One of the youngest Olympians competing in the 2022 Winter Games stole the show at the figure skating team event on Saturday night.
During the women’s short program, 15-year-old Kamila Valieva of the Russian Olympic Committee became just the fourth woman to ever land a triple axel at the Winter Olympics.
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American Mirai Nagasu was the most recent woman to complete the jump at an Olympics, doing so at the 2018 PyeongChang Games.
Valieva earned a score of 90.18, just barely shy of the 90.45 short program world record she owns, and crushed the rest of the competition. The second-place finisher, Japan’s Wakaba Higuchi, trailed Valieva by more than 15 points.
All of that at age 15.
Olympic Sports
By winning the short program, Valieva provided the ROC with 10 points to overtake the United States for first in the team event. The ROC holds a three-point lead over Team USA entering the final day of the event.