Jackie Wong

There will be backflips at this event.

Backflips are legal again.

That is correct.

The backflip was made illegal in 1976.

And it just became legal again over the past couple of seasons.

And so we're going to see some backflips.

Not everybody's going to be doing them.

And I always get the question like,

are backflips really that hard?

Like, is it like harder than everything else?

It's actually not.

A backflip on ice, many will tell you, many who have done backflips will tell you that a backflip on ice is easier than a triple jump, but you have to actually know how to do a backflip first before you can do the backflip, right?

Like that's the difference.

But because the mechanics of a backflip is literally you go,

like in one direction and flip one way, it is actually a lot less mechanically conducive to errors than going up and jumping and rotating three times in the air or four times in the air or four and a half times in the air as the quad axle would have it.

So it's interesting, right?

It is dangerous, but mechanically it is a simpler element than most of the stuff that you're going to see out there.

So one of the things I'm most excited about at the Olympics is going to be the women's event because the women's event is just jam-packed with athletes.

incredible skaters the u.s and japan are both bringing three skaters each who all have the potential to be on the podium so you add those up you already have six people who are medal contenders right alyssa lu who's the world champion right now amber glenn who is the u.s champion isabel levito who's been a world silver medalist those are the three that the u.s is bringing

And then Japan is bringing a three-time world champion, Kari Sakamoto.