The figure skating pairs competition at the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics delivered a medal ceremony that captured the complex intersection of athletic excellence and geopolitical reality. As six skaters stood on the podium at the Milan Ice Skating Arena, their matching costumes glittering under the lights, the scene told a story far more intricate than the simple raising of three national flags.
Japan's Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara ascended to the top step, gold medals around their necks, having achieved a world-record-breaking free skate score that placed them a full ten points ahead of their rivals. Their victory represented a breakthrough moment for Japanese figure skating, proving that nations beyond the traditional powers could reach the pinnacle of pairs competition. Yet the athletes who joined them on the podium revealed a different kind of story—one of migration, adaptation, and the enduring influence of a nation officially absent from the Games.
To the Japanese pair's right stood the silver medalists, Anastasiia Metelkin and Luka Berulava, representing Georgia. Their presence marked Georgia's first-ever Olympic Winter Games medal, a historic achievement for the small Caucasus nation. Both athletes were born in Russia and continue to train in Perm, Russia, under Russian coaches. Their teal costumes, bedazzled and meticulously crafted, matched their beaming smiles as they bowed to the crowd, having secured their place in Olympic history not for their birth nation, but for their adopted one.
The bronze medal added another layer to this narrative. Germany's Minerva Fabienne Hase, born in Berlin, stood alongside her partner Nikita Volodin, a newly minted German citizen originally from Russia. Their partnership exemplified the increasingly common practice of blending talents across borders to create competitive duos capable of challenging for Olympic hardware.
The backdrop to this diverse podium is Russia's ongoing exclusion from Olympic competition. Since the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games, the nation has been banned from competing under its flag following the doping scandal that marred the 2014 Sochi Olympics and intensified by the continued war in Ukraine. This sanction has created a unique diaspora of athletic talent, particularly in figure skating, where Russia has dominated for decades, winning gold in 13 of the past 16 Winter Games.
Rather than competing as Individual Neutral Athletes (AIN)—the designation used in Paris 2024 for athletes without national affiliation—Russian-born figure skaters have increasingly chosen to represent other countries outright. The Milan Cortina Games feature no AIN pairs teams, yet 11 Russian-born skaters compete across eight nations: Armenia, Australia, France, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, and Poland.
This strategic shift allows athletes to maintain Olympic eligibility while honoring their competitive ambitions. For receiving nations, it offers a fast track to building competitive programs in a technically demanding sport. For the athletes, it represents a complex negotiation of identity, loyalty, and career preservation.
Anastasiia Metelkin's comments earlier in the week revealed this delicate balance. "I was accepted very well by the Georgians, and I want to do my very best to represent this flag and country," she stated, acknowledging both the warmth of her welcome and the weight of her new responsibility. Her words hint at the personal calculations behind such moves—the desire to compete at the highest level, the search for opportunity when doors close at home, and the genuine embrace of a new national identity.
The influence of Russian skating extends beyond those who carry its passports. Russian coaches populate the rink edges, their expertise sought after by teams from numerous countries. These coaches transmit technical knowledge, artistic sensibilities, and training methodologies refined over generations of Russian dominance. Their presence ensures that the Russian school of figure skating continues shaping the sport's future, even without official Russian participation.
The American delegation further illustrates this cultural diffusion. All three U.S. men in individual events—Ilia Malinin, Andrew Torgashev, and Maxim Naumov—descend from Russian skating lineage. Whether born in Russia or raised by parents who represented the country professionally, they embody a second generation carrying forward a tradition that transcends national boundaries.
Meanwhile, Adeliia Petrosian competes as the sole female individual AIN skater, representing Russia's best chance for a neutral athlete medal. Her participation highlights an alternative path, one that maintains official distance from any national affiliation while still allowing individual achievement.
This phenomenon prompts fundamental questions about the meaning of national representation in contemporary sports. When an athlete trains in Russia, with Russian coaches, using Russian techniques, but competes under the Georgian flag, what does that flag truly represent? The Olympic movement was built on the ideal of pure national competition, yet globalization has long complicated this vision. The Milan Cortina pairs podium simply makes these complexities visible.
For Georgia, the silver medal transcends sport. It announces the nation's arrival as a Winter Olympic contender, capable of attracting and nurturing world-class talent. For the athletes, it validates difficult personal choices and demonstrates that excellence can flourish in new soil. And for the Olympic movement, it presents both a challenge and an opportunity—a chance to reflect on how the Games can remain relevant when the simple narrative of nation versus nation no longer matches reality.
The technical excellence displayed by all medalists was undeniable. Miura and Kihara's gold-medal performance set a new standard for the sport, their precision and artistry earning them a decisive victory. Metelkin and Berulava's silver demonstrated the continued strength of Russian training methods, even when applied in service of another nation. Hase and Volodin's bronze showed how strategic partnerships across borders can yield podium results.
As the Winter Games continue, this pattern will likely persist and perhaps intensify. Nations seeking to elevate their skating programs will continue recruiting Russian-born talent, and athletes seeking Olympic opportunities will continue exploring new national allegiances. The result is a more competitive, more diverse field, but also one where the stories behind the performances involve layers of geopolitical circumstance, personal ambition, and athletic excellence.
The Milan Cortina podium, with its blend of pure national triumph and transnational talent, perfectly captures the modern Olympic paradox. An event designed to celebrate nations increasingly showcases individuals whose journeys defy simple categorization. The flags tell one story; the athletes' biographies tell another. In the end, the audience witnesses world-class performances that transcend politics, even as those politics shape who gets to stand on the podium and under which flag they compete.
This evolving landscape suggests that future Olympics may need to adapt their frameworks to acknowledge the complex identities of modern athletes. Whether through modified eligibility rules, enhanced transparency about athletes' backgrounds, or simply embracing the richness of these stories, the movement must evolve. For now, the image of Russian-born athletes helping Georgia win its first Winter medal while Japan claims gold creates a moment that is uniquely Olympic—simultaneously about nations and about individuals, about politics and about pure sport.