As longtime fans of women’s figure skating know, the sport has evolved quite a bit over the years. While it’s no longer uncommon to see a female skater land a quadruple jump in competition, back in the early ’90s, even the triple Axel was a rarely attempted feat. In fact, it wasn’t until 1992 that Japan’s Midori Ito became the first woman to land a triple Axel during the Olympics.
The diminutive skater’s career was packed with firsts, actually: In 1989, Ito became the first figure skater outside of Europe and North America to become World Champion, according to the official Olympics website; she became the first woman to land a triple Axel in competition at the NHK Trophy the year before. When she won the silver medal in 1992 for her history-making performance, it was the first figure skating medal won by an Asian nation in Olympics history.
There’s no question that Ito paved the way for the powerful jumpers to come after her, such as Kamila Valieva and Alysa Liu. It’s a path the skater seemed destined to take from her early childhood.
Born in Nagoya, her skills were impressive enough at the age of 4 to attract the attention of coach Machiko Yamada. Just two years later, she moved in with Yamada’s family after her parents split up. “At that time, she accepted me as one of her children,” Ito told the Los Angeles Times in 1990, adding, “So I didn’t feel that I was a hardship for her.”
With Yamada’s help, Ito developed her singular talent for jumping, landing her first triple jump at just 8 years old. By the time she was 11, she landed three triple jumps at the World Junior Championships.
“As a child, I felt I could master some of the jumps quicker than the other children,” she recalled. “Jumps that would take them three hours to learn took me an hour and a half.”
While jumping clearly came naturally to Ito, she sometimes struggled with the more artistic aspect of skating and eventually added ballet lessons to her training regime. Once described as “a smile with wings attached,” Ito never lacked for enthusiasm (and was even known to pump her fist after landing especially challenging jumps).
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For everybody watching, it was hard not to get caught up in the sheer exhilaration of Ito’s performances. “It will be 50 years before we see anything like Midori Ito again,” predicted Olympic gold medalist and commentator Scott Hamilton in 1990. As Ellen Kestnbaum wrote in the book Culture on Ice: Figure Skating and Cultural Meaning, Ito heralded the start of “a new era in women’s skating” when a variety of triple jumps would become a routine part of competitions.
In 1998, Ito’s legacy as Japan’s first major star of the Winter Olympics was honored when she was chosen to light the Olympic Flame in the opening ceremony of the Nagano Games while dressed as the Japanese sun goddess Amaterasu.
Now, over 30 years since she took home the silver, Ito remains impressively active in the skating world. In 2024, at the age of 54, Ito won her 20th international medal at the ISU International Adult Championship Masters Elite Women III in Oberstdorf, Germany.
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