Ethel McKelt

Nowadays, the success of any figure skater who turns 20 is perceived as a sensation.

This does not apply to pair skating and ice dancing - there the age limit can move at least a decade and a half forward, as evidenced by the victory of 34-year-old Alena Savchenko at the Olympics in Pyeongchang.

But in single skating the picture is completely different, and in fact this discipline is open only for young skaters.

However, this was not always the case.

When figure skating was just in its infancy, it was mostly mature athletes who participated in women's competitions.

It was before World War II that almost all age records in single skating were set, which seems unrealistic to break these days.

One of them belongs to the British Ethel McKelt - at the age of 38 she became the medalist of the Olympic Games.

McKelt came from a wealthy family in the dye industry.

She trained in Manchester, where there was one of the rare ice rinks for that time.

She initially skated in pairs and, along with Sidney Wallwork, became the silver medalist in the British championship in 1914.

Six years later, they competed at the Olympic Games in Antwerp and finished fifth.

At the same time, McKelt performed as a loner.

At the World Championships in 1923, she finished fourth and then competed at the first separate Winter Olympics in Chamonix.

There, the 38-year-old athlete, due to the best performance of the obligatory figures, became the third.

Even then, most of McKelt's rivals were young girls, including 11-year-old Norwegian Sonia Heni, the future undisputed singles skating star of the late 1920s and 1930s.

McKelt owns a number of other achievements.

Two years later, she competed at the national championship, when it was the last time that men competed with women.

The 40-year-old athlete took second place, losing only to her pair skating partner John Page, with whom she won silver at the World Championship.

In 1928, the British competed for the last time at the Olympics and showed the seventh result.

42-year-old McKelt became the second oldest competitor in the competition, regardless of discipline, and still is.

The record belongs to the Finnish woman Ludovica Jakobsson, who also fought for medals in pair skating at the age of 43 in St. Moritz.

  • Ethel McKelt

  • © Wikimedia Commons

Madge Sayers

The oldest Olympic champion is Florence Madeline Cave. She was born in London into a large family, where, in addition to her, there were 14 other children. She early became interested in fashionable figure skating and once met the pioneer of this sport and her future husband Edgar Sayers, who was 19 years her senior. He began to train his wife and perform in pairs with her, but she achieved the greatest success as a loner.

In 1902, Sayers made a revolution - she competed with the men at the World Championships and took second place, behind only the great Ulrich Salchow. There is a legend that the Swede was so impressed by her performance that he gave her his gold. However, the success of Sayers also had a negative effect - for some time women were completely forbidden to compete. In 1906, they got their clearance back, and then Sayers easily won the World Cup two times in a row.

If figure skating had been included in the program of the Olympic Games from the very beginning, then by that time the British woman could have won gold, or even more than one.

But she had to wait for the competition in London, which took place in 1908.

Sayers, at the age of 27, won easily with top marks from all judges.

In addition, she became the bronze medalist in doubles competitions with her husband, who, by the way, remains the oldest medalist to this day - he won the medal at 45 years old.

  • Madge Sayers

  • Gettyimages.ru

  • © ullstein bild Dtl.

Irina Slutskaya

Only eight athletes managed to climb the Olympic pedestal in single skating when they were more than 25 years old - in addition to McKelt and Sayers, at the beginning of the 20th century, Swede Magda Yudin (1920), American Teresa Weld-Blanchard (1920) and Beatrix Lawgrain (1928) achieved this. and also the British Dorothy Greenhoog-Smith (1908). And only two skaters have performed in the modern era. In 2006, the medal went to the Russian woman Irina Slutskaya. At the time of the Turin Olympics, she was 27 years old, and she was only a month younger than Sayers, who performed 98 years earlier.

Slutskaya was considered one of the main contenders for gold.

She came to Turin as the current world and European champion, and at the same time had the Olympic silver in Salt Lake City in her collection.

After the short program, the Russian woman was only three hundredths behind the American Sasha Cohen.

But in an arbitrary box office, Slutskaya fell on a triple rittberger.

In addition, it did not have the same complex content as Coen and the Japanese woman Shizuki Arakawa.

As a result, the Russian woman took third place.

Carolina Costner

Eight years later, the triumph of another athlete, who could already be classified as a veteran, took place.

She was the Italian Carolina Costner.

Shortly before the Games in Sochi, she turned 27 years old, and during the performance of the free program she was only two days younger than Slutskaya when she climbed the Olympic podium for the second time.

Costner had won medals at the last three world championships by then and was considered one of the favorites for her impeccable skating.

After the Japanese Mao Asada fell from the triple axel in the short program, the Italian's chances for an award were greatly improved.

In the free program, she again performed cleanly, having received seven “tens” for the components.

At her third (and not last) Olympics, Costner still won bronze.

Ahead were the Russian Adelina Sotnikova and the Korean Yuna Kim, who either in technique or in skating were slightly better than their older rival.

Maria Butyrskaya

Over the past three decades, only one figure skater has managed to win the world championship after celebrating a quarter-century anniversary.

It was Maria Butyrskaya.

She began performing back in the days of the USSR and even became the bronze medalist of the last national championship.

Before her 25th birthday, Butyrskaya won not so many titles.

Although she won the Russian championship four times, she won only one bronze in the European championships, and brought one gold from the Grand Prix stages.

But then a real breakthrough came in her career.

In 1998, Butyrskaya won the European Championship, finished fourth at the Olympic Games in Nagano and became third at the World Championship.

In the next season, Butyrskaya achieved a historic achievement - she was the first Russian woman to celebrate her victory in the world championship.

At that time she was already three months less than 27. But the skater did not even think to stop there.

A year later, she again climbed the podium, this time to the bronze step.

Butyrskaya continued to skate until the Olympic Games in Salt Lake City.

The chances of her winning a medal at age 29 were not low.

Before that, she won the European Championship, bypassing Slutskaya, and became the oldest owner of gold.

But in the United States, Butyrskaya took sixth place, and then withdrew from the World Cup, after which her long and successful career came to an end.

Akiko Suzuki

In the modern era, in addition to Butyrskaya, Slutskaya and Kostner, only one more athlete managed to become a world championship medalist at a solid age for figure skating.

Japanese Akiko Suzuki is a real example of how long you can go to your goal and not pay attention to the years.

Unlike previous heroines, she had nothing to brag about in her youth.

In addition to victories in junior and minor tournaments, Suzuki did not shine.

But in 2009, the Japanese woman blossomed and got to the Grand Prix finals, where she immediately became the third.

She soon finished second in the Four Continents Championship and even represented her country at the Vancouver Olympics.

Suzuki never established herself among the leading figure skaters in the world, but two years later she was selected for the championship of the planet and still wrote her name in history.

The 27-year-old Japanese woman unexpectedly became the third after Costner and the Russian woman Alena Leonova.

Such success has not happened with age single women since the time of Butyrskaya.