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When coming up with the program choices for this fic, I wanted to give Yuri Plisetsky a classical piece, similar to his free skate from the original anime. The first one to come to mind was Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, which is both Russian and a commonly used piece of music in figure skating.
The program and narrative behind it is based on Japanese skater Mao Asada’s program to that music from the 2013-14 season (no commentary, with commentary). She competed this program at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, where she had a very similar performance to Yuri Plisetsky. She’d come in as one of the favorites for gold, being at the time the 2010 Olympic silver medalist and a two-time World Champion, but had a nightmare short program that left her in 16th place.
(In the day between the short program and free skate, the Japanese media did in fact call her a “national disgrace.”)
In the free skate however, she skated a clean program with eight triple jumps, including a triple axel, which is about as difficult of a program layout as you can get before you start adding in quads—and by far the most technically difficult program competed in the women’s event at those Olympics. She placed third in the free skate to finish sixth overall, and then later that season went on to win the World Championships.
While Mao Asada inspired Yuri’s free skate music, I also drew inspiration (and the scores) from American skater Nathan Chen’s free skate from the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang (no commentary, with commentary). Just like Mao Asada, he had also come in as a gold medal contender before bombing both the team event and individual event short programs. He then came back with an insane six-quadruple jump free skate that at that point, no one else had ever managed to do before, moving himself up from 17th to 5th. Nathan Chen also went on to win the World Championships at the end of the 2018 season.
And although it doesn’t come up in this fic, I envisioned Yuri’s short program music to be something he might have had more of a hand in picking, while still maintaining a “classical” feel to it that would match his and Lilia’s style. I had in mind something like Nathan Chen’s “Lacrimosa” program from the first half of the 2021-2022 season, since it’s a remix of a classical music piece (no commentary, with commentary).
As for Yuri Katsuki, his free skate is set to “Rain, In Your Black Eyes” by Ezio Bosso. This is a piece used very often in figure skating, but it’s one of my favorites of the popular “warhorse” pieces. Specifically, his program is inspired by Japanese skater Yuma Kagiyama’s free skate from the 2023-2024 season (including the triple axel fall), with which he won silver at the World Championships (geoblocked, non-geoblocked fancam).
The inspiration for this was mostly that it felt along the same lines as Yuri Katsuki’s instrumental “Yuri on Ice” free skate from the previous season, and that the speed up in tempo during the step sequence at the end is something that Yuri could take advantage of with his stamina.
For his short program (not that it comes up in this fic), I wanted to give him something Japanese for the Olympics, since I didn’t do that for the free skate, and so I went with Ryuichi Sakamoto’s soundtrack from the movie Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence—a popular music choice for Japanese skaters. For inspiration I had in mind Japanese skater Mai Mihara’s short program from the 2022-2023 season, with which she won the Grand Prix Final (geoblocked, non-geoblocked from Nationals).
Victor’s free skate was probably the one that took me the longest to figure out the music to. From the start, I knew this fic would have Victor win the Olympics, Yuri Katsuki win the Grand Prix Final, and Yuri Plisetsky win Worlds, and so I wanted to find the right music for Victor’s “Olympic moment.”
I wanted something Russian, but also not overly orchestral or concerto-like. My thinking was essentially “the Russian version of Yuzuru Hanyu’s ‘Hope and Legacy’ program,” i.e.: something instrumental and melancholic, but still “big” enough.
That ultimately led me to “Nureyev” from the soundtrack of the movie White Crow, another relatively popular music choice for figure skaters. I know this isn’t entirely in line with Victor’s canon thing of having custom music composed for his programs, but I also wasn’t about to come up with an original song just for this fic.
Despite the movie being about a Soviet ballet dancer who defected from the USSR, Russian skaters have skated to this music—one example being Mikhail Kolyada during the 2021-2022 season. Victor’s performance specifically was more inspired by American skater Isabeau Levito’s free skate from the 2023-2024 season, with which she won silver at the World Championships (geoblocked, non-geoblocked fancam). In particular, I’m going off the way she nailed all her jumps before stunning the audience into silence with one of my favorite step sequences of all time.
There’s a quote from Austin Wintory, composer of the soundtrack to the video game Journey, where he talks about “the emotional potential in less is more, and if we dial it down to zero everyone leans in.” That’s the impression that I got from this step sequence, where the music drops in complexity and volume and it just captivates you and draws you further into the performance.
Victor’s exhibition program is set to Christina Perri’s “A Thousand Years,” because I think he’d be sappy enough to do that. It’s very loosely based on South Korean skater Yelim Kim’s exhibition program to that music (link). And while it wasn’t to that music, American skater Adam Rippon did in fact once sing his own gala music live on the ice, at the Grand Prix Final in 2017 (link).