Well then, it's a darn good thing Zagitova hasn't bought a ticket to Cooperstown. But I'm willing to guess she will make it to the
World Figure Skating Hall of Fame at some point.
The comparison of shelf life between figure skaters and tennis players is an interesting one. The Tennis Channel, which has a lot of time to kill in the off season, has been replaying a fair number of Coco Gauff matches. Gauff is fifteen, a fact repeated by commentators as often as Nathan Chen goes to Yale is on US TV skating commentary.
Tennis was concerned a while back that its young teen stars (Tracy Austin, Jennifer Capriati, etc.) were winning too young and burning out too fast. So it changed its eligibility rules (a fact much mentioned in Coco Gauff matches), limiting the number of tournaments younger players could compete at.
Figure skating has sort of done that but while it works for tennis to have its women stars older, bigger and stronger, that's not the ideal situation for skating. It's a sport that has for a very long time favored small slender body types. Not all its stars look that way, but the ones who don't are more noticeable and tend not to be as successful.
Fifteen year old Coco Gauff may well grow bigger and stronger, and more likely to win major titles by the time she's sixteen or older (and have a longer career while doing so). Skaters such as Oksana Baiul, Tara Lipinski, Sarah Hughes and Alina Zagivova were and are less likely to benefit from becoming older, bigger and stronger.
