Let Mexican figure skater Donovan Carrillo be great!!

The ISU needs to do more to support skaters from small federations

Mexican figure skater Donovan Carrillo was among the competitors at this week’s Challenge Cup figure skating competition in The Hague, Netherlands. Carrillo was at the competition to try to reach the minimum technical score required to compete at the World Figure Skating Championships in March. He didn’t get it, and that’s our fault. The figure skating community needs to do more to support skaters from small federations like Mexico.

Carrillo is far from the first (or last) athlete to be held back by a lack of structural support. But he’s likely the most glaring example of the problem right now. In Carrillo, we have a young skater (he’s 20) with star power, talent and with potential. He’s already a fan-favorite. He could be great.

But he probably won’t be.

The cards are stacked against him, making his path to success exponentially more difficult— yes, even with weaker domestic competition—than for skaters from powerhouse skating nations like the U.S., Russia, Japan and Canada.

Figure skating is an expensive sport that generates incredibly limited income for the vast majority of competitors. Coaches, choreographers, ice time, costumes, off-ice training (like ballet and strength training), equipment, medical expenses, and travel and lodging for competitions, all add up. According to a Money report in 2018, skating at a high level can cost between $35,000 and $50,000 annually. Honestly, that feels conservative. Rates for elite coaches can easily reach above $100/hour, and choreography for one program costs several thousand dollars, as do costumes. Throw in a couple thousand for skates and blades (that will need to be replaced regularly), and you’re scratching the surface of what it takes to be great.

Meanwhile, for all but the top skaters, income is never guaranteed. Skaters may win prize money for scoring in the top five at major international competitions. For the 2019–2020 season, winners of Grand Prix competitions received $18,000, silver medalists received $13,000 and bronze medalists $9,000. American winners of Olympic gold medals in 2018, received $37,000 in prize money.

Athletes also make money by skating in shows in the offseason. But again, only the top skaters are invited onto the most lucrative tours, and they can take time away from training.

Many skaters rely on crowdfunding campaigns to finance their seasons. Carrillo has a campaign that you can donate to here. He has currently raised just over $2,300 toward his goal of making it to the 2022 Olympics.

Some skaters receive financial support from their domestic federations. In this season, U.S. Figure Skating stated on their website that they planned to award $750,000 in scholarships and funding to skaters. This type of funding generally is not available to skaters from small federations. The Mexican Figure Skating Federation doesn’t even have a website.

Corporate sponsors also help skaters finance their careers. Again, this funding source is primarily available for top skaters. Top mens skaters Nathan Chen and Yuzuru Hanyu each have a handful of big-name brand sponsors. Chen is sponsored by Nike, for example. Boot and blade companies typically do a decent job of sponsoring the athletes that wear their equipment. Carrillo lists Edea (skates) and MK (blades) as sponsors on his website. He also has sponsorships from several other small brands.

The lack of financial support means skaters from small federations are required to cut corners in their training and preparation. Malaysian skater Julien Yee famously trained at a rink in a shopping mall growing up. To reach those Worlds technical minimums, it would likely help Carrillo to train with a coach with expertise and success in jumping technique. But it doesn’t seem he has the money to hire one (in addition to paying the fee, he would have to literally move to train with that coach). It’s incredibly difficult for skaters without elite resources to be successful against well-funded competition.

When given more support, skaters from smaller federations can become top competitors. Recently-retired Spanish skater Javier Fernandez, “a rebellious kid from a working-class background,” became an Olympic bronze-medalist, two-time World Champion and seven-time European Champion. Fernandez brought fresh styles and perspective that made skating more fun to watch. He did that with essentially no support from his domestic federation. At the time, Spain had fewer than 20 rinks in the country and essentially no investment in high-level figure skating.

In 2016, El País reported that Spanish journalist Pedro Lamelas said of Fernandez, “The word miracle doesn’t even begin to describe it. It’s as though Messi had been born in Indonesia!”

Early in his international career, Fernandez showed promise but contemplated retiring after failing twice to score high enough in the short program at Worlds to compete in the free skate. Fernandez’ family scraped together enough money to send him to train with a coach in the U.S. who offered to train him for free. He later moved on to train with one of the best coaches in the world in Canada. These moves changed the trajectory of his career.

In retirement, Fernandez is working to expand the popularity and accessibility of skating in Spain.

The future is never clear cut, but it does seem like Carrillo has the potential to be a great competitor. But he’ll need help to get there. And it’s like: Right now, at this very moment in time, the skating world has the opportunity to make a choice that could completely reinvigorate the sport. The could chose to support skaters like Carrillo. But that support is going to have to come from the International Skating Union (ISU), because the Mexican federation doesn’t have the resources to do it. And the ISU get most of its support from big, power-house federations. So, really, those nations will have to come together and say, this is something that is good for the sport; it will raise the level of competition across the world. Even if maybe it means they’re investing in their own competition.

The choice to give skaters from small, underrepresented federations the ability to be great, or to confine them to mediocrity is in their hands. It feels unlikely that they’ll make the right choice.