2026 Olympics Team Event - Strategy, Predictions & Discussion

[ChillSkate]

Unfortunately, Jackie Wong is reporting there was a problem with the surface of the podium used for the team event. Blades were damaged, so the medal-winning skaters need to scramble to get their blades sharpened before their next practice -- and for the dancers, before tomorrow's competition.

That's ridiculous. There really should be a requirement that there is at least 1 day in between the last day of the Team Event and the first day of individual competition. Even though Ice Dancers didn't compete today, they were still obviously heavily engaged in today's event from both a time and energy perspective.

 

[kwanfan1818]

I may be mis-remembering, but didn’t Arutunian sharpen and care for Nathan Chen’s blades? If so, he is going to have 21 new best friends…

 

[Private Citizen]

Jackie didn't know at the time he recorded the podcast. He said he noticed one of the Italian male skaters (I don't remember which) running his hand across the surface of the podium at some point. I guess he later was told there was an issue.

The Japanese skaters were all touching and feeling the surface while they were standing there and the U.S. was being called. I thought it was really weird that they were doing this, but it seemed like they knew there was a problem. The US team all jumped on this surface. Hopefully that didn’t make it worse. Ai yay yay.

 

[MacMadame]

I may be mis-remembering, but didn’t Arutunian sharpen and care for Nathan Chen’s blades? If so, he is going to have 21 new best friends…

There is probably an official skate sharpener on the team as well. And the IOC should have one on-site too.

 

[Rukia]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure USFS brings a skate tech with them. But my coach would touch up our blades sometimes with a hand file, so maybe it's something easy they can fix quickly lol. I'd hate to compete on freshly sharpened blades.