hungry the other women were. The right team is going to the Olympics."
Related: Who Is Alysa Liu? Inside the Life of America’s Top Women’s Figure Skater
#11 Wardrobe malfunction embarrasses skater
2018 Winter Olympics French ice dancers Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron stood out in a bad way -- for a nip slip! As USA Today reported, after starting her short program ice dance with partner Cizeron, a clasp holding Gabriella’s halter top came unhooked, and she struggled to keep her costume in place as they performed. Near the end, after Papadakis bent her body back, her top slipped and revealed her nipple on live TV!
Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron at the 2018 Winter OlympicsTeary-eyed Papadakis told reporters afterwards, “I felt it right away and I prayed. It was pretty distracting, kind of my worst nightmare happening at the Olympics. I told myself: ‘I don’t have a choice. I have to keep going.’ And that’s what we did.” Plus, they won the silver medal!
#12 Faulty laces force re-dos
Tonya Harding had more to worry about than Kerrigan and the knee hit scandal at the 1994 Olympics. During her long program, Harding stopped skating after supposedly seeing she had a broken skate lace. Harding tearfully approached judges and lifted her foot up on the table to point at her skate; they let her replace the lace and start over. The moment became iconic as critics doubted troubled Harding’s lace claim. Despite the second chance, Harding finished eighth.
Tonya Harding shows judges her broken skate lace at the 1994 Olympics.At the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, Japanese figure skater Nobunari Oda’s shoelaces came undone halfway through his free skate. He approached the judges and was given the chance to continue. But it ruined Oda’s momentum and he dropped from fourth to seventh place. “It came untied, it’s my fault,” he sighed.
#13 Skater’s scary fall causes injury
Pairs skating is the most dangerous of the figure disciplines, and German skater Mandy Wotzel suffered a severe 1994 Olympics injury. Wotzel received a deep cut and had trouble breathing after she tripped on her toe pick and fell chin-first onto the ice. Her partner Ingo Steuer carried Wotzel off the rink and viewers saw her being rushed to medical care. “Very scary,” NBC commentator Scott Hamilton shuddered during the live broadcast. The couple withdrew from the competition. Happily, Wotzel recovered.
Next, Miracle on Ice 2.0? USA Hockey Reveals 2026 Olympic Rosters for Milan-Cortina.
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