Top 10 for Stephen Gogolev in men’s figure skating short program

Stephen Gogolev is making the most of competing at the biggest event of his life. 

After two excellent performances for Team Canada during the figure skating team event, he came right back to place 10th in the men’s short program on Tuesday at the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games.

The 21-year-old opened with a stellar quad toe triple toe combo, and followed it up with a clean quad salchow. His only slight mistake came when he put a foot down on the landing of his triple axel. His performance earned him a score of 87.41 points. 

He was able to do that despite being distracted by one of his skate laces coming loose and flapping around his boot midway through his program. 

“My first thought was ‘that isn’t very good right now’,” Gogolev told the CBC afterwards. “Towards the end, once I got to the last spin, I knew I was fine. […] I became aware of it in the middle of my step sequence as I saw a glimpse when I was doing a loop in one of my clusters, but I knew it wasn’t the lace coming undone, the laces just came out of my pants. I was just hoping I wouldn’t catch it with the other foot.” 

Gogolev skated in an early flight for the short program, the start order for which is based around world rankings. Hindered by back injuries throughout the last couple of seasons, Gogolev’s opportunities to compete and earn ranking points, especially at ISU Championships, had been limited. But his score held up for a long time and ensured he will be in the second last flight for the free skate. 

He said afterwards that competing in the team event brought both positives and challenges. 

“Experience wise, I was able to know what to expect out of the performance and out of the audience,” said Gogolev. “From a physical perspective, I think it was a little bit tougher. […] This is my third time competing in four days, so it is a little bit physically challenging because of the high that you get during the performance and then you have to get down and then come back up again for the short program.” 

That said, he wouldn’t have changed anything about his Olympic experience thus far. 

“I really enjoyed the team event and I was very happy to compete with my team,” said Gogolev. “I would definitely do it again if I could.”