Evgenia Medvedeva is the 2018 Olympic gold medal favorite. Just as exciting, she’s at the heart of a classic figure skating conspiracy.
Evgenia Medvedeva is probably the best female figure skater in the world right now. Particularly if you’re going off scores and titles. (Which are, admittedly, pretty good gauges of talent.) The 18-year-old (!) has competed in the senior level for two seasons, but has already racked up two back-to-back World and European Championships, the first woman to do so since Michelle Kwan in 2001. Until she came in second at the 2018 European Championship, after 15-year-old (!) fellow Russian Alina Zagitova, she had not lost a single competition since November 2015.
Anyways! She is also the focal point of a delightfully passionate truther contingent regarding her lutz — sorry, flutz.
Before we get to the conspiracy at hand, here are a few more things you should know about her.
- She often performs jumps with her arm(s) above her head, which increases the difficulty (and score value) of the jump.
- She was really salty about the IOC ruling banning Russia from competing in the Pyeongchang — saying, “I cannot accept the option that I would compete in the Olympic Games without the Russian flag as a neutral athlete” — but apparently not enough to let her principles get in the way of a gold medal. (Nor should she!)
- She recently returned from a stress fracture she suffered in Nov. 2017 in her right foot, which is her spotting foot for flip and lutz jumps, and her landing foot for everything else.
You should probably see her skate too:
Point is, she’s really, really good and probably going to win the gold medal. Good for her. But that’s not what we’re really here to talk about. We’re here to talk about conspiracy theories. Specifically, the Evgenia Medvedeva flutz theory.
What is a flutz, who may ask.
To answer that, first you need to know what a lutz is.
A lutz is figure skating jump with a backward takeoff from the outside edge of one skate that lands backward on the outside edge of the other. (Double, triple, etc. refers to the number of rotations. Under-rotations are a whole different issue!)
This is a slow-motion lutz.
A flutz is when the skater takes off on the inside edge of the skate, turning the lutz into a flip. This generally occurs when the foot/skate turns inward at the last minute. It should be called by the judges and points deducted.
Here’s a delightful explanation video, that explains both the lutz, the flutz and helpfully uses Evgenia as an example. The skater on the right, Yuna Kim, is the form Evgenia should be replicating.
If you would instead prefer to learn about the Evgenia Medvedeva flutz by way of a Peak Conspiracy Theory video, complete with slowed down voice-over, ridiculously aggressive music and abrasive photoshop, this may be more to your liking:
The truth, then, if you choose to believe it, is that the judges — those conspiratorial ISU, and potentially IOC, folks — are consciously not docking Medvedeva’s scores and by way of her inflated technical prowess, created a (until very recently) undefeated figure skating force on a foundation of lies. What, really, is the alternative? That the judges just don’t see the flutz? That they are not, in fact, flutz? Roll the tape.
Even on an ostensibly neutral video, like the above performance from European’s at the end of January, YouTube commenters draw attention to her flutz. There are plenty more videos on YouTube — of performances, of flutz explanations — for you to peruse and determine your own personal truth. (SHE IS ON THE INSIDE EDGE.) Continue down this path at your own discretion.
Godspeed, whatever you decide.