Andrew Torgashev Cheer Thread

peibeck said:

x.com

x.com x.com

Just for @Rukia ?

Also, Torgy best not fall for the deception. There are no CPK's in Wichita. :p
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thank you for blessing my life

also there may be no cpk there but someone did show him that the Pizza Hut museum is so that's something to aim for i guess
 
tangerine dream said:
There is one in Boston...
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Of all the amazing food to be had in Boston, I wouldn't consider California Pizza Kitchen to be high on anyone's priority dining destinations. :lol:(Personally, I'm not a big fan of their pizza. The tequila chicken fettuccine is decent though.) Their convo was about Nationals, so I assumed they were talking Wichita. ?‍♂️

Besides, I don't want @Rukia to be missing the skating in Boston because she's stalking the entrance of CPK. :P
 
peibeck said:
Of all the amazing food to be had in Boston, I wouldn't consider California Pizza Kitchen to be high on anyone's priority dining destinations.
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Oh, I agree! I meant if Torgy skates two clean programs in Wichita he can collect the promised CPK in Boston bc he will be on the worlds team. Ashley & Adam can have it delivered to his hotel room. :lol:
 
Cross-posting from the U.S. Men's News thread... Let's GO, Andrew! :)

"We caught up with Andrew during the NHK Trophy to discuss what has been driving his strength this season, his choice of classical music for his free skate, and his ambitions as he looks toward the Olympic season."
Absolute Skating's Andrew Torgashev article by Ayaka Okumura (Jan. 14): https://absoluteskating.com/index.php?cat=interviews&id=2025torgashev
 
Torgashev Catches A Second Wave of Momentum by @Jayar (Jan. 20):
www.usfigureskating.org

Torgashev Catches A Second Wave of Momentum - U.S. Figure Skating

A decade ago in Greensboro, North Carolina, Andrew Torgashev thrust himself into the limelight when he secured the 2015 U.S. junior men's title. At just 13 years
www.usfigureskating.org www.usfigureskating.org
His final quote:
Torgashev’s long-term goals are to finish in the top 10 at the World Championships in Boston and put himself in the position to compete for an Olympic Team berth next season.
“I am getting more comfortable and confident because I have been able to train consistently,” he said. “We’ll see how I can handle the pressure, but for me, I have been through so much and if I don’t set goals like finishing in the top 10 at Worlds, then there is not much of a point. I want to be competitive.”
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lol I've been so busy I forgot to post in here but huge congrats to Andrew for absolutely killing it at nats! He really had pressure on him to rise to the occasion as everyone predicted him to be second and I was concerned this would be too much for him, but he really came through including adding a second quad to his free! So excited to see him at 4cc's and in Boston!
 
Several years when I started watching juniors, I remember Ted Barton`s assessment of Andrew. "He`s a beautiful, talented skater. If he could just be more consistent" (followed by a sigh) And in the first years in seniors he`s been a little lost. Its so amazing when someone people had come to doubt finally blossoms.

I watched the FS a couple times now. Elements on the music. Lovely. Can you learn this or do you just have to have it?
 
Didn't Andrew break his leg several years ago? I always thought he was a talented skater, but after he broke his leg and didn't compete for a while, I thought it was the end of his skating career. Granted, I was in my late 20s when I broke my ankle & had surgery, but it took a long time to feel close to back to normal (it still doesn't feel right) and I never tried just a double flip again. It's incredible that Andrew not only came back to competing, but also gained his quad jumps.
 
He's had surgery twice and had to take extended breaks. And then we know he's had smaller injuries as well. He said this is his first season feeling really healthy, but also that's he's having to make sure to listen to his body and his trainers. It sure seems to be working at this point though.
 
Re-watching Nationals tonight and I had a bit of inspiration for Andrew. I'd love to see Samuel Mindra choreograph one of his programs next season.
 
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@olympic asked in the U.S. Men’s news thread:
olympic said:
So, enlighten me - What is the connect between Pizza and Torgy?
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Sylvia said:
Andrew's Nationals post & 9 photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DFYRhK9y0ej/
...
ETA - :lol: at the 9th photo as well as Adam Rippon's comment: "OUR MIGHTY PIZZA KING ?????"
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Andrew's 30-second Golden Skate video from 2023 Challenge Cup in the NED (where he got his minimum scores for his first Worlds): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8fSFPOgdwA
"My favorite food is pizza. I ate it for 53 days straight one time this year."

From the 2024 U.S. Nationals Men’s SP play-by-play thread (Peacock commentators were Adam & Ashley):
Wyliefan said:
For those who missed it, A&A were telling a story about a skater (I think it was Torgy) who ate a whole pizza every day for 50 days. Hence, Pizza King.
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I recently came across Phil Hersh's article Ahead of world championships debut, Andrew Torgashev is building instead of grinding (March 16, 2023) which predates the creation of this fan thread and is worth reading, IMO:
www.nbcsports.com

Ahead of world championships debut, Andrew Torgashev is building instead of grinding

U.S. figure skater Andrew Torgashev discusses his journey through various injuries and coaches to reach the 2023 World Figure Skating Championships.
www.nbcsports.com www.nbcsports.com
 
Edited transcript from The Runthrough’s podcast episode 59 on U.S. Nationals - “You Win Some, You Liuse Some” uploaded on Jan. 29, 2025 (starting at ~45:45) :D:

Adam: I mean, arguably, Torgashev had the performance of The Night.

Sarah: Not arguably. Torgashev absolutely did.

Adam: He had the audience eating out of the palm of his hand. He was commanding the ice. There aren't the, you know, crazy transitions, and, you know, he was kind of taking his time through the footwork.
There's things to improve upon, but that was the cleanest, most thought out, most complete performance of the night with incredible technique intertwined. […]

Ashley: He was the highlight of the men's event for me out of both programs. I love seeing him healthy and trained.

Adam: Wait.

Ashley: What?

Adam: We owe him pizza.

Sarah: Yeah, and you guys are not responding to him. He tweeted at you saying “So…”
Andrew to Ashley & Adam on X (Nov. 11, 2024): "If I do a clean free at nationals can you bring me a pizza in the kiss and cry?"
Ashley quoted him and replied on the same day: "Two clean programs and @AdamRippon and I will take you out to CPK ?"
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https://twitter.com/x/status/1883686925590311183

Adam: Oh, my God. Wait, I sent him an Instagram message today.

Ashley: But I also tweeted that I was aware. I guess I need to respond to him directly. This is bad!

Adam: Wait, Ashley, I sent him a DM and I said pick the restaurant. I'll go down to Irvine and I will give him the gift certificate.

Sarah: No, I think this is what I think we should do is we should do a live show in Boston. And then when it's done, you guys take him out for pizza.

Ashley: Wait, is there a California Pizza Kitchen in Boston?

Sarah: For sure. They're everywhere.

Adam: No, no, he's been skating too well. We need to take him to like a nice restaurant, not a California Pizza [Kitchen].

Sarah: Well, he asked for pizza.

Ashley: There is one in the Prudential Center, which is going to be really close to, I assume, where they're going to be staying. We'll walk him right into CPK. He wanted CPK, he's going to get CPK.

Sarah: I think that he does deserve CPK because that's what he wanted.

Ashley: You deserve what you want.

Sarah: But he can change his mind if he really wants something else, Adam.

Adam: I think he needs a gift certificate for, it was quite good. We can take him out for pizza, but we can get him a dinner where he can do his own thing.

Ashley: Get a steak

Adam: He's a, yeah. A diet coke and a steak. Can I say one moment?

Ashley: That was a steak performance.

Adam: My nationals moment.

Ashley: Yeah, okay. We're back there. Let's go.

Adam: Andrew Torgashev, at the very end of his program, this is the only time it's allowed, where he went right up to the judges, and so close that he hit the boards with his hip.
And he goes in front of the judges, and he nods to them, and he goes back. And I was like, the performance of the competition, that was it.

Ashley: The nod. The nod right there. I loved it. That was just so... I don't even know the word. I was so happy for him. That was cool.

Sarah: I think Andrew Torgashev... I think we need a fan name for him.

Ashley: I mean, we could call it the pizza kingdom, but I feel like it's not bad.

Sarah: I like the pizza kingdom. The pizza kingdom, though, is like what Adam was saying about the Illuminati. It's like that's the whole group, and then we just need a name for the individuals within the pizza kingdom.

Ashley: The slices.

Sarah: I'm a pizza slice. I am a pizza slice.

Adam: Done.

Sarah: All right, that's done. It's over.
I actually have like a pizza slice necklace from when I was in college somewhere that I'm gonna bring to the World Championships.

Adam: Wait, did we call him the pizza king?
Because he signed his, like, he did a Nationals post, and he signed it “The Pizza King.”

Ashley: Do we name people?

Sarah: I feel like, yeah, I think we came on and called him that at some point.

Adam: It had to have been us. What other reputable journalist would call an athlete the pizza king?

Sarah: That's true. Yeah, that sounds like us. That sounds like us.

Sarah: OK, great. Pizza slices unite.

Ashley: Pizza kingdom together at last.
 
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2025-26 pre-season interview, Olympic Figure Skating Dreams: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPxO02KaLlc
American figure skater Andrew Torgashev shares his journey from rink rat to Olympic hopeful in this in-depth interview. The son of Soviet immigrant coaches, Andrew has been skating since childhood and has one clear goal: wear the red, white, and blue at the Olympic Games. Andrew opens up about his Ukrainian heritage and family still living in Odessa amid ongoing conflict. His grandfather remains his biggest supporter, traveling to competitions since Andrew was 8 years old. He discusses participating in charity shows to support Ukraine and how his family's resilience puts figure skating challenges in perspective. From training at Colorado Springs with Christy Krall to working alongside Nathan Chen and Mariah Bell in California under coach Rafael Arutyunian, Andrew shares how elite training environments shaped him. After dealing with injuries that forced him to watch and learn, he's now ready to apply everything he's absorbed from world-class athletes. His mission: make the Olympic team, compete in the team event, and win medals for Team USA.
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NBC LA feature on Andrew filmed in Irvine, CA, including Coach Raf interview clip - "his weakness is that he had to start work with me so late" ;) - that aired after his Nationals SP (Jan. 9, 2026): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA1WLgctUdc

Japanese broadcast of Andrew's Nationals FS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uBTFSJyu6k

Clips of all the jumps in Andrew's stellar FS in St. Louis:
www.instagram.com

Figure skating - Men's Discipline on Instagram: "Pizza King Excellence in St.Louis 🇺🇲 The skate that made our Torgs an OLYMPIAN!!! 📍 2026 US National Championships 🇺🇲 ☑️ 4T (9.50) +2.71 → 12.21 ☑️ 4T+2T (10.80) −0.27 → 10.53 ☑️ 3Lo (4.90) +1.12 →

1,583 likes, 38 comments - men_of_fs on January 11, 2026: "Pizza King Excellence in St.Louis 🇺🇲 The skate that made our Torgs an OLYMPIAN!!! 📍 2026 US National Championships 🇺🇲 ☑️ 4T (9.50) +2.71 → 12.21 ☑️ 4T+2T (10.80) −0.27 → 10.53 ☑️ 3Lo (4.90) +1.12 → 6.02 ☑️ 3A (8.00) +2.29 → 10.29 ☑️...
www.instagram.com www.instagram.com

Fan cam of the his FS choreo. sequence with the audience cheering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0CHiyLjcQo

Proud mom Ilona (mentions her parents in Ukraine):
www.instagram.com

U.S. Figure Skating on Instagram: "Welcome to the team @andrewtorg 🇺🇸✨ #WinterOlympics"

4,562 likes, 102 comments - usfigureskating on January 11, 2026: "Welcome to the team @andrewtorg 🇺🇸✨ #WinterOlympics".
www.instagram.com www.instagram.com

Andrew posted yesterday: https://www.instagram.com/p/DTmNzV0kT8x/

Edited to add more video links above.
 
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Cross-posting here from the U.S. Men's news thread...

Orange County Register's Scott Reid has written a detailed article on Andrew Torgashev (Jan. 29):
www.ocregister.com

Andrew Torgashev conquers doubts, injuries on the way to Milan

After years of setbacks the Orange County based skater is finally headed to the Olympic Games.
www.ocregister.com www.ocregister.com
Excerpts:
“So I did tell myself, I said that, ‘Well, Olympian is just a label,’” recalled Torgashev, who was in fifth place after the short program, less than four points out of third. “But the Olympics, they’re about the Olympic spirit, right? And I know I have that Olympic spirit because I’ve sacrificed a lot, and I have tenacity. I have grit, work ethic, resilience, and I’m at the top of my sport, whether it’s top two or top five or top 20 in the world, I’m there. So I guess regardless, if I can be called an Olympian, I know that I have achieved what it means to be an Olympic athlete, regardless of the title.”
It is a title that Torgashev, 24, had seemed destined for even before he won the 2015 U.S. junior title at 13, the youngest skater in the field, setting competition records for free skate and overall scores. A title he would chase from Florida to Colorado Springs to his current training base in Orange County, through coaching changes, through a series of major injuries that threatened to end his career in his teens, through two years of talking himself in and then out of quitting skating on almost a daily basis.
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“So I don’t know for me, like winning at 13 the (U.S.) Junior title, just having my own expectations and other people’s expectations. I think give a 13-year-old a little bit of pressure and recognition and who knows what’s going to happen? I don’t know. It’s just like a really weird place to be. I think it definitely, like, inflated my ego a lot. It took many years, I think not until I was like 20 or 21 before I just like humbled myself and got to work really. I think throughout my whole Junior career, it was just mostly expectations and not good work and not good quality to what I was doing. I think it was just all expectations. So I think once I matured, everything changed.”
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Around this time, his parents’ marriage was unraveling. In June 2018, just weeks after his 17th birthday, Torgashev moved to Colorado Springs to train with Christy Krall, a 1964 Olympian.
Torgashev was asked if the move was hard.
“No,” he said. “It was not a great place for me to be in Florida. They were getting divorced, and the training environment in Florida was just not it for me and my development. I think my parents taught me a lot in terms of being a disciplined athlete, but I wouldn’t listen to them when there was, like, lots of conflicts there. And, you know, the family was kind of breaking apart, and I was just looking for a way out of that situation. And Christy Krall had been working with me since I was 9, just coming down, once or twice a year, and that was just the logical option to go to her Olympic training site, environment.”
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At the time of Torgashev’s move [Nov. 2020], Arutyunyan was coaching Nathan Chen, having already guided him to the first two of his three World titles.
The Georgian-born Arutyunyan had also known by Torgashev’s parents for a decade, working as a young assistant in the 1980s for Tatiana Tarasova, the most successful coach in figure skating history, at the same Young Pioneers Stadium sports complex in Moscow where Melnichenko and Artem Torgashev trained.
“He’s the best technician in the world,” Torgashev said. “He is like a professor at graduate school. He knows what he’s doing. He’s got a method, and he’s very confident in what he says. So this is not his first day. He’s been coaching for 50 years. He’s seen a lot, and he knows how to get things from athletes. I don’t completely understand this method sometimes. But he knows how to get things from athletes, whether it’s to get them to react or get them to find a higher gear, to continue to push, or to build some resilience or to figure something out on their own, like he just knows how and when to push you.”
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Torgashev didn’t see skating for others as an added burden. Instead, it gave him a sense of purpose, which only took on a greater importance when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Skating for his grandparents
Torgashev has always been especially close to his maternal grandparents, Vladimir, 85, and Nina Melnichenko, 80, who lived with the family in Florida part-time when he was growing up. The Melnichenko later returned to their native Ukraine and live in Odesa on the Black Sea, the country’s largest and most important port. Torgashev has used his skating to raise awareness and funds for Ukraine.
Odesa has endured 800 air raid alarms a year. Last month as temperatures hovered below 20 degrees (fahrenheit), nearly a million residents were without power.
Torgashev was asked how his grandparents are doing.
“Surviving,” he said. “No electricity, they do their laundry at like, 4 in the morning, when the energy is working or when prices are cheaper.
“They have sirens all the time, no heat, so they’re in winter coats and blankets a lot. My grandparents, they’ve been through so much, so so much, the whole Soviet Union era. They’ve just been through so much, and they have to continue going through it. So just to be able to distract them with success for a moment, just it means the world to me that I’m able to do that for them.”
His success means perhaps even more to his grandparents.
“The biggest positive is our beloved grandson, Andrew,” Vladimir Melnichenko, the former head of the Ukrainian skating federation, wrote in an email to the Southern California News Group. “The war is a tragedy for the people of Ukraine, and Andrew is worried about us, just as we are in the heart of the war zone. But we are holding on and believe in victory. “
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In the weeks leading up to the U.S. Championships, an emotional Torgashev left Arutyunyan exasperated.
“For a month before nationals, he kind of just ignored me,” Torgashev said. “I don’t know why, and if I was like, messing things up and getting frustrated on the ice, he even, wouldn’t help, like, kicked me off the ice once because I was, I mean, I was just like, having a horrible attitude, to be honest. So it was the right call, but he just made me figure it out myself. He made me take accountability for the technique that he had already taught me. Pretty much like to stop playing a victim and take ownership of my training and my technique, trust it what he’s taught me already.
“That was a recent example.
“I was frustrated, the same way, like a tennis player will break a racket. I’m not purposely trying to fall or pop on this jump, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out what I’m doing. And of course, as the Olympic trials get closer, I get more pressure and more overwhelmed. Just get more reactive.”
So he arrived in St. Louis for the U.S. Championships unable to sleep, physically and emotionally exhausted, finally sharing with Frazier in the light of day the fears that tormented him in his darkest moments.
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“How do I deal with that free skate and that whole competition, then I started to get nervous, like, what if? What if it’s not all sunshine and rainbows at the end of this? Because there’s a very real possibility that it doesn’t happen. I mean, so many people have this dream, and so little people actually lived it. So I started to think, what if I’m, what if it just remains a dream for me, and not a reality, right?
“And then it starts to get scary, because then you’re starting to think like, how am I going to live with myself? How am I going to skate another four years and try it again? I know Adam Rippon, he made the Olympics when he was 28, in spectacular fashion also. So he did it. And there’s some people that can do that, but not everybody. I don’t know how much longer I can skate and keep my life on pause. I don’t know.”
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At the end of the program, the weight of the moment, the weight of a life spent bearing Olympic expectations, brought him to his knees. A moment where whether he would spend the rest of his life as Andrew Torgashev, Olympian, didn’t matter.
“I just put my heart out there,” he said.
Later, as Torgashev took a victory lap after the medal ceremony with Malinin and third-place finisher Maxim Naumov, he spotted Melnichenko on the sideboards and stopped. She handed him her cell phone. She was Facetiming her parents.
“We did it,” Torgashev shouted to his grandparents. “We did it!”
And so the journey continues to Milano Cortina, for Torgashev, for his family, for 16 days the Olympic flame distracting them from the smoldering ruins of Odesa.
“Defeat motivates, strengthens, increases efficiency, and leads to the desired result,” Vladimir Melnichenko said. “Andrew went through this path.”
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