The Ladies Figure Skating Event at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics was both phenomenal and quite controversial. Through skaters failing to perform their personal best, and the controversy over technical elements versus artistic skills, the two night event was filled with tears of both sadness and joy.

The American Ladies all qualified after the short program to compete in the free skate and finished in the top 11 after the final scores were tallied. Bradie Tennell, the 2018 US National Champion finished in 9th place with a total score of 192.35. Tennell is notorious for being a consistently clean skater, meaning that she never misses a jump, but she had her share of struggles during both the short program and freeskate. In 10th place was American, Mirai Nagasu, who became the first American woman to land a triple axel on Olympic Ice. This was Nagasu’s 2nd trip to the Olympics, as she competed in 2010, but missed making the team in 2014. She successfully completed the triple axel in the Team event, but was unable to do so in the Ladies Single Event. In 11th place was 18 year old, Karen Chen, who finished with a score of 185.65. Chen was the 2017 National Champion, and the skater who is believed to have been chosen over favorite, Ashley Wagner, for the third spot on the Olympic team. There was a huge amount of controversy over Wagner failing to be chosen to compete, considering the fact that she had been the favorite to make the team since the 2014 Olympics. Wagner received countless endorsements and was sponsored by Team USA as a spokesperson for the 2018 Olympic Team. Even though Wagner was the favorite by spectators, her 2017 season was not where it needed to be in order to be considered for a trip to the Olympics.

The real controversy at The Games was over the two Russian athletes who received the gold and silver medal. Going into the event, Evgenia Medvedeva was the clear favorite to take home the gold. For the past few seasons, she had been untouchable in nearly every event, while newcomer, Alina Zagitova, just came onto the scene from the junior level. Zagitova was the only skater in the entire event to place every single one of her jumps in the second half of her program due to the fact that every jump executed after the halfway point receives a 10% bonus added to the score. Not only did Zagitova receive a 10% bonus on all of her jumps, she also performed jumps with a higher difficulty level than her teammate, Medvedeva. Due to this influx of technical points that she received, she was able to beat Medvedeva by a mere 1.31 points. In fact, the two tied in the freekstae by both receiving a score of  156.65, but Zagitova won the short program, winning her the gold.

An argument arose over the fact that Medvedeva had much better artistry in her skating, which should have been considered more in the components score. Skating fans across the world were angered over the fact that Zagitova placed all of her jumps in the second half of the program to gain extra points, arguing that it took away from the artistry of the piece. Rather than performing a well rounded program, like Medvedeva, Zagitova waisted time for 2 minutes, and jam packed the second half of the routine full of content to the point where it wasn’t enjoyable.

Clearly, the Ladies event had many ups and downs, but the event as a whole had spectators, both at home and in the area, on the edge of their seats.