Not since the co-creator of the Minions disavowed their history have we had a despicable scandal like this. The Spanish figure skater Tomàs-Llorenç Guarino Sabaté, who’s set to compete at the 2026 Winter Olympics, will now be allowed to perform his Minion short-form routine after an initial copyright denial. Guarino Sabaté had been using the song for the entirety of the international skating season — he even wears matching blue overalls and a yellow T-shirt, cutting quite the Kevin-esque figure while landing those Axels — music of which he said was chosen to “bring joy and a playful style to the ice while still meeting every required element to show that skating as a male Olympic figure skater can be fun.” (One extended step sequence features Guarino Sabaté bumping to EDM while “papaya” is repeated in Minionese.) In his celebratory update, the six-time Spanish national champion credited those who “reposted, shared, and supported” his routine for moving the needle on Universal’s reversal, although he’s still waiting on two other musical elements to be cleared.
Jackie Wong, a skating analyst currently on the ground in Milan, says getting clearance to use certain songs was never a significant issue for figure skaters until a blowup in 2022. Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier, an American pairs team and Olympic medalists, repeatedly performed a routine to a cover of “House of the Rising Sun” from the composing duo Heavy Young Heathens. “They sued everybody under the sun, including NBC,” Wong explains. “So that set off a chain reaction in the figure-skating world where people were asked to preemptively go through a whole process of music clearance. That process was never a thing before those two guys sued. It freaked a lot of people out.” The case was settled out of court, with the Guardian reporting Heavy Young Heathens were awarded $1.4 million.
