Kamila Valieva’s historic quadruple jump seals team figure skating gold

As she has laid waste to her rivals throughout an extraordinary first season as a senior while skating with deeper maturity and sophistication in each passing competition, it’s been increasingly apparent that only an act of God could prevent Russian prodigy Kamila Valieva from winning figure skating’s most prestigious title.

On Monday, the 15-year-old Valieva offered the world a sneak peek of why next week’s Olympic women’s singles competition is little more than a formality, becoming the first woman to land a quadruple jump at the Olympics – then doing it again moments later – to punctuate the Russian Olympic Committee’s runaway gold in the team event at Capital Indoor Stadium.

Valieva, the newly minted Russian and European champion who has already broken the world records for the women’s short programme, free skate and combined total in a stunning debut campaign as an adult skater, opened her title-clinching long program on Monday with a gigantic quad salchow before following with a quad toe loop in combination with a triple toe loop.

Her final score of 178.92 was more than enough to prevail in Monday’s free skate, nailing down a gold that was safely in hand even before Valieva’s first-place finish in the short on Sunday single-handedly wiped out the Americans’ day-one lead.

“I had [the] burden of responsibility, but I came out a winner,” Valieva said. “It’s been quite overwhelming. I was very nervous, but I am just glad I was able to execute all of my elements well. To perform with a team like this means everything.”

Valieva’s dominance on Monday, which followed her Russian team-mates Anastasia Mishina and Aleksandr Galliamov’s win in the pairs’ free skate, left the United States and Japan in a touch-and-go battle for