Figure Ice Skating

• Other eligibility rules
Skaters may represent a country of which they are not yet a citizen in most competitions, except the Olympics which require citizenship.
Each country is restricted to three entries per event, thus, even if a skater has a high season's best, he or she may not be sent to major events if their country has many good skaters in a discipline. Some skaters have tried to circumvent this by switching to another country. In response, the ISU introduced rules barring a skater from 24 months of international competition from the date of his or her last event for the previous country.
For pair skaters and ice dancers, this may be reduced to one year to reduce the difficulty of finding a new partner but only if the skater obtains a release from his or her previous skating federation. Even if a skater has dual citizenship, the previous federation may block him or her for 24 months from the date of his or her last ISU Championships (Worlds, Europeans, Four Continents, Junior Worlds) or 12 months if he competed in some other international competition.