Update: Mystery solved in the worst way possible.

Buckle up, y'all. This one's a doozy.

A warning: today’s newsletters includes discussion of sexual assault. Not graphic discussion, but it is mentioned. Skip it if that’s not for you.

Well. Where do we even start? We could get into Skate America and talk about Ilia doing the first legal back flip of the Grand Prix. Or Wakaba Higuchi winning her first Senior Grand Prix gold medal ever. Or we could be pleasantly surprised that TWO American Pairs teams won medals.

Or… we could talk about secret teen marriages.

I was going to do one big newsletter with a Skater America debrief, a Skate Canada preview, and an update on this wild news story, but I decided we might all appreciate two shorter newsletters rather than one behemoth.

Today, in a Very Special Episode of The Nice Capades: Secret Teen Marriage.

Evidently, we can’t assume that there are any Ice Dance couples who are not married. To each other.

This goes back to last week when I told you about the mysterious last minute Skate America withdrawal of Isabella Flores and Ivan Desyatov. There’s a grim update to this story— Desyatov is temporarily suspended by SafeSport for allegations of misconduct. Basically, this means he’s been accused of sexual misconduct. And a temporary suspension like this is pretty bad— it means they’re suspending him while they investigate. This is not the norm— remember, Nikolaj Sorensen continued to skate for over 8 months while he was under investigation (not technically a SafeSport case, but they function similarly). A suspension like this means they have some pretty compelling reasons. The Skating Lesson says it’s easier to suspend someone when SafeSport knows about an active police investigation and possible pending criminal charges. In short, it’s terrible.

What does this have to do with secret teen marriage? The Skating Lesson also took this opportunity to reveal that Flores/Desyatov have been married in secret since August 2022 when Bella was 19 (they met in April, thanks for asking). The Skating Lesson went on to reveal that another couple from the same training base also got secretly married in December 2023, and this is in addition to a third couple from the same training camp who are publicly married (Leah Neset and Artem Markelov)

All three marriages have four things in common:

1. They skate together as an ice dance partnership under the coaching team in Colorado Springs.

2. The woman was a teenager at the time of the marriage.

3. The man was born in Russia and does not have US citizenship

4. They all happened with relative close proximity to Russia invading Ukraine.

Also, Annabelle Morozov appears to be secretly married to her Russian boyfriend, and you might recall that Diana Davis married her (Russian male) partner Gleb Smolkin right after Russia invaded Ukraine.

So, we started this story with a horrible revelation about sexual assault accusations, and we ended it with a possible Ice Dance Green Card Marriage ring.

I’ve having a lot of thoughts here.

• Haven’t they seen the movie Green Card with Gerard Depardieu in which we learn how hard it is to fake a marriage for a Green Card? (Probably they have not seen it as they were not even born in the 90s. But surely this is a plot point in SOMETHING the youths have seen— surely there’s a popular BookTok romance that uses this trope?)

• Where are the adults.

• Let me rephrase… where are the responsible adults.

• This training camp is right there in Colorado Springs, right in the middle of the US Olympic Committee headquarters. Did people KNOW about this? Were they cool with it if it meant competitive ice dance teams?

• This is real bad for Bella Flores.

• Remember Bella’s old partner, Dimitri? The one who ghosted her completely? He’s a US citizen, so he didn’t need to get married to stay here, but maybe the coaches at this training camp are doing other shady shit. Maybe his parents ARE the responsible adults and wouldn’t let him train with them anymore. This is purely speculation on my part, but you can’t help but see that situation with a different lens. Maybe the two situations are not related, maybe they are.

• I don’t think Ivan’s sexual misconduct allegations are directly connected to his secret marriage with Bella— there’s no rumor to suggest that she is the accuser. I think they came to light at the same time because it’s just more evidence of predatory behaviors and grooming in figure skating.

This is obviously not fun gossip, and I don’t relish sharing it. Fun gossip is: I’m pretty sure Mariah Bell and Nathan Chen had a fling during the Stars on Ice tour after the Olympics. Fun gossip is: Loena Hendrickx called her top intra-country rival, “The Other Belgian Girl.” Fun gossip is: Katarina Witt used to improv routines to her competitors’ music to psyche them out.

But I didn’t think I could completely ignore this story and just move on to Kevin Aymoz’s award worthy Kiss and Cry reaction, especially not after I opened the last newsletter wondering what happened with Bella and Ivan. There’s a culture of silence around sexual abuse in figure skating; it seems irresponsible to shove it into a closet when someone comes forward.

That said, I’m probably not going to write much more about this situation. I will provide some brief updates as they happen, and I’ll do my best to provide links to reputable writers with more thoughtful takes. But I know you’re here for the escape of it all and so am I. Next time, we’ll go back to gasping at the Chock and Bates defeat and rolling our eyes at a very complicated free program back story that doesn’t even make sense.

See you Thursday for your Skate America Debrief and your Skate Canada preview.