Yulia Lipnitskaya, who became Russia’s youngest Winter Olympic gold medalist ever at the Sochi Games in 2014, has retired at the age of 19 after being treated for anorexia.
Her mother Daniela told news agency TASS that Ms Lipnitskaya informed the Russian Figure Skating Federation she was ending her career in April “after returning from Europe, where she underwent three-month treatment for anorexia”. This was the first official mention of her suffering from an eating disorder.
In an Instagram post, two-time Olympic gold medalist Evgeni Plushenko called her a “little legend who took Russian women’s figure skating to the highest level after a long stagnation”.
Dubbed the “girl in red” for her bright costume, Ms Lipnitskaya won the free skate and short programme to give Russia the team figure skating gold in Sochi at the at the age of 15. Russia went on to win the medal count at the games that were seen as a cornerstone of Vladimir Putin’s legacy, and Ms Lipnitskaya, the youngest figure skating gold medalist in 78 years, became the star of the show.
A beaming Mr Putin patted Ms Lipnitskaya on the head and embraced her after the competition, and she was later declared a master of sport, the country’s highest sporting honour.
Like the rest of Russia’s medalists, Ms Lipnitskaya received a Mercedes-Benz from PM Dmitry Medvedev, but was promised a driver as well since she did not yet have her licence yet.
Russian commentators dubbed her a “tiny genius” and the “future of figure skating”. But it was not to be. After a string of disappointing finishes, she battled through a hip injury to win the Cup of Tyrol in Innsbruck, Austria, last year, but then missed the Russian championships with a hip and back injury.
Ms Lipnitskaya had begun struggling with her weight and told Sport Express last year that it was as if she had been “getting fat off the air” before she managed to start losing weight again.
Photos of her being given a new flat in 2017 showed she had again gained weight, leading some social media users to wonder if she was pregnant. “Do I have to weigh 37 kilograms (82 pounds) for the rest of my life for you to be happy?” Ms Lipnitskaya responded.
