Alysa Liu is the champion who can't stop smiling

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.

Read More

In pairs skating, Deanna Stellato-Dudek succeeds in 10-year quest

In pairs skating, Deanna Stellato-Dudek succeeds in 10-year quest

The results will tell you that Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps of Canada finished 14th of 19 teams in Sunday’s pairs short program at the 2026 Winter Olympics.

The results won’t tell that just by skating, Stellato-Dudek had succeeded in what seemed an utterly quixotic quest when she began it 10 years ago, that she had realized an improbable dream that nearly became an impossible one two weeks ago.

Stellato-Dudek, of course, couldn’t see it quite that way right now. The fierce competitive fire that carried her and Deschamps to the world title two years ago won’t be entirely banked by knowing that at age 42, she had become the oldest woman to compete in Olympic figure skating since 1928 and the third oldest in history, according to Olympedia.org.

Read More

Many questions, few answers for Malinin in Milan

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.

Read More

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

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.)

Read More

Her choice of music is no accident: Bradie Tennell is on a personal mission of trying to make another Olympic team

Her choice of music is no accident: Bradie Tennell is on a personal mission of trying to make another Olympic team

The story of Bradie Tennell’s long and decorated figure skating career has a satirically cartoonish side to it, which is something she wryly acknowledges, no matter that it has hurt like heck at times to be its protagonist.

“I have definitely felt a bit like Eeyore,” Tennell said, recalling the donkey in A.A. Milne’s Pooh stories with a perpetually aggrieved and ironically comedic view of his plight.

“They’re funny things, Accidents. You never have them till you’re having them,” Eeyore says in The House at Pooh Corner.

How true that has been for Tennell, 27, who makes her Grand Prix season debut this weekend at Skate Canada in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. For the last five seasons, it has been one thing after another for the two-time U.S. champion and 2018 Olympic team event bronze medalist.

Injuries. Boot problems. More injuries. Blade issues. Tennell kept trying to avoid having the other boot drop, because it usually hit her leg. Whether her travails were purely accidental or just the damage elite athletes incidentally do to their bodies and equipment, she had them all while trying to make another Olympic team.

Read More