If someone tries to negate it in any way, tries to tear it down, tries to question you about it, male figure skaters will defend it.”īoitano, who has devoted much of his career to mentoring and giving advice to younger skaters, has spent time with both Malinin and Chen. “Just try to fling yourself at 15 miles an hour into the air to do a four-revolution jump while lifting three feet off the ice, traveling 10 feet and landing on a 1/8 inch blade with two edges - and do that on seven jumping passes. “Most men in our sport are defensive about how hard it is, because it is so hard athletically,” he said. Figure Skating supports the LGBTQ+ community and does not condone any type of discrimination.”īoitano said that because figure skating is a sport measured both athletically and artistically, with abundant attention paid to the music skaters perform to and the outfits they wear, there’s a natural inclination for male skaters, gay or straight, to defend the athletic side of their sport. Figure Skating has advised him to attend sensitivity training to better understand the LGBTQ+ community in figure skating and the larger society. Figure Skating said, “While Ilia has apologized for his actions, U.S. And, I would hope no competitor would be penalized for such private matters regardless of orientation.” I have no evidence or reason to believe that I have been impacted in my scoring due to my heterosexual orientation. While I posted an immediate apology to the viewers for my immaturity, I also now want to additionally apologize to our governing body, the judges and my fellow competitors for even inserting such ill-advised commentary in our competitions. “Earlier today, during an Instagram Live question/answer viewed by fans and followers, I made some inaccurate and frankly embarrassing commentary linking sexual orientation and scoring by judges in our sport. This was the opening paragraph of the letter, dated the same day, April 22:

Tory brennan