How Musical Talents Give Elite Figure Skaters a Competitive Edge

A music degree will not help you land a quad. But it could help you look more graceful in the attempt. Standing apart among sports where results are often measured in terms of speed, height, tactics, and agility, figure skating takes into account not only the athlete’s technical skills, but also their artistic presentation and flow with the music. So, while playing piano keys or plucking guitar strings may not seem to have a lot in common with skating strokes, skaters say knowing some scales and chords can help when out on the ice. “I have a good ear for music, and I'm able to count really well,” said Canada’s four-time national champion Madeline Schizas, who was a piano player for 12 years. “I don't play so much anymore, but I think that having that background in music from the time I was a kid helps me bring musicality to my performance.” The figure skating world is filled with athletes who played instruments growing up or, like France’s Adam Siao Him Fa, picked up the skill later as a hobby. Some top-level skaters even performed on the musical stage, be that as piano soloists in orchestra concertos or underground rock’n’roll bars in Eastern Europe. Olympics.com spoke to a handful of skater-musicians to discover the overlap between those two worlds and why being able to play the “Moonlight Sonata” or “All Along the Watchtower” could give them an edge in a figure skating competition. From Michelangelo to Måneskin: A figure skating journey through Italian history and art Backstreet’s back, on ice: Figure skaters turn back the clock to the 1990s Mornings at the ice rink, afternoons on the piano bench Switzerland’s Kimmy Repond started playing the piano around the same time as she started skating. While she loved both activities, she had to choose between them when she turned 12, as juggling the two became too hectic. Figure skating took centre stage in her life from that moment, but six years after stopping her music lessons, Repond sat at the piano again and started playing for pure enjoyment. “I try to play a little bit for myself, and I really love the music,” Repond said. “It's very similar to skating as well. You can really feel the music, and I think it's something very beautiful and I would like to start it again.” In addition to being an enjoyable hobby, playing the piano gives Repond an advantage out on the ice. The skater likes to be involved in selecting her program music and with piles of piano books sitting on her bookshelves at home, she can easily find a piece for any mood. “It does help me in skating,” she said. “When I was younger, I always connected my skating with the piano, when I did both at the same time, and sometimes I also chose my program music to what I did on the piano and that always really helped me.” Olympic champion Nathan Chen is another skater with professional music training. He took classes in piano and violin and won local piano competitions in his age group as a child. The USA skater also took up guitar as a hobby and has credited playing musical instruments with helping him to relax in between high-pressure competitions – similarly to France's Siao Him Fa, who sometimes even brings his guitar on the road. Austria’s Olga Mikutina does not have professional piano training like Repond or Chen but learned a handful of tunes, including Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Für Elise” and the theme song from Romeo and Juliet, from YouTube tutorials. For her, piano playing is less about developing musicality – something the Beijing 2022 Olympian said comes naturally – but rather for pure enjoyment and a way to flex her memory muscles. “I feel that I actually have this feeling of the beat since I was very little,” Mikutina said. “Piano helps only for the memory, so I get used to memorising things.” Hands vs feet: Does a good musician a good skater make? An innate understanding of rhythm like Mikutina’s is a useful talent for figure skaters to have. It is also rare but, fortunately for those not born with Mozart-like gifts, it can be learned. USA’s Bradie Tennell got a crash course on rhythm when her coach and choreographer Benoît Richaud picked Kirill Richter’s “Mechanisms” and “Chronos” for her short program in the 2019-20 season. Richaud, who himself is a self-taught musician, instantly connected to the piano virtuoso’s minimalistic and simultaneously grandiose composition and created a choreography to match. But for Tennell, who does not have a music background, the learning process quickly turned into a gruelling “labour of love”. “That piece, every single movement was choreographed to a piano beat,” Tennell said. “It was so difficult. I can't even tell you how many times he would stop the music and be like, ‘Are you listening? Can you hear it?’ And I'd be like, ‘No, I don't! I'm sorry’." That short program ultimately became one of Tennell’s all-time favourites. She never got to compete it at the 2020 World Figure Skating Championships, which were cancelled due to the Covid pandemic, but sometimes still brings it back for shows. “I just love the program, and it's so fun for me now,” she said. “I think that was kind of the turning point when I started to really hear each instrument and be a little bit more attentive. I definitely didn't always have that.” Swedish ice dancer Nikolaj Majorov picked up some of those music smarts by learning how to play the drums. But before you start to think that John Bonham or Ringo Starr could have had glittering Olympic careers had they chosen to pursue figure skating instead of rock’n’roll fame, Majorov is quick to dampen that fantasy. Drumming skills, while they do focus on the beat – an essential component in figure skating – are not superior to other instruments when it comes to learning the sport, he said. “It did help, but at the same time, playing on the drums is one thing, skating to the beat is completely different,” Majorov explained. “It's movement with your legs, skating to the beat and with your body to the song, and in drums everything is just one beat. Basically, your legs are working one way, your arms another, that's it. But in skating, I have to do much more.” A broader music palette Music choice is important across all figure skating disciplines, but perhaps more so in ice dance, where there are numerous rules for what kind of music athletes can use, and judges check that every step is timed to the beat. Thanks to his music background, Zachary Lagha is able to sift through the rules better than most. The Canadian ice dancer has played the piano at concerts and competitions since he was five years old, including on the stage of Carnegie Hall in New York City, USA. "The melody needs to be beautiful, but at the same time, there needs to be some sort of rhythm that you can perform on, so the judges can be like, ‘Oh, this was made on this accent’, so we can get points for this,” Lagha explained. “We need rhythm, too. It's in the rules. You cannot skate on music without rhythm in the background.” Lagha’s extensive knowledge of music also means he has a broad spectrum of pieces to choose from each season. For Danijil Szemko, that music choice often comes down to what songs he is playing with his band in Hungary. The Hungarian ice dancer plays the guitar and harmonica in an underground band that performs in bars, clubs and cafes. Their repertoire is full of classic rock covers, so when the rhythm dance theme for the 2024-25 season was announced as “social dances and styles of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s”, the choice was easy. “We perform Elvis (Presley) every other song,” Szemko said. “From Elvis to the 70s, 60s, rock’n’roll – all of this is so me. I really love this music. I dive into it headfirst. “I really love music in general. For me, figure skating is not so much about the dance, but about the music. I’m not that interested in the dance and technical aspects, but music really motivates me.” His love for music aside, the skater is humble about his own musical abilities on stage. “To be honest, I don’t do much,” Szemko confessed with a laugh. “I’m a lousy musician. Everyone is playing, and I'm just jumping up and down. I’m happy, I’m firing up the crowd. I blow into the harmonica once in a while, I strum some guitar strings. You could simply turn me off, like the bass guitarist of the Sex Pistols, Sid Vicious. They would turn off his bass guitar during concerts, and he was just joyfully jumping up and down, not playing anything. That’s me, more or less.”