Figure skating has traditionally been one of the most popular sports at the Winter Olympics and heading into the Milano Cortina Games Germany has a top pair - Minerva Hase and Nikita Volodin - who could win a medal.

But that’s it.

Unlike other European countries like France and Italy – not to mention the figure skating power houses - the United States and Japan – except for pairs, Germany hasn't come close to a podium spot in decades.

In men’s figure skating, the country has only had a single Olympic gold medallist: Bavarian Manfred Schnelldorfer took the top prize at the Innsbruck Olympics – in 1964.

As for the women you have to go back some 40 years when Katarina Witt won her first Olympic gold in 1984 and repeated that in 1988, for East Germany.

The country has never won an Olympic medal of any colour in ice dance, which was introduced in the 1976 Games.

In fact for this Olympics, Germany is not even sending single skaters to Milan - because they did not perform well enough to earn a spot.

The last major German medals outside of pairs came 22 years ago at the world championships, when Stefan Lindemann and ice dancers Kati Winkler and René Lohse won bronze in Dortmund.

“Nothing is happening,” Schnelldorfer complained in an interview with dpa.

He says a lack of top-level trainers, poor financing, low coaching salaries and insufficient advertising have left the sport in the state it’s in.

Extremely high physical expectations

Part of the problem is that the technical level required to be an Olympic medallist has exploded, especially in men’s skating. When Schnelldorfer was skating in the 1960s only a few men could do a triple jump.

“I had a triple jump, but I didn’t risk using it in a championship,” Schnelldorfer said.

Today, with that level of skating, he would not even make it into the lower ranks. Top male skaters have to jump higher or spin faster – or both – to perform quadruple or quad jumps – and several at that.

There are six jumps in figure skating, but only US Wunderkind Ilia Malinin – the hands down favourite for gold in Milan - has performed all six quads – including the quad axel, the most difficult. And the 21-year-old phenomenon has hinted that he has nailed a “quint” or five revolution jump, which would be a first for the sport.

But every country has to compete with Malinin's magic and Germany is falling far behind, with skaters from Japan, France, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Switzerland and Italy in the top 10 International Skating Union (ISU) men's ranks. The top German is 35th.

Benjamin Blum, head of the Bavarian Figure Skating Federation and a former competitive ice dancer, said he watched the German national championships in January and called the standard there “abysmal.” The country has better skaters in the youth and junior categories, than at the senior level, he said.

Fredrich Dieck, president of the North Rhine Westphalia Figure Skating Association, agrees that the problem is not in the lower ranks.

'We have actually always had good success in the youth and junior sectors over the years. But at the moment, we are not bringing athletes up to the senior level. That is our big problem,” he told dpa.

The coaching factor

Top coaches can produce top skaters, many agree, but Germany has not been able to attract top international coaching talent, in part because the salaries are too low, most work on a freelance basis, sufficient ice time is difficult to come by and the system is too inflexible.

"Wherever ice skating is successful, there is always a strong team of coaches or a strong base, regardless of how it is structured,” says Martin Liebers, head of the Berlin Figure Skating Association.

Lack of major international skating centres

What also helps is training with top competitors, but no centre in Germany offers that for single skaters. While some point to the training centre in Oberstdorf, Blum says the Bavarian rink has changed since when he trained there in the 2000s.

“Back then when I was training, the ice was full of international athletes,” he says.

But today there are sometimes 40 skaters on the rink and high-level skaters cannot train under those conditions, he says.

Italy has several major centres and Canada has the top training facility for ice dancers where nearly all top 10 Olympic contenders train. German ice dancer Tim Dieck, who now competes for Spain, as he receives more support there, trains in Canada.

The money problem

German skating officials say they help skaters as much as they can but critics say the financing structure is rigid, funds are insufficient and athletes who want to train outside of Germany don't get the funding their competitors do who train abroad.

Jens ter Laak, sport director at the German Figure Skating Federation, says top skaters who train abroad can apply to “receive a subsidy to cover part of their costs. But of course we cannot finance the same things abroad as we do in Germany at our federal training facilities.”

The German school system

Another problem for German Olympic wannabes is the country’s school system – which requires children to physically be in class. In other countries online school or sometimes home schooling is available.

“We are stuck in our ways in Germany. Schools are simply not flexible enough,” says Dieck, whose son Tim competes for Spain.

The problem of puberty

Several skating leaders point to puberty as a turning point for many. There are masses of little girls who want to be the next Katarina Witt, but problems hit especially “between the ages of 12 and 15, which is usually decisive for reaching the world elite level,” says Berlin’s Liebers.

“There’s always a slump. Always.”

But girls go through puberty outside of Germany too – so what’s the key?

Flexibility – not a hallmark of the German system – says Blum. Pubescent kids “need special support during that time. It’s not okay to expect pubescent skaters to stick to rigid rules and say if you don't meet my expectations, you'll be kicked off the team.”

That, he says, just pushes kids out of the sport, since if they are dropped from a state or national team they do not get cheap ice time or coaching subsidies.

A different approach?

Some countries deal with the challenge by not focusing on the individual events.

"Countries with fewer resources are turning to dance and pairs, because individual events are almost impossible to compete in,” Xavier Cherta, general secretary of the Spanish Ice Sports Federation, told dpa.

Not a skating problem?

Maybe – at least if you listen to Germany’s men's Olympic champion – the problem is not with the sport at all.

“So much of what is wrong in Germany at the moment is that a [top] performance is almost frowned upon,” Schnelldorfer told dpa.

“Today's society is very strange, where achievement and work no longer count for anything. They are no longer important,” the champion skater says.

Whatever the factors, those involved are not willing to give up.
“We all love this sport,” says Blum. “We just want to see progress and we're not satisfied with being mediocre or not making it to the Olympics.”