With four Olympic medals, Kaori Sakamoto didn't need gold to cement her legacy

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With four Olympic medals, Kaori Sakamoto didn't need gold to cement her legacy

Kaori Sakamoto knew well before the scores were announced. She skated off the ice Thursday night at the Milano Ice Skating Arena with a glum expression on her face. She could sense that the one jump she couldn’t pull off in her free skate was going to keep her from the gold medal.

Alysa Liu, the soon-to-be champion, got up from the leader’s chair as soon as Sakamoto left the ice surface. Liu hugged Sakamoto tight and long. A tear worked its way slowly down Sakamoto’s right cheek. More tears would flow later from the most decorated women’s figure skater in Japanese history.

“I really wanted to skate perfectly here,” Sakamoto said via an interpreter. “Knowing that I couldn’t, and it was the difference for the gold, was painful. I couldn’t stop the tears.”

This was her third and last Winter Olympics. The second, four years ago, had also ended in tears so strong her body shook as she wept. Those tears looked like a mixture of happiness over winning what she calls “a miracle” bronze medal and relief over simply surviving the chaos surrounding the women’s singles event in Beijing.

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Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara pulled off tear-filled comeback to win Olympic gold

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Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara pulled off tear-filled comeback to win Olympic gold

Ryuichi Kihara looked crestfallen as he left the ice after the Olympic pairs short program Sunday, knowing his big mistake on a lift would be costly for him and his partner, Riku Miura.

The team’s coach, Bruno Marcotte, quickly tried to temper Kihara’s disappointment, which would increase when he heard the scores that put the reigning world champions from Japan in 5th place heading into Monday’s free skate.

“It’s not over,” Marcotte insisted to Kihara, then repeated. “It’s not over.”

How right he was.

And how different Kihara’s emotions were when it was over, even if someone watching without knowing the context might have wondered why he was bawling, his face contorted by the tears of joy just a few hours after he had finished crying tears of distress.

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With all eyes on him, Ilia Malinin masters performing under pressure

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With all eyes on him, Ilia Malinin masters performing under pressure

Athletes for whom an Olympic gold medal is the highest achievement in their sport often try to whistle past the graveyard by saying they intend to treat the Games as just another competition.

Those who are favored to win a gold medal usually double down on that mantra.

Figure skater Ilia Malinin, who came to the 2026 Winter Olympics as the overwhelming favorite to win the men’s singles gold, found out the another-day-at-the-office approach stopped working once he got into the atmosphere of the five-ring circus for the first time.

“I didn’t expect it to be that much,” he said.

And that showed in his unremarkable two performances in the team event, when he skated less impressively than expected but well enough to help his teammates win gold by one point over Japan. He was second in the short program and a shaky first in the free skate, when he needed a win to keep Team USA atop the podium Sunday.

Lesson learned, as was evident in Tuesday’s individual short program, which Malinin soared to victory at the Milan Ice Skating Arena on the strength of the huge quadruple jumps that are what separate him from every other skater in the world.

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Team USA's path to Olympic figure skating team gold was full of surprises

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Team USA's path to Olympic figure skating team gold was full of surprises

This time, the Olympic figure skating team event is over when it was over.

Team USA claimed a second straight gold, and the medals were hung around the necks of the seven U.S. skaters who took part in the team event barely 30 minutes after the competition ended at the Milan Ice Skating Arena.

And it wasn’t over until it was over, coming down to a thrilling head-to-head contest between the final two men’s singles skaters — Ilia Malinin of the U.S. and Shun Sato of Japan.

“I was more nervous watching Ilia than I was skating myself,” said U.S. captain and pairs skater Danny O'Shea.

Malinin had lost the short program decisively to Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama, who was replaced for the free skate by Sato, recently stronger in the longer phase of events than Kagiyama. That left some doubt about how the Quadg0d would handle the free.

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Alysa Liu competes at her second Olympic Games with joy

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Alysa Liu competes at her second Olympic Games with joy

Just before starting her short program in the 2026 Olympic figure skating team event, the new Alysa Liu cruised along the rink boards, smiling broadly, slapping hands with her coaches, Massimo Scali and Phillip DiGuglielmo, as she rocketed past them. 

In the midst of her program, she responded to a front-leaning landing on her double Axel jump with a bemusedly funky facial expression, a reaction Liu could cheerily describe as “like, oopsie” since the imbalance didn’t result in a faceplant.

As she skated off the ice toward the Team USA Box at the Milano Ice Skating Arena after a performance that was fallible but never fragile, Liu pumped both fists in unison, yelled, “Yeah!,” then turned around to tumble into a group hug when her scores were announced.

“I want people to see everything about me,” Liu said, then added an hour later, “I love, I guess, being noticed.”

How different that is than four years ago, when the old Alysa Liu might have preferred to skate with the lights off at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, when the sport brought darkness rather than joy to her life, gave her pain rather than pleasure.

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