Mirai Nagasu Just Became the First U.S. Woman to Land a Triple Axel at the Olympics (2024)

Mirai Nagasu became the first American woman to land a triple axel at the Olympics on Monday morning as the figure skating team competition wrapped up. The move, with a three-and-a-half-revolution jump, is widely considered figure skating's most difficult one to execute—only two other women have landed it on Olympic ice. The successful axel also paved the way to not only her personal-best score of 137.53, but the Team USA's bronze medal, making her historic victory extra sweet.

“I feel really great,” the 24-year-old from California told the Guardian. “Going into it, I was like a train and I was like, ‘Get on the tracks and get some speed.’ And I tripped a couple times. 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.”

Although she finished fourth at the 2010 Vancouver Games, Nagasu wasn't part of the U.S. figure skating team that headed to Sochi in 2014: She came in third at the national championships, but in a committee decision, the spot on the team was given to the fourth-place winner, Ashley Wagner.

“Four years ago when I was left off the team, I wanted to make another Olympic team, and I knew I would really have to be something special,” Nagasu told The New York Times. "So to become the first American to land a triple axel at the Olympic Games is historical, and no one can take that away from me.”