The 2000s ended in a low note with a heated discussion over the men’s Olympic Gold Medal won without a quadruple jump. Evgeni Plushenko (RUS) was one of the most vocal critics of what was going on in figure skating, he felt the sport was not going forwards (see for example to the Wikipedia page on this subject). Thinking of how the introduction of the International Judging System (IJS) in the 2003–04 season had halted the development in quadruples, Plushenko certainly had a point (read about it in the previous post in this series).
The International Skating Union (ISU) also seemed to agree with Plushenko. Two things were changed: the judging system was amended to reward risk-taking and attempting two quads in the short program was allowed. The first change meant that a less than stellar quad attempt could earn more points than the same triple. The second change meant more scoring potential with more quads. But doing that required also mastering two different quads with one in combination – not a whole lot of skaters could do that in the beginning of the 2010–11 season when both changes were introduced.
Growing Complexity
The effects of these changes were not visible very quickly. Kevin Reynolds (CAN) was the first to do two quads in the short already in 2010 Skate Canada – he had both 4T and 4S and got them clean with the first try. However, he was one of the few who did this regularly: by the end of the of the 2014–15 season, the two-quad short was tried only 29 times by five skaters. Reynolds and Maxim Kovtun (RUS) were responsible for 23, Boyang Jin (CHN), Brian Joubert (FRA), and Konstantin Menshov (RUS) did the rest. But things started to heat up in the mid-2010s and the second part of the decade witnessed 305 short programs with two quads. The pioneering skaters were a mixture of old and new quadsters – a veteran like Javier Fernandez (ESP) was able to add a second quad to his short whilst the younger skaters proceeded to the 2-quad short within a season or two after starting attempting quads.
| Season | 2-quad shorts | Skaters |
| 2010–11 | 4 | 1 (Reynolds) |
| 2011–12 | 1 | 1 (Joubert) |
| 2012–13 | 4 | 1 (Reynolds) |
| 2013–14 | 9 | 2 (Kovtun, Reynolds) |
| 2014–15 | 11 | 4 (Jin, Kovtun, Menshov, Reynolds) |
| 2015–16 | 28 | 9 (Chen, Fernandez, Hanyu, Jin, Kovtun, Menshov, Reynolds, Samohin, Uno) |
| 2016–17 | 57 | 15 (Besseghier, Chen, Davis, Fernandez, Hanyu, Jin, Kovtun, Lazukin, Nguyen, Reynolds, Samohin, Shveysov, Tamura, Uno, Zhou) |
| 2017–18 | 85 | 28 |
| 2018–19 | 62 | 24 |
| 2019–20 | 73 | 21 |
In the 2000s, it had been very rare to have two different quads. This also began to change slowly in the new decade. Daisuke Takahashi (JPN) had started to experiment with the 4F already in 2010 but did not manage to get a clean one. Kevin Reynolds started to attempt the 4Lo in 2011 but did not manage to land a fully rotated one. Brandon Mroz (USA) had attempted only 4Ts in the 2000s but started to experiment with 4Lzs and 4Los now. He became the first to get an ISU ratified, cleanly landed 4Lz at the Colorado Springs Invitational in 2011.
The 4F and the 4Lo were conquered during the 2016–17 season. The 4Lo went to Yuzuru Hanyu (JPN) at the 2016 Autumn Classic International. Shoma Uno (JPN) managed the 4F at the 2017 Team Challenge Cup in the spring of that season. Both were the first attempts at the jumps by these skaters in competition! 4A remained then the last – and seemingly impossible – quad to be conquered. The difficulty of the 4,5 revolutions did not scare Artur Dmitriev Jr. (RUS) who was the first to try the 4A in competition at the Russian Cup Final in February 2018.
The number of skaters who were regularly attempting more than one quad type grew over the decade from 3 in the 2010–11 season to 49 in the 2019–20 season. Most had two quads, usually 4T and 4S, with 4Lz as the third most popular choice. Only a few tried 4Los and 4Fs. Kevin Reynolds (again) was the first to try three different quads (4T, 4S, and 4Lo) in a free program in 2011. The first ones to put four different quads in a free program were Boyang Jin and Nathan Chen (USA) during the 2016–17 season. Both had had 4T, 4S, and 4Lz, Jin’s fourth was 4Lo and Chen’s 4F. During the 2017–18 season, Nathan Chen attempted five different quads, adding 4Lo to his repertoire. However, even Chen did not try all five in the same program.
The number of attempts for different quad types for the first and second parts of the 2010s show the speed and intensity of the diversification process:
| Seasons | 4T | 4S | 4Lo | 4F | 4Lz | 4A |
| 2010–15 | 1688 | 467 | 11 | 4 | 20 | 0 |
| 2015–20 | 3301 | 1551 | 99 | 190 | 419 | 3 |
The new generation could also jump the different quads in combination. The first 4Lz+3T was landed by Boyang Jin at the 2015 Cup of China and the first 4F+3T by Nathan Chen at the 2016 NHK Trophy (in the short program). A 4Lo+3T was attempted by Daniel Grassl (ITA) at the 2020 European Championship, but it did not quite work out.
Having multiple quads also made it possible to add more of them to the free program. The repetition rules are fairly strict in figure skating, and it is possible to repeat a jump only in combination. In the 2018–19 season, a new rule limited attempting jumps with three or more revolutions: only two could be repeated in the free program. The 2-quad short had encouraged skaters to master at least two quad types and this new repetition rule enouraged learning even more quad types. In addition, having multiple quads and being able to do one or two in combination meant that a free with at least three quads became the new normal.
| Season | Total | 2 types | 3 types | 4 types | 5 types |
| 2010–11 | 3 | 3 | |||
| 2011–12 | 9 | 8 | 1 | ||
| 2012-13 | 7 | 6 | 1 | ||
| 2013–14 | 9 | 9 | |||
| 2014–15 | 12 | 12 | |||
| 2015–16 | 14 | 13 | 1 | ||
| 2016–17 | 28 | 23 | 3 | 2 | |
| 2017–18 | 44 | 32 | 8 | 3 | 1 |
| 2018–19 | 44 | 35 | 7 | 2 | |
| 2019–20 | 49 | 37 | 8 | 4 |
Though the beginning of the decade was a little slow for 3-quad frees with only 34 attempts by six skaters: Kevin Reynolds 11, Javier Fernandez 10, Boyang Jin 7, with Max Aaron (USA), Morisi Kvitelashvili (GEO), and Maxim Kovtun with the rest. The second part of the decade witnessed 212 3-quad frees in addition to 90 free skates with four to six quads. Boyang Jin was the first with four quads at the Cup of China in 2015 and Nathan Chen attempted to conquer the five and six quad frees at Finlandia Trophy in 2016 and the World Championships in 2017.
| Seasons | 3-quad free | Skaters | 4-quad free | Skaters | 5-quad free | Skaters |
| 2010–15 | 33 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2015–20 | 220 | 42 | 77 | 9 | 15 | 5 |
The complexity of regular figure skating programs grew almost exponentially in just a few years. The speed of changes in the 2010s is staggering after the slow-moving 2000s.
“The Quad Wars” 2015–2018
I have sometimes called the mid part of the 2010s as “The Quad Wars” because one skater after another started to add quads to their jump repertoire. It seems as if the young Chinese skater, Boyang Jin, was the trigger. Although there had been skaters like Kevin Reynolds earlier in the decade attempting more quad types and more difficult quad layouts, their efforts were seemingly not enough to inspire the top contenders to react. Or maybe they were not yet ready before the mid-2010s?
Jin started his international senior career with a big splash at the Cup of China in early November 2015: a 4Lz in both programs, the first 4Lz combination, his first time attempting three different quad types in the free (as only the second skater ever to do that), and the first 2+4 quad layout.
This seems to have made the reigning Olympic Champion, Yuzuru Hanyu, pull out a 2+3 quad layout for the first time in his career at the NHK Trophy two weeks later. Hanyu had tried the 3-quad free twice that season already, but the 2-quad short had let him down. This was followed by the reigning World Champion, Javier Fernandez, who updated his quad layout to 2+3 at the European Championships in January 2016 (he attempted the 2-quad short at the Spanish Nationals in December for the first time). Nathan Chen went for the 2+4 layout at the US Nationals around the same time. The 2016 World Championships medals went to Fernandez, Hanyu, and Jin with 2+3 and 2+4 layouts. Jin medaled at the 2016 Four Continents with a 2+4 quad layout executed to perfection (that is, all jumps received a postive GOE), but lost narrowly to Patrick Chan (CAN) who had only two 4Ts in his free but a 17 point advantage in the PCS.
In the fall of 2016, Hanyu managed to add 4Lo to his quads and consequently was able to upgrade his quad layout to 2+4. Chen started to introduce the 4Lz and the 4F into his programs – he and Boyang Jin were regularly attempting the 2+4 and 2+5 layouts. Shoma Uno also entered the race with combinations of 4T, 4Lo, and 4F in his programs. Even Patrick Chan started to attempt two different quads (4T and 4S). Fernandez, however, had maximised what he could do with a 4T and 4S and continued with a 2+3 layout. The World Championships medals in 2017 went to skaters with the 2+4 layouts.
And the next season 2017–18 brought more of the same heightened by the Olympics just around the corner. The situation settled to this new level by the end of the decade: more than 1100 quad attempts per season, all different quads attempted regularly, steady increases in program difficulty and numbers of skaters attempting quads. In the 2019–20 men’s ISU World Standings list, only 12 of the Top 100 had not attempted a quad in their careers and only one of them was in the Top 50.
The quad frenzy lead perhaps partially to the ISU setting up two new rules starting from the 2018–19 season. Firstly, jump passes in the free were reduced to seven after having been eight for the whole time IJS had existed. Secondly, only two quads could be repeated. Amusingly enough, losing one jump pass did not seem to have any effect as the number of quad attempts continued to grow in 2018–19 (from 1180 in 2017–18 to 1284). The effects of the second change have become visible more recently with more and more skaters learning multiple quad types.
And Women?
Women followed the developments in the first part of the decade mostly from the borders. Courtney Hicks (USA) became the fourth woman to try a quad, 4S, in competion at the 2011 Glacier Falls Classic. Young You (KOR) was the first skater in the novice age group to try a quad (again a 4S) at a Korean domestic competition in November 2016.
However, few skating fans were ready for what happened next. In the fall of 2017, a Russian junior skater Alexandra Trusova did what was thought almost unthinkable and started the process of making the quad a regular part of women’s figure skating. Trusova started the 2017–18 season with an underrotated 4S in her free and ended it with clean 4T and 4S at the Junior World Championships. Not very many men have been able to successfully introduce two different quads in one season (Nathan Chen and Ilia Malinin (USA) are among those few).
The next season, 2018–19, four other women followed Trusova’s example and Elizabet Tursynbaeva (KAZ) became the first senior woman to land a 4S successfully in competition at the World Championships. Trusova and Anna Shcherbakova (RUS) landed clean 4Lzs many times over the season and conquered the 4F in the following season. Skating gossip was buzzing with rumours of women training quads: at least 26 names for the late 2010s.
By the end of the decade, 152 quads had been attempted by 19 women. Or perhaps, rather, mostly by girls, because most of those attempts (97) took place in novice or junior competitions. Slightly more than half of the women’s quads (83) were attempted at domestic competitions. And the vast majority were attempted by Russian skaters – only 14 quads by women from Kazakstan, Japan and USA.
Conclusions
The 2010s began from a fairly low point in quad history, but things started to change with increasing velocity thanks to a push by the ISU by introducing changes in judging. By the end of the decade, the quad revolution that started in the 1980s began to look just about completed. The quad had become a staple for most top skaters among men and many skaters began to have two or more different ones in their jump repertoire. Women also stepped into the quad world seriously for the first time. Quads were attempted regularly in all kinds of competitions from domestic events to the Olympics from novice to senior.
The rule changes – seven jump passes and repetition of only two euads in the free – taking effect in the 2018–19 season seemingly did not reign in the enthusiasm of the next generation to attempt quads. However, the COVID-19 pandemic starting in the spring 2020 created a disruption to the world that had not been experienced before. It also meant disruptions in the figure skating world for the next two seasons. Could the pandemic stop the evolution of the quad?
Want to know more?
Read the previous posts related to the dreamers of the pre-1980s, the beginnings of the quad in the 1980s, the leaps and bounds of the 1990s and the stagnation of the 2000s. The post on Making of gives additional background on sources and data collection among other things.