Winter Olympics: Kamila Valieva's 'flawless' in debut performance

Only the fluffy pink toy she was hugging while being interviewed after another record-breaking performance gave away that Russian figure skating sensation Kamila Valieva is just 15.

Beijing 2022 got its first glimpse of the hot favourite for the women's individual gold when she performed a stunning short program in Sunday's team event.

Her 90.18 score was just shy of her own world record, but is an Olympic record.

And that is before she unleashes the quads that have got everybody talking.

Quad jumps — featuring four rotations of the body mid-air — are still rare in women's figure skating and no woman has landed one at an Olympics.

She has three of them in her long program.

So, who is this teen sensation and what can we look forward to seeing at these Games?

At 15, you don't get 231,000 Instagram followers unless you're doing something special.

The high-scoring quads, coupled with a grace and elegance on her mesmerising spins, are how she has broken world records several times since making her senior debut last year.

Oh, and that debut at the CS Finlandia Trophy in October… also a world record score.

She was too young to compete in last year's World Championships but at the Europeans last month she became the first woman to score more than 90 points in the short program, setting a world record of 90.45 on her way to the title.

She is skating the routine in memory of her grandma, who died in 2019, and it is set to In Memoriam by Russian composer Kirill Richter.

«I had so much energy going into the end of this short program,» she said after Sunday's performance which helped put Russian Olympic Committee in the lead in the team event. «I'm skating for my grandmother, so I think it was that feeling that got me.»

Olympic champion and BBC