A thank you to all those who helped me do what I love: write about figure skating (and the Olympics)

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A thank you to all those who helped me do what I love: write about figure skating (and the Olympics)

And, now that I have finished posting the last few stories to my Blog, I can close the books on the 2026 Winter Olympics. (You can find all the stories here.)
I want to thank NBC Olympics & Paralympics for letting me be part of its coverage team for the second straight Olympics - and to thank in particular the tireless crew of editors and writers at the NBC Olympics web site. It was a privilege to work with you.

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"She doesn't want to be famous. She wants to be Alysa."

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"She doesn't want to be famous. She wants to be Alysa."

Alysa Liu won two Olympic gold medals by doing things her way.

And, her coach says, Liu hopes to keep doing that once she leaves Italy on Sunday.

That’s why it’s probably a good thing that she has skating commitments to keep her busy for the next two months, including a trip to Prague to defend her world title in late March.

“No press tour right away, no nothing,” coach Phillip DiGuglielmo said Saturday via telephone from Milan, not long before Liu closed down the exhibition gala’s solo performances.

“We have to figure out how we are going to train (for worlds). We may have to ask the rink management (in Oakland, Calif.) to close the rink when she trains because of the attention she has gotten. “Dealing with that kind of attention is not what she wants now. She doesn’t want to be famous. She wants to be Alysa.”

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Alysa Liu is the champion who can't stop smiling

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Alysa Liu is the champion who can't stop smiling

You write this screenplay for a biopic about a figure skater and take it to Hollywood.

You start with a kid whose immigrant father puts her on the ice at age 5. You skip ahead to show her as a 13-year-old beating adults to win national titles when she is too young to compete at even the junior level internationally. You get her to the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing when she is just 16.

You have her retire a few months later because she hates a sport that is no longer what she wants to do, hates that it has consumed her life.

You have a great section where she tosses her skates into a closet, where they stay while she hangs out with her friends and four siblings and starts college. Then you watch her take them out 18 months later, go to a rink and land a triple jump as if she never had been away. You see her convince her old coaches to take her back because she wants to compete again — on her terms, not someone else’s.

You make the kid who once saw her sport as a grim exercise to be endured turn into a young woman who can’t stop smiling as she skates and practices skating and, heck, maybe even as she sleeps.

And that’s not even the half of it (don’t forget the spies) before you get to the final scene.

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Many questions, few answers for Malinin in Milan

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Many questions, few answers for Malinin in Milan

Ilia Malinin smiled broadly as he slapped hands with his father/coach, Roman Skorniakov, on the boards at the Milano Olympic Ice Center.

That was just before he skated to the center of the ice to begin his free skate Friday in the men’s singles event at the 2026 Winter Olympics.

No wonder he smiled. Malinin had a five-point lead over Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama after the short program. And his path toward an Olympic gold medal was seemingly clear of any obstacles after Kagiyama, skating before Malinin, made mistakes big and small on three of his first five jumping passes.

Malinin figured to be smiling even more broadly soon.

But when Malinin finished his four-minute free, he first masked his reaction by covering his face with his gloved hands.

He shook his head, lowered his eyes, shook his head again as he skated off the ice toward his father. Still out of breath, his mouth was open in a narrow rectangle. He shook his head one last time, each shake signaling that Malinin’s incomprehension was complete, just as it was for everybody who had watched him come undone.

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French team defying timelines for ice dance success

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French team defying timelines for ice dance success

It’s not supposed to happen this way in ice dance, having two skaters who teamed up less than a year ago leading the Olympics after the rhythm dance.

After all, the last three Olympic champions all had skated together seemingly forever, beginning when they were children: 18 years for 2022 gold medalists Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron of France; 21 years for 2018 winners Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir of Canada; 17 years for 2014 winners Meryl Davis and Charlie White of the United States.

"Longevity is incredibly important because of how complex both the training relationship and competitive relationship is, especially in ice dance, since the elements are so nuanced, and there’s so much relying on the performance and emotional chemistry," Ben Agosto, 2006 Olympic silver medalist with Tanith (Belbin) White, told me when Papadakis and Cizeron won.

And yet here we are, with Cizeron and his new partner, freshly minted French citizen Laurence Fournier Beaudry, beating three-time reigning world champions Madison Chock and Evan Bates of the United States by two whiskers in Monday’s opening phase of the 2026 ice dance event. It concludes with the free dance Wednesday.

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