Winter Olympics 2026: Georgia’s Anastasiia Metelkina/Luka Berulava aim to turn figure skating world upside down like Mikhail Shaidorov
Georgia’s pair Anastasiia Metelkina and Luka Berulava were skating “with tears in their eyes” in the team event at the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026 due to injury. Exactly one week later, on Sunday (15 February) they were back with force and feeling even stronger than before.
While their short program score of 75.46 was two points lower than what they scored in the team event, Metelkina and Berulava have managed to put themselves into strong medal contention heading into Monday’s free skate.
They currently sit second, 4.55 points behind Germany’s Minerva Fabienne Hase and Nikita Volodin, and 0.86 points ahead of Canada’s Lia Pereira and Trennt Michaud.
Their miracle prescription?
Rest, massage, and an extra dose of motivation from best friend and new Olympic men’s singles champion Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan – the biggest figure skating sensation of Milano Cortina 2026 so far.
“I saw then that the impossible is possible,” Berulava told Olympics.com. “I do not forget that moment even for a second and, of course, I want to repeat the same result.”
Shaidorov created a stir in the stands of the Milano Ice Skating Arena when he skated his free program on Friday (13 February). Two days later, Metelkina/Berulava were determined to do the same.
The spectators gasped audibly when the Georgian skaters got into the opening pose of their matador-inspired short program: Metelkina in a headstand, Berulava holding up her legs, her skate blades within inches of his jaw line.
“It’s really nice that this pose surprises people at every competition,” Metelkina told Olympics.com. “It’s not just at one competition that this pose made an impression and people were surprised. There are (social media) posts about our pose, people comment on it. It’s very nice. It makes us want to do more creative things like this.”
“It really fires me up,” Berulava agreed. “I really like it.”
The 2026 European champions channelled the energetic audience response to their headstand into their skate, landing a triple Salchow and following that up with a triple twist lift. Metelkina touched the ice with her hand on the throw triple flip, but that was the only costly mistake in an otherwise clean skate.
Metelkina and Berulava scored top levels on their spin, step sequence, and two lifts, upgrading from the Level 3 they got on their reverse lasso lift in the team event.
“Overall, I think the skate was much better today than in the team event,” Metelkina said. “We made one mistake on the throw, but this is quite a stable element for us otherwise, so I think everything will be good in the free and there shouldn’t be any problems.”
