Andrew Torgashev is a 24-year-old figure skater from Coral Springs, Florida. He placed 12th in men’s singles figure skating at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan with a score of 259.06. In the segment placements he placed eighth with a personal best score of 88.94.
At this year’s Olympics, Torgashev did the best he has ever done in his figure skating career. In 2026 he finally made it to the Olympics after years of hard work.
“I’m living my childhood dream right now,” Torgashev said. “I’m enjoying everything.”
In his performance in the Olympics men’s figure skating competition, he used the song “Maybe I Maybe You” by German rock band The Scorpions. Throughout his performance, he did a quadruple toeloop, quadruple toeloop and sequence, triple lutz, triple axel, triple axel and double axel sequence, triple lutz, euler and triple salchow and triple flip.
He also performed a free skate with the songs “Oratores” and “Good News” by Apashe, doing two quadruple jumps and a combination with a double axel. His free skate was based on a three part thematic structure focused on a warrior narrative.
“It was different from all the other competitions I had,” Torgashev said. “Obviously there’s much more people… It’s really the world’s biggest stage.”
Torgashev competed for the U.S team, but his cultural background has strong ties to Ukraine and Russia; he is fluent in both English and Russian. His parents, Artem Torgashev and Ilona Melnichenko, are Soviet immigrants and both competed in figure skating competitions.
Melnichenko was the 1987 World Junior Ice Dance Champion and Artem Torgashev was a 1987 World Junior Medalist in pairs. Artem Torgashev also coached the Panthers’ Figure Skating Club in Coral Springs, where Andrew began skating.
Torgashev first started skating when he was five years old in 2006, and has been skating for 20 years. He trains at Great Park Ice and Fivepoint Arena in Irvine, California with his coach, Rafeal Arutyunyan.
Torgashev fractured his ankle in June 2015 attempting a quadruple toe loop. Because of this injury, he got three screws inserted in his ankle. This injury also caused him to miss the 2015-2016 skating season. Even after this initial failure, he worked on the trick and was able to execute it perfectly at the 2020 Toyota U.S. Figure Skating Championships.
During his training in 2020-2022, he struggled with his injured ankle and had to go through extensive rehabilitation. This caused him to miss two consecutive seasons.
Despite all of his injuries, Torgashev has successfully reintergraded his quadruple toe loop into his performances.
Now that he has successfully made it to the Olympics once, he plans to earn another spot on the Olympic roster in four years and secure a top score.
