WATCH: Mirai Nagasu Lands Triple Axel and Makes Olympic History

By Sameer Rao Feb 12, 2018

Mirai Nagasu entered the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in PyeongChang as only the second U.S. figure skater, after Tonya Harding, to land a triple Axel in competition. She successfully performed that move again yesterday (February 11), earning a place in skating history as the first American woman to do so at the Olympics.


ESPN reports that Nagasu, one of 13 Asian-American members* of Team USA, landed the triple Axel 21 seconds into her routine. She also holds distinction as the third woman, after Japan’s Midori Ito in 1992 and Mao Asada in 2010, to successfully execute the trick at the Olympics.


"I don’t know if you could tell—it was more something I could feel—but to nail it the way I did, even out of the corner of my eye, I could see my teammates standing out of excitement," Nagasu told ESPN. "And at that moment, I wanted to stop the music and get off, but I still had my whole program ahead of me, and to complete the performance to the best of my ability is really exciting."


Nagasu earned a score of 137.53, which helped the U.S. figure skating squad win the bronze medal—the same one it won at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.


Watch video of the historic moment, pulled from NBC’s Winter Olympics coverage, above.


*This post has been updated since publication to reflect the correct number of Asian-American athletes on Team USA.