Bradie Tennell returns to U.S. Figure Skating Championships after nightmarish comeback

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Bradie Tennell returns to U.S. Figure Skating Championships after nightmarish comeback

Bradie Tennell was ready. Her bags were packed for an early October trip to the Japan Open, an event that had would have symbolic resonance for her. It was to bring a traumatic part of her life full circle toward its end.

Tennell would be returning to figure skating competition in the same country where she had last competed 20 months earlier, at the 2021 World Team Trophy, before a right foot injury that frustratingly defied diagnosis.  The two-time U.S. champion had missed an entire competitive season, missed a chance at going to a second Olympics, missed the part of her identity that was Bradie Tennell the athlete.

It was the day before she was to leave for Japan. Tennell was practicing at her new training base in Nice, France, where she moved last September from her home in suburban Chicago (before her injury, she had been training in Colorado Springs). She was hoping such a dramatic change could bring renewed energy to her oft-delayed comeback.

Tennell had been training well, regularly doing clean program run-throughs in practice. She had been able to work her way back slowly and deliberately, with a schedule that allowed her to be patient.

And then, in her words, “something weird” happened on the landing of a triple toe loop jump. And now she had pain in her left foot, and the trip to Japan was off, as was a planned trip to Hungary for the Budapest Trophy a week after the Japan Open, as was … another season?

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Bold Isabeau Levito faces skating idol at Grand Prix Final

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Bold Isabeau Levito faces skating idol at Grand Prix Final

The highlight of Isabeau Levito’s season so far came at Skate America in October.

It wasn’t the silver medal Levito won there, in her debut on figure skating’s senior Grand Prix circuit.

It was meeting the reigning world champion – and 2022 Skate America winner – Kaori Sakamoto of Japan.

“She is one of my idols,” Levito said of Sakamoto, who is also the 2022 Olympic bronze medalist.  “Right before her long program at worlds, you could see she was determined and strong and fierce.  Her eyes would obliterate you.

“That look and that fierceness and determination. . .I admire it so much, and I hope to have it someday.”

At only 15, Levito already belies her delicacy of movement on the ice with such powerful determination to reach her aspirations that she gets to meet Sakamoto again this week at the Grand Prix Final in Torino, Italy, where the senior women’s event begins Friday.

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For Alexa Knierim, Brandon Frazier, a historic world pairs’ title is reason to continue skating

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For Alexa Knierim, Brandon Frazier, a historic world pairs’ title is reason to continue skating

They had been together so little time, barely a season of true international competition when you factor in the year disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and yet Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier had still accomplished so much.

So, at the end of a whirlwind 2022 season, when they missed the national championships after Frazier contracted COVID but returned for landmark performances by a U.S. pair at the Olympics and world championships, they inevitably came to a career crossroads.

Should they be satisfied with what they already had done competitively, finishing on the high of skating flawlessly to become the first U.S. team to win the pairs’ world title since 1979? Should they end on that high that followed having won an Olympic team event medal and earning sixth place in the individual event at the 2022 Winter Games, the best U.S. pairs’ finish at the Olympics since 2002?

Or should they keep competing to see how much more they could do, both in terms of tangible results and the intangible quality that makes a pair more than two individuals skating together?

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In pushing each other, Hanyu and Chen have redefined the meaning of figure skating greatness

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In pushing each other, Hanyu and Chen have redefined the meaning of figure skating greatness

The figure skating rivalry between Nathan Chen of the United States and Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan is enduring, but sporadic. Compelling, but infrequent.

Hanyu is the two-time reigning Olympic gold medalist. Chen has won the last three world titles. But they have met in the same individual competition just nine times over six seasons.

And that only makes the rivalry more compelling. Absence makes the heat grow stronger.

Never will it be more intense than next Monday, when Hanyu and Chen begin skating for the men’s singles title at the 2022 Winter Olympics.

What happens next week can only embellish Hanyu’s legacy. By becoming in 2018 the first man to win consecutive Olympic gold medals in singles since Dick Button of the United States in 1952, Hanyu already became a permanent member of a pantheon open to few.

Chen, yet to win an individual Olympic medal, is seeking a career-defining singles gold. Even if he gets it, Chen understands his rival’s place in the sport’s history will remain distinct.

“He is in a completely different status than I am as a skater,” Chen told me before this season began. “I will always respect that.”

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Nathan Chen likely to skate 2019-20 programs at 2022 U.S. Championships

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Nathan Chen likely to skate 2019-20 programs at 2022 U.S. Championships

Three-time world champion Nathan Chen has gone back to the programs that produced his career best scores.

They are the short program to Charles Aznavour’s version of “La Bohème” and the free skate to an Elton John medley that Chen used in the 2019-20 season, which ended prematurely when the onset of the Covid pandemic forced cancellation of the 2020 World Championships in Montreal.

At the 2019 Grand Prix Final, Chen’s short program to the Aznavour earned him a personal best 110.38 points. With the Elton John free skate at that event, Chen scored a world record 224.92 for a world record total of 335.30.

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