She will never be a top tier skater, only skates to show tunes, has uncontrollable and wild jumps, needs to smile less, her injury is career ending, only scores well in Canada and never internationally, cannot skate a LP to save her soul, her Helsinki Silver was a fluke, she will never be a GP Finalist, an Olympic or a World podium contender ever again; so some here have said.
And now as the singles most decorated woman in the sport the last 2 years, I say 'You Go Girl', and her FANS and even her naysayers will forever remember her as a World Champion and as an Olympic Gold, Silver and Bronze medalist. So with that said, my choice is...
Evgenia Medvedeva, Carolina Kostner and Yulia Lipnitskaya were the ones who came to my mind immediately while reading this title. So, I guess here we go. Ladies is basically the only discipline I watch committedly and not just like a casual fan. But for the other disciplines, I have Savchenko & Massot and Yuzuru I really admire.
Ladies:
Irina Slutskaya (She‘s the reason why I fell in love with figure skating. In 1996 I saw her in TV, I was 6 years old, she was 16 by the time and became european champion.. So I wanted to be sooo much like her Ever since I followed everything figure skating I could back then without Internet and as a very young child)
More recent my faves are Evgenia Medvedeva and Alexandra Trusova (I love both of their personalities)
Men:
My first fave: Alexey Yagudin (that 2002 Olympics )
All time fave: Stephane Lambiel (well I was soo in love with him as a teenager)
Our-day skaters: Deniss Vasilijevs (well no surprise), Yuzuru Hanyu, Shoma Uno
But I like really many of the competitive male skaters right now!
Pairs: Aljona Savchenko... I followed her career ever since 2004 and she‘s just had/ has an incredible career/personality
Honorable mentions (as in I like them but don't have quite the same emotional attachment--subject to change):
Men:
Jason Brown
Alexei Yagudin
Mikhail Kolyada
Nathan Chen
Boyang Jin
Denis Ten
Jeffrey Buttle
Deniss Vasilijevs