The ISU World Figure Skating Championships in Boston this week are one of the first major international sporting events since Trump has upended U.S. foreign policy.
World leaders react to President Trump’s automobile tariffs
Canadian, South Korean, German and Japanese world leaders quickly reacted to President Trump’s tariffs on cars.
- Skaters from around the world are in Boston for figure skating’s top competition.
- The sport has long held competitions amid a backdrop of major international affairs.
BOSTON — In the three years since Russia’s invasion, Ukrainian figure skater Kyrylo Marsak has used the spotlight of international competition to highlight his country’s plight – and taken heart when he sees spectators with Ukrainian flags.
Now, he and other international skaters are competing at the ISU World Figure Skating Championships here in Boston against a tense political backdrop and shifting international perceptions about the United States.
In the weeks since returning to office, President Donald Trump has threatened allies such as Canada and Mexico with a trade war, criticized fellow NATO members and rolled back former President Joe Biden’s staunch support for Ukraine.
On Thursday, Trump announced 25% tariffs on imported automobiles, and earlier this week, news broke of a Signal group chat where Vice President JD Vance said he would “hate bailing Europe out again.”
That has left skaters from countries such as Canada, Mexico and Ukraine to navigate both the ice and rising geopolitical tensions during one of the first major international sporting events held in the U.S. since Trump’s election. The United States is also set to co-host the World Cup in men’s soccer in 2026 and the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028 − all during Trump’s second term.
Marsak, 20, said that while “politics are a bit changed after Trump became president,” his worries about the war with Russia fall away when he takes to the ice.
“Skating, the rink, is where I feel alive. It’s what makes me feel safe,” he said. “It’s also the reason why my mental health is holding up, because of the skating.”
Marsak reflected the hope of many skaters in Boston this week, who said they hoped the figure skating championships would foster unity.
“I think sports really is one of the few things in the world that really brings people together from all different nationalities and all parts of the world,” said Deanna Stellato-Dudek, a Canadian pairs skater who was born in the U.S. and skated for the U.S. before becoming a Canadian citizen last year. “I really hope that this world championships does that for everybody as well.”
U.S. skaters in Canada sense change
The site of this week’s figure skating championships, Boston’s TD Garden, is the same arena in which American fans last month booed the Canadian national anthem during a U.S.-Canada hockey game. Hockey fans in Montreal had previously booed the U.S. anthem at an earlier matchup.
But it was a much different scene during this week’s figure skating competition, where crowds cheered politely for competitors while unfurling flags from a variety of nations, including Ukraine and Canada.
One group of Canadian fans, who declined to provide their names as they watched practices earlier this week with a maple leaf flag, said they decided to brave the rising cross-border uncertainty because Boston felt safe and they wanted to support their skaters.
Trump has roiled relations with Canada with a fusillade of tariff threats, new registration requirements to enter the U.S. and rhetoric about turning the longtime northern ally into America’s 51st state.
That has stirred a backlash in Canada, including some vowing to stay away and stores taking U.S. products off their shelves. There have been calls from new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney about going “elbows up,” a hockey analogy about getting ready for a fight.
Andrei Markovits, professor emeritus at the University of Michigan who studies sports and comparative politics, said he has seen individual examples of Canadian sports fans eschewing U.S. travel for sports. But he is unsure whether such decisions will ever swell into wider boycotts, either by fans or athletes.
“It’s a devastating situation. But I don’t see it swapping into sports on a major level, to the level of avoiding the United States or boycotting the United States or anything of that sort,” said Markovits, author of “Gaming the World: How Sports Are Reshaping Global Politics and Culture.”
In figure skating, Canada’s athletes are often closely intertwined with Americans. They compete together and often move back and forth between the two countries to train.
U.S. ice dancer Madison Chock, for example, has trained and lived in Canada for about seven years with her skating partner and husband, Evan Bates. At a Montreal cafe recently, a reminder of the geopolitical tensions occurred when Bates ordered an espresso drink known as an “Americano.” The barista who handed the drink to him called it a “Canadian.”
“And we were like, what? Oh, it’s an Americano and they don’t want to call it an Americano for, well, obvious reasons,” Chock said.
“America has always had a very global reach when it comes to politics and culture, so we never really saw that truly reflected here until that moment, where it was like, oh, OK. Things are shifting.”
‘We have to be more united’
International figure skating, particularly at the Olympics, has long mixed politics and sports. It’s a place where geopolitical rivalries often play out on the ice, said Kelly Grieco, a foreign policy analyst at The Stimson Center in Washington D.C. who has written about figure skating and politics.
During the Cold War, Olympic figure skating wins were freighted with political symbolism and skating judges were accused of political bias. At other times, national political rivalries, including between Korea and Japan, also played out on the ice, she said.
This week in Boston, geopolitics − this time between China and Taiwan − also intruded briefly into the competition. On Thursday, organizers apologized for displaying the flag of Taiwan for a skater rather than the emblem of Chinese Taipei, which is displayed by organizers to connote a connection between Taiwan and China without explicitly backing Taiwan’s claim to sovereignty.
It was another example of the political tightrope the sport often must walk.
Meanwhile, the larger controversy has centered around Russia and its invasion of Ukraine at the end of the 2022 Winter Olympics.
At the subsequent world figure skating championships, Russia was banned from participating, while Ukrainian skaters turned to patriotic displays that risked violating rules around political neutrality at competitions. Ice dancers Oleksandra Nazarova and Makysm Nikitin scrapped the regular music for their rhythm dance and instead skated to “1944,” a song that refers to the forced removal of Crimean Tatars from Ukraine by the Soviet Union.
“This song is helping people in Ukraine at the moment,” Nikitin said.
The duo also wore Ukraine’s colors rather than their usual costumes, as did men’s singles skater Ivan Shmuratko.
Three years later, there are political tensions not just between Russia and Ukraine but also the U.S. now and several of its long-time allies. Mexican figure skater Donovan Carrillo, who trains in Toronto, has a broader perspective on the new cross-border tensions than most.
“It’s quite sad,” he said. “Because I feel, as a world, we have to be more united instead of trying to divide countries and territories.”
Yet he and most other skaters said the political backdrop hasn’t impacted their training or performance – and hasn’t frayed some of the close-knit bonds among skaters from different countries.
“We can’t focus on what we can’t control,” said Piper Gilles, an ice dancer who was born in the U.S. but now represents Canada. “We can control our skating and we can control that we’re proud of our country and proud to represent our country in the U.S.”
‘Today, my city, it’s on fire’
One thing Marsak can’t control is what happens to his friends and family in Ukraine. He now trains in Finland but said his father is in the Ukrainian military and fighting on the front lines.
“Of course it’s making pressure on me, because I’m worrying about them,” he said. “This whole situation is really difficult to deal with.”
The Trump administration, which has blamed Ukraine for the war, has tried to work with Russia to negotiate an end to the fighting. The White House announced separate agreements with Russia and Ukraine over a ceasefire in the Black Sea earlier this week.
Yet for another Ukrainian skater, Artem Darenskyi, there are reminders every day that the war is raging on.
Darenskyi, who competes in pairs with partner Sofia Holichenko, said they’ve been training in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, at one of the country’s few still-functioning rinks. The threat of attacks hovers. Safely catching a flight to a competition means first traveling to Poland.
After competing Wednesday, a reporter asked Darenskyi about the Ukrainian flags that fans waved in the crowd, and the round of applause he and Holichenko received after their program.
“It’s good,” he said. “But today, my city, it’s on fire.”
Darenskyi reached into his backpack and pulled out his phone, scrolling to an image of a burning cityscape.
“It’s a drone attack,” he said. “So it’s very difficult.”
Contributing: Reuters