MOSCOW — The figure skater Evgenia Medvedeva of Russia was already a two-time world champion and a consensus favorite to win gold at the 2018 Winter Olympics weeks before her 18th birthday last autumn.
At a competition in Moscow in October, she laughed easily. Months earlier, she had skated as the anime character Sailor Moon, dressed as a Japanese schoolgirl turned superhero. Now she performed as Tolstoy’s tragic Anna Karenina, joking, “I’m skating to show that I won’t be an old maid.”
She carried a toy cat like a security blanket but also became the assertive face of Russia’s Olympic athletes.