US Skater Nails Triple Axel At The Olympics & We Totally Know What That Is Now

mirai nagasu triple axel olympics

Mirai Nagasu, a 24-year-old Californian ice skater, has just become the first American woman to successfully execute a triple axel jump at the Olympics. She’s only the third woman in the world to land the diabolically tricky jump at an Olympic level, after Japan‘s Midori Ito and Mao Asada.

Of course, the entire world now knows exactly what a triple axel is – and how astonishingly difficult it is to pull off – thanks to a little flick you may have heard of called I, Tonya.

The jump is so hard that only one other American woman has ever been able to do it at an international event: Tonya Harding. Here’s Margot Robbie explaining that the move is so difficult, they couldn’t even get her skating doubles to do it – the producers had to CGI it.

 

Nagasu’s beautiful jump, and faultless routine, earned her a score of 137.53: a personal best.

Unsurprisingly, her successful execution of the triple axel combined with the fact that we all totally actually know what the hell that is has sent the world into a frenzy, with people including Olympic figure skating champion Kristi Yamaguchi rushing to Twitter to send their congratulations.

https://twitter.com/ira/status/962877039375077377

https://twitter.com/notgneissatall/status/962874958022979584

I’m NOT crying at the figure skating again! I’m not!!!

If you’re keen to see exactly how hard (and how wild) Nagasu worked to get to a triple axel-executing Olympic genius, check out this little vid from The Players’ Tribune:

Congratulations, Mirai. What a fucken legend.

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