Figure skating age debate also exposes body image challenges

BEIJING (AP) — Some figure skaters are hoping an Olympic doping scandal that is fueling a push to raise the minimum age of competitors will also focus attention on what they see as the sport’s most pressing issue: body image, body shaming and disordered eating.

The sport is under scrutiny after 15-year-old Kamila Valieva of the Russian Olympic Committee tested positive for a banned heart medication, then failed to medal in an event for which she was the overwhelming favorite.

Valieva's ordeal has led some skating officials to propose raising the minimum age for elite figure skating competitions from 15 to 17, ahead of the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy.

The age question is inseparable from the sport's struggles with eating disorders and body image. Younger, less developed skaters are doing things on the ice that more mature women's bodies can't, notably the quadruple jumps performed in Beijing by Valieva and other teen skaters working with her embattled coach, Eteri Tutberidze.

“We see girls who are really young and thin and who do really well in our sport," said Josefin Taljegård, a 26-year-old Swedish figure skater who competed in the women’s individual event in Beijing. "Maybe that’s why they’re so skinny – because they’re still children.”

That puts pressure on older skaters to keep pace.

“It usually is not like ‘Oh you have to look this kind of way’ but sometimes one can hear 'Oh if you were skinnier, you would jump higher or rotate faster,” Taljegård said.

While the Valieva case has focused the world's attention on doping, skaters say body image issues are far more pervasive in the sport. The 2014 class of Olympic skaters is proof.

Yulia Lipnitskaya was Russia’s golden girl at the Sochi Games when she was 15, before becoming a cautionary tale of chronic anorexia...