With low levels of awareness and participation, can the ISU Athletes’ Commission really represent the skaters?
The International Skating Union’s strategic plan ‘Vision 2030’ begins with a motto: “Athlete-first, member-friendly, and fan-centric”.
What does it mean for the sport’s governing body to be athlete-first, at a time when figure skaters are increasingly raising their voices to oppose ISU decisions?
At the recent World Championships, for example, the men’s medalists used the press conference to speak against upcoming rule changes and call for a greater role for athletes. As World Champion Ilia Malinin put it, “I think the ISU should really reconsider all of these changes, and really give opportunity and a voice to all of us athletes to really come together and realize what’s better for the sport.”
When journalist Phil Hersh asked about channels for athlete feedback, the ISU pointed to its Athletes’ Commission.
“Athlete input is an essential part of this process,” said the ISU statement. “Feedback is gathered through established channels, including engagement with athletes via ISU Members, the ISU Athletes’ Commission, and direct interactions at ISU events. The Chair of the Athletes’ Commission has a seat on the ISU Council in order to ensure that the athletes’ voices are heard and are at the center of decision-making and the ISU welcomes feedback through all channels.”
What is the ISU’s Athletes Commission? Does it accurately represent athletes’ opinions – and how much power does it actually have within the ISU?
The Athletes Commission model
Within the Olympic movement, it is increasingly common for spots on boards and committees to be set aside for athlete representatives. According to the International Olympic Committee’s guide on the subject, “Athlete involvement in decision-making is a core component of good governance within sports organisations. An Athletes’ Commission enables athletes’ voices to be heard and experiences used for the improvement of sport.”
However, some athlete advocates, like Rob Koehler of Global Athlete, argue that this form of representation essentially tokenizes and co-opts athletes.
Global Athlete recommends that athletes’ commissions should be independent of sports federations, including having independent funding. As for representation, “Athletes should have 50% of voting rights within sporting organizations on rules that are being developed that affect them.”
Han Xiao, the former head of the US Olympic Athlete Advisory Committee (the forerunner to the Team USA Athletes’ Commission, which represents US Olympic and Paralympic team members) noted the challenges in a 2020 opinion piece.
“Athletes’ Commissions inherently have an uphill climb in driving tangible positive change for athletes due to their funding model, structure, and lack of leverage and decision-making authority. Without solving these problems, it is unclear whether they will ever be a useful counterbalance to all the other interests within sport or whether they will endure the test of time…The Athletes’ Commission itself does not possess the power to do much at all. Instead, it depends on persuading other people to make decisions that are beneficial to athletes and then implement those decisions.”
In recognition of these issues, in 2024, the Congressional Commission on the State of US Olympic and Paralympic Sport recommended that the Team USA Athletes’ Commission be made fully independent of the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee; however, to date no change has been made.
Who represents athletes at the ISU and how are they chosen?
The ISU first established an Athletes Commission in 2018, and its role and function has gradually been refined. However, it remains a relatively new institution within the governance structure of the sport.
For the current Commission, serving 2022-2026, the figure skating representatives are Eric Radford (Singles & Pairs) and Evan Bates (Ice Dance). Speed Skating, Short Track, and Synchronized Skating each have one representative on the Commission. From 2023-2025, Radford chaired the Commission and served on the ISU Council (the executive body of the federation). Currently, the speed skating representative Douwe de Vries is the chair of the Commission and the representative on the ISU Council.
The ISU’s Technical Committees also have athlete representation, though these positions are chosen by the committee leaders rather than athletes themselves. Currently, the representatives are Kaitlyn Weaver (Ice Dance) and Brandon Frazier (Singles & Pairs, holding the spot vacated by Han Cong when he returned to competition).
In the new ISU Constitution adopted in 2025, the Athletes’ Commission was renamed as the Athletes’ Committee. Its role in the governance remains the same, but Singles Skating and Pairs Skating each have their own representative, bringing the total on the Commission to six members.
The process for the Athletes’ Committee election for the 2026-2030 term was laid out in Communication 4723. Athletes who participated in the 2025/26 Senior Grand Prix and/or Challenger Series were eligible to register to vote. This meant that 154 dancers, 88 pair skaters, and 247 singles skaters were eligible to vote in their categories.
Skaters had to register to vote by following a link, which was primarily shared in the ISU’s Inside Events App and the Sportity App used at Challenger events. AnythingGOEs has asked what percentage of eligible athletes completed the registration, but the ISU has not released that information.
Candidates for the Athletes Commission must be nominated by their national federations. This requirement is typical for other elected ISU offices, such as the Council or the Technical Committees, which are elected by the member federations. However, in the case of the Athlete Committee, it is less logical as a requirement, since this rule interposes the member federations between the athletes and their choice of representative. In at least one case, the federation recruited athletes to run for the position.
According to Communication 4723, “ISU Members are encouraged to base their nominations of candidates for election to the ISU Athletes Committee through elections held at the national level and to consider both genders when deciding which athletes to nominate.” However, as far as AnythingGOEs has been able to determine, no such national elections have been held.
On January 15, 2026, the ISU announced that two of the Athletes’ Committee positions had only received a single nomination: Evan Bates was reelected as the Ice Dance representative, and Adam Hagara of Slovakia was elected as the Singles representative. Deanna Stellato of Canada and Sui Wenjing of China contested the pairs spot; their statements are accessible here. The vote for this position (and the Contested Speed Skating, Short Track, and Synchronized Skating positions) took place between January 15, 2026 and February 28, 2026.
At the European Championships, Adam Hagara told AnythingGOEs about his reasons for running, “The [Slovak] federation sent us information about the Athletes Commission and so I [applied]…I’ll see what my responsibilities are, if it’s something for me, and if I can bring something new to the table, as I’m 19. I’ll consult with my [fellow] athletes and friends to see what they think, and will give it my best.”
At the Olympics mixed zone, AnythingGOEs spoke to the Pairs candidates about their reasons for running.
“I hope, if I can get [the position],” said Sui, “I can show more Chinese culture.” She elaborated on this in her statement of candidacy, noting that one of her goals would be “facilitating cultural integration– using figure skating as a link to bring more ethnic cultural elements to the world through the sports stage, while building a communication platform for athletes from different disciplines.”
Her partner, Han Cong, added, “Wenjing also knows the athletes, she has been competing since she was a young girl and won the Olympics. She has that experience and will encourage many athletes. If she can work for the athletes commission, she will help the athletes and work for what they want and help them and the ISU.”
“I have a lot of ideas for the ISU,” Stellato shared. “One of them, that I was able to use as a catalyst, was the dress idea. This is the first year ever that they’re allowing athletes to partner with couture designers…I hope that [my partnership with Oscar de la Renta] opens doors for other athletes to have more opportunities to work with fashion, opens the doors for journalists, opens the doors for photographers, and it helps the pipeline and figure skating to grow. I have a lot of ideas along that vein, and that’s why I’m running – but I am so upset that I am running against Sui. The last person I wanted to run up against, I would like to do it with her. We could do it together!”
On March 30th, the ISU announced that Wenjing Sui had been chosen as the Pairs representative.
On April 23rd, the full results were posted, showing that only 6 skaters voted in the election for pairs. The vote was tied 3-3, but since Canada was already represented on the Athletes Commission through the new Speed Skating representative, Ivanie Blondin, the pairs spot went to Wenjing Sui.
Six votes represents only seven percent of the eligible pair skaters. The pairs turnout is low compared to 39 of the 237 (17%) eligible short track athletes, 66 of 304 (22%) speed skaters, and 60 of the roughly 500 eligible Synchro skaters (12%).
The challenge of communication
Why do so few skaters vote?
AnythingGOEs conducted an anonymous survey of figure skaters via Instagram from April 18-24.
Of the eight pair skaters who responded, none voted in the election. Seven said they had not known about the registration form or seen any information about the election. One respondent said that they did not feel like their opinion mattered enough to vote.
According to current Athletes Commission representatives Evan Bates and Eric Radford, establishing direct communication with the athletes has been difficult.
“One of the puzzles that the Athletes Commission has been trying to solve is how do we reach the most number of athletes possible?” Bates shared in 2024. “It’s a little trickier than I think maybe I knew at the outset, just based on security concerns, and it’s not that easy to get a mass database of every skater in the world and, you know, blast them with an email. So it does go through the member federations…we’re working towards getting more awareness around this kind of feedback system, so that everyone’s getting a chance to say their piece.”
Eric Radford recently told the podcast The Future of Figure Skating that he thinks the next commission will have an easier time directly communicating with athletes. “[T]here’s going to be a closer work environment with ISU. We’re going to have more tools available to us….So we’ll have more support in order to create these types of things. I think that there is talk about using the app because a lot of the athletes are already sort of logged into there, where they would be able to opt in if they choose to receive information directly from the Athletes Commission.”
According to Radford, the Commission has attempted to collect more systematic feedback, including a post-season survey, “just to finally open up some dialogue with the athletes and to connect their thoughts and their feelings on things to the Council…And just getting the athletes to fill out the survey was always a challenge, except I have to point out in Synchro, where I think all of the athletes [answered] right away. Synchro has such a special energy and it was always just lovely to see how engaged they were.”
Radford notes that not all athletes understand the need to be involved. “Our challenge was to foster and create more of a community. And I attended a forum in Lausanne a few years ago, and it was the chair of different athlete commissions from around the world. And we were all in the same boat…because when you’re an athlete and you’re training and you’re preparing for competition, your focus is just like a laser. And it is on that one target – and I can speak from my own experience like I didn’t have any concern or energy to put into anything outside of that until I got a little bit further on into my career, and I got a little bit older and I started to realize how important it was.”
“I think all athletes, on a baseline, want to be in the know,” Radford continued. “They want to understand…from my own personal experience, and the other commission members’ as well, we’ve all talked about how when we were athletes, we would read about rule changes and there was no explanation. It was like, ‘Okay, this is what this is worth next year,’ or ‘This is the change we’re making.’ And we were like, ‘Who’s coming up with this? Why is this being made?’ It left me feeling powerless and out of the loop and frustrated. So I know that that’s common across all of the sports.”
Translating the ISU to the athletes
The interviews with Radford and Bates also reveal how the task of representing athletes to the ISU often merges with another role: representing the ISU’s positions to the athletes.
When he first started with the Commission, Radford wanted to address the lack of understanding, and lack of trust, that athletes had in the ISU’s decisions. “You know, it’s our blood, sweat, tears, hopes and dreams that form the foundation of these sports. And there’s this magical person up here that’s making these decisions and we’re just like, ‘Why?’ My experience over the last years when I’ve spoken with athletes, they’ll be like, ‘Why is this happening?’ And, they’re kind of angry, and I say, ‘Well, this is why.’”
Radford thinks that if athletes understood why the ISU is making changes, they would be more supportive.
He used the example of the ISU’s decision to shorten the warmup period during competitions. “It’s not just about how comfortable you are on your six-minute warmup. I used to feel like this, too, [but] when you have a large portion of the ISU’s income coming in through TV rights and then you have a TV executive saying, ‘Can we do this?’ there’s got to be wiggle room, and that could affect the athletes…”
“I think that [matters], giving the athletes that bigger picture,” Radford continued. “I’ve seen it. They’re like, ‘That makes sense.’ They’re just not aware of what’s going on on all these other levels that the ISU has to oversee. We’re in our own little sphere, in our own little bubble. So it makes sense, when you hear something, you’re like, ‘What, why?’ But then once you understand it, usually it’s been well received.”
The stated role of the Commission is to communicate athlete perspectives to the Council, but Radford’s comments make clear that the Commission also sees its goal as explaining, and possibly advocating for, ISU positions to the athletes.
With time inside of the ISU, Radford’s perspective changed, and he became more sympathetic to the opinions of other ISU officials. “Something that I came to realize, and I let the athletes know, is that there’s a lot of very smart, passionate people who really are doing their best to try and do what’s best for the sport. As an athlete, I felt like such an afterthought, and sometimes these rules wouldn’t make any sense, and not every rule change is always for the best, but I can sincerely and genuinely say that there are people at the top who are really trying to do what’s best for the sport and a lot of really brilliant work has been done.”
Bates’ comments also demonstrate how Athletes’ Commission members mediate athlete views on issues such as financial compensation, translating a grievance into a reason to support ISU priorities.
“[Prize money is] a very popular issue amongst the athletes. You know, we need to make a living and we are in a sport that is quite expensive…And I think it goes back to growing our sport, to getting more fans into the arenas, to getting more lucrative TV contracts, to just expanding our budget as a sport entity. Then from there, letting that trickle down to the athletes and hoping that more athletes will get a slice of the pie.”
An inherent weakness in the model?
With one seat for the Athletes Commission on the 15-person ISU Council, athletes have little formal power. The Athletes Commission only has the ability to influence ISU decisions if they can persuade other members of the Council to go along.
Han Xiao, the former head of the US Athlete Advisory Council, wrote in his essay in Inside the Games, that “Sports organizations’ goals and athletes’ goals are generally aligned, including the growth of the sports we love. However, there are also areas where goals and opinions may not align. For example, when an organization is unwilling to sacrifice revenue or brand image to protect athletes’ interests, athletes may feel that the decision is unjustified.”
Xiao went on to write that a core problem of the Athletes’ Commission model is “a lack of any inherent leverage or decision-making authority. Without collective bargaining, they frequently face scrutiny from both athletes and sports organizations regardless of which position they take. Athletes are never a monolithic group. There will always be athletes wondering whether the Athletes’ Commission is indeed advocating on their behalf if the commission takes a position they don’t personally like. Similarly, those within sport organizations who disagree with the Commission’s perspective will often doubt whether other athletes genuinely agree with the Commission. The commission does not necessarily have the unity and credibility that an athlete association or union typically would bring.”
In professional sports leagues, such as FIFA or the NBA, it is common for athletes to organize outside of the governing bodies, through the creation of a collective bargaining agreement or players’ association. However, within individual sports, and in the Olympic movement, independent organizing is difficult and often discouraged.
According to Koehler of Global Athlete, independent athlete power and collective bargaining, “demands transparency, and within the Olympic sport, you see very little transparency…that’s where we think it shouldn’t be a threat to the International Olympic Committee. It should be an opportunity, because if you look at all professional sports that embraced collective bargaining, they have grown exponentially in terms of revenues [and] in terms of safety. While not perfect, it’s much better than what we’re seeing within the Olympic movement now, where current athlete committees are controlled, and run by the organizations.”
Given those arguments, would Radford like to see a skaters’ union or other form of independent organization to represent the athletes?
“From my own experience, there have been times in frustration where I have fantasized about all of those skaters unionizing and going on strike, if you will, and saying, ‘we’re not going to do this anymore if we don’t get this.’ Of course,” Radford quickly added, “the hopes of that ever happening was pretty slim. I think that maybe each one probably has its pros and cons. I can’t speak to the structure of a player’s union or anything like that, but…we could only control what’s in our power. So I think that having the Athletes’ Commission and for it to continue to grow, develop and evolve is good for now.”
Athlete perspectives
Ten athletes completed AnythingGOEs’ online survey, which asked skaters to anonymously report their opinions about the Athletes’ Commission and athletes’ role in ISU decision-making. While this survey captures only a small portion of athletes, it is nonetheless notable that none of these ten registered to vote or voted in the 2026 Athlete Commission election. Four of the ten have engaged with the Commission in other ways, such as by filling out a survey or attending a meeting.
When asked if their representative was doing a good job representing their opinions to the ISU, most chose ‘neutral’ or ‘I don’t know’.
One ice dancer who filled out the survey added the comment, “I, as an athlete, only just found out about the athlete commission after the voting process happened…I have no clear idea of what the representative does. I have never heard of an idea being proposed by the [ice dance] representative…I wish representatives could reach out to athletes and ask them what they think of the current state of their discipline.”
The athletes who responded to the survey were also unhappy with the current relationship between skaters and the ISU.
Given the statement “The Athletes’ Commission has the power to make the ISU listen to athletes’ opinions,” six disagreed or strongly disagreed. One selected strongly agree.
The result is also stark when they were asked to agree or disagree with the statement, “The leadership of the ISU cares what athletes think about new rules and competition changes”. Half disagreed or strongly disagreed; only one strongly agreed.
With such low participation rates in the election, and low confidence in the Commission’s ability to make a difference, it is clear that the Athletes’ Commission has a long way to go to meaningfully represent the the majority of figure skaters. Can the incoming six representatives improve awareness and engagement with the Commission? The answer may depend on how committed the ISU really is to being “athlete-first”.
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