At 5-2 and just 15 years old, Isabeau Levito becomes commanding presence

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At 5-2 and just 15 years old, Isabeau Levito becomes commanding presence

SAN JOSE, Calif. – With a calm command belying her age, Isabeau Levito has taken control of U.S. women’s skating at age 15.

Levito came here as the solid favorite to take her first national title, and she did it with a seemingly effortless grace, her balletic style producing solid winning performances in both Thursday’s short program and Friday’s free skate.

She was the last of 18 skaters in the free skate, following rivals who made mistakes big and small. Levito did not need perfection, but her skating approached it, even if the execution of some jumps could have been better.

Levito left no doubt of her superiority and burst into a wide smile even before the scores were announced. After a narrow win over Bradie Tennell (.02 points) in the short program, Levito (223.33) wound up 10.21 points ahead of the runner-up Tennell (213.12) in the final standings.

Amber Glenn was third at 207.44. She, Levito and Tennell will fill the three women’s places on the U.S. team for the March World Championships in Japan.

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Figure skating champion Bradie Tennell, a competitive ‘shark,’ making comeback in new waters

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Figure skating champion Bradie Tennell, a competitive ‘shark,’ making comeback in new waters

A week after chronic foot pain forced Bradie Tennell to withdraw from the 2022 U.S. Figure Skating Championships, the impact of that situation hit her full force.

Tennell was the defending national champion, a good bet to make the 2022 Olympic team had she been healthy. But she was lying in bed in her family home in the Chicago suburbs as nationals was going on in Nashville.

She had lost the chance to realize her dream of skating in another Olympic Games. She had lost an entire competitive season. Then she realized a fundamental part of her also had been lost when walking to the kitchen became so painful it was easier to stay hungry until someone could bring her food.

“In my core, I’m an athlete,” Tennell said via telephone in an interview last week. “I take so much pride in being able to demand pretty much anything of my body and being able to do it. If I want to go on a 10-mile hike, I can go on a 10-mile hike. This was like my identity as an athlete being so suddenly ripped away.”

This lengthy phone and text interview was the first time the two-time U.S. champion and 2018 Olympian had spoken at length about what she described as an “honestly traumatic experience.”

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Still just 16, Alysa Liu has met the challenges of going from insouciant prodigy to world medalist

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Still just 16, Alysa Liu has met the challenges of going from insouciant prodigy to world medalist

You look at Alysa Liu, and you see a 16-year-old with braces, and it doesn’t seem possible she still is that young because of how much has happened to her in the past four years, all of it in the public eye.

Liu has gone through adolescence under the relentless glare of a spotlight she attracted in January 2019, at age 13, by becoming the youngest U.S. women’s singles champion ever. She was a prodigy who would bear huge expectations for two seasons before she was even eligible to compete at the senior level in her sport.

It all was so easy at the start, with one landmark achievement after another, a second U.S. title in 2020, victories on the Junior Grand Prix circuit, history-making triple axel and quadruple jumps.

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With personal best in worlds short, Mariah Bell aging like a fine wine

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With personal best in worlds short, Mariah Bell aging like a fine wine

In women’s singles skating, where youth has been served over the last 30 years, it is easy to think of a 25-year-old as a woman of a certain age.

So it was a big talking point in January when, at 25, Mariah Bell became the oldest U.S. women’s champion in 95 years and again in February when she became the oldest U.S. woman to compete in Olympic singles in 94 years, finishing 10th.

Now here we are in late March, less than a month before Bell’s 26 birthday, and she is doing the fine wine thing, getting better as time passes.

Call it aging gracefully, which describes Bell’s fluid, elegant skating in Wednesday’s short program at the World Figure Skating Championships in Montpellier, France.

In opening the final competition of a long season – perhaps the final competition of her lengthy career? – Bell had her highest short program score ever and her highest finish ever, third place, in any program at a global championship.

“I absolutely think I’m getting better,” Bell said. “As long as you want to and are dedicated, you can continue to improve.”

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From Michelle Kwan to Nathan Chen, passing an Olympic torch of representation

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From Michelle Kwan to Nathan Chen, passing an Olympic torch of representation

Nathan Chen has talked frequently about the motivational impact of growing up in Salt Lake City, where reminders of the 2002 Winter Games were widely visible around town throughout his childhood. He began skating at 3, not long after watching snippets of NBC’s Olympic broadcasts.

What captivated Chen equally was seeing -- both at the Olympics and in the following years -- a skater who was not only a champion but also a person who looked like him ... and his four siblings ... and his Chinese immigrant parents ... and others in the Chinese-American community.

That was Michelle Kwan, one of the most decorated and most admired skaters in history, who won an Olympic bronze medal in 2002 -- and, coincidentally, the third of her nine U.S. titles in Salt Lake City three months before Chen was born in 1999.

In interviews following his Olympic triumph Thursday, the first gold medal by a singles skater of Chinese ethnicity, Chen acknowledged more than once how much Kwan had meant to his career as a figure skater.

"Growing up in Salt Lake City and having a face like Michelle Kwan is very inspirational," he said. "Having an athlete that looks like you gives you the hope you can do the same. Michelle Kwan is certainly that for me. That goes back to the power of representation."

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