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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To Alysa Liu, competing and comforting "just another day"

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To Alysa Liu, competing and comforting "just another day"

Amber Glenn always wears her heart on her sleeve, her joy or dismay clear for the world to see.

“It’s what makes me relatable, but it also makes it hard to hide,” Glenn said after her Wednesday practice at the Milano Ice Skating Arena.

Some 18 hours earlier, her face had displayed increasing levels of devastation, reflecting a heart crushed by the mistake on her favorite jump in the short program. It was an error so costly it left the three-time U.S. champion in 13th place, slightly more than nine points from 3rd, her hopes to contend for a medal probably gone.

Glenn looked inconsolable.

Reigning world champion Alysa Liu saw that. And when she might have been celebrating the strong skate that put her third, just 2.12 points from short program winner Ami Nakai of Japan heading into Thursday’s free skate final, Liu was more concerned about helping her teammate.

To Glenn, that ability to sense the heart of the matter is what has brought Liu to where she is today, delighting in skating for its essence rather than for where she winds up in the standings.

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Sophie Joline von Felten heads to figure skating nationals free from Olympic pressure

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Sophie Joline von Felten heads to figure skating nationals free from Olympic pressure

Ice skating had been a big part of Inna von Felten’s childhood in Russia.

Her father, Yuri, was a city speedskating champion in Moscow. And when Soviet sports officials visited her kindergarten to look for potential athletes, a key part of the country’s talent identification system, they thought the smallish Inna fit the physical parameters for a pairs figure skater. She would skate pairs from age 4 to 13, her competitive career ended by a knee injury.

Yet the initial motivation for Inna to have her only child, Sophie Joline, try figure skating came from elsewhere.

Inna and her Swiss husband, Daniel von Felten, were on a Christmas holiday trip to Paris when they saw a pop-up seasonal rink on the Champs-Elysees. The setting was so magical Inna imagined skating there one day with her daughter, and she found out young children were allowed on the adult part of the rink with a parent if they could skate unassisted.

“I had her try skating to make my wish come true,” Inna said.

What followed was a clear example of needing to be a little careful about what you wish for. The wish has morphed into a dream come true for her daughter, and it has turned the family’s life into a bi-continental adventure.

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Despite twists and turns, U.S. ice dancers Zingas and Kolesnik stay in fast lane

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Despite twists and turns, U.S. ice dancers Zingas and Kolesnik stay in fast lane

There are a lot of unexpected plot twists in the story of how Emilea Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik got here.

Not the least of those surprises simply is what “here” means to them this week.

The U.S. ice dancers are in Helsinki, Finland, where they will compete beginning Friday in the Finlandia Trophy event on the Grand Prix circuit, with a chance to make the Grand Prix Final and/or simply build their case for getting one the three U.S. ice dance spots at the 2026 Winter Olympics. 

Who would have imagined a convert from singles skating in 2022 and an ice dancer from a war-ravaged city in Ukraine could be a team in this position so quickly?

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Madison Chock and Evan Bates find appreciation in swan song Olympic season

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Madison Chock and Evan Bates find appreciation in swan song Olympic season

They have been around the competitive ice dance world so long it would be easy for Madison Chock and Evan Bates to develop a sense of ennui, a sense of been there, done that, of thinking how can their 1,000th practice or seventh appearance at the U.S. stop on the Grand Prix circuit be anything more that a forgettable way station on the trip to their ultimate goal.

It's just such an attitude that the winners of the last three world titles have been consciously rejecting as they prepare to skate together in a fourth Olympics this February in Milan, Italy, where they would seek the one thing missing from their sparkling résumé: an ice dance Olympic medal (preferably a gold one.)

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