For Isabeau Levito, once No. 1, the perspective is different

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For Isabeau Levito, once No. 1, the perspective is different

ST. LOUIS, Missouri — This was going to be Isabeau Levito’s Olympic quadrennium, a four-year span in which she would become the leading lady of U.S. Figure Skating and smoothly glide past markers on the way to the 2026 Winter Games in her mother’s hometown of Milan.

After all, Levito, now age 18, had made the podium in her senior national debut four years ago, winning bronze after taking second in the free skate. At that point, she was below the Olympic age minimum.

By five months after the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, all three women on the U.S. team in China had retired from competition.

A year later, Levito won the short program and the free skate at the 2023 U.S. Championships, seemingly establishing her national dominion with her balletic skating.

“She was having her moment, and since then she has been up and down,” said Adam Rippon, 2018 Olympic team event bronze medalist and an NBC contributor.

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Alysa Liu swept up in a glittering figure skating whirlwind

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Alysa Liu swept up in a glittering figure skating whirlwind

LAKE PLACID, N.Y. -- Alysa Liu’s Olympic season began three months ago in Norwood, Massachusetts for a U.S. Figure Skating pre-season training camp.

Then came Bergamo, Italy for a Challenger Series competition. And Chongqing, China, 1,200 miles southwest of Beijing, for the Cup of China Grand Prix competition, followed by a (purposely) sleepless night and a flight the next day to New York City for the U.S. Olympic committee’s media days previewing the 2026 Winter Olympics.

Next was a little more than two weeks at her home in the San Francisco Bay area. And, in the latest episode of 'Where’s Alysa,' she wound up in the you-can’t-get-there-from-here north woods of New York state, specifically Lake Placid, for the Saatva Skate America Grand Prix event.

Ms. Liu heads back to the Bay Area with the Skate America gold medal, her first win at a Grand Prix event, and another long trip added to her Olympic season itinerary. This one is to Nagoya, Japan for the Grand Prix Final in two and one-half weeks.

Combined with a second place at Cup of China, her victory Sunday earned the reigning world champion one of the six singles spots in the Grand Prix Final women’s field.

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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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Under the circumstances, figure skating worlds – and future – hard to assess

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Under the circumstances, figure skating worlds – and future – hard to assess

Even in normal times, it always has been hard to draw a lot of conclusions from the World Figure Skating Championships that immediately follow the Olympics.

The rigors of an Olympic season lead many medalists to take a pass on worlds. Those who do compete often are obviously fatigued.

It is exponentially harder to assess the competition that ended Saturday in Montpellier, France.

No world meet has taken place in more abnormal circumstances.

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Still just 16, Alysa Liu has met the challenges of going from insouciant prodigy to world medalist

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Still just 16, Alysa Liu has met the challenges of going from insouciant prodigy to world medalist

You look at Alysa Liu, and you see a 16-year-old with braces, and it doesn’t seem possible she still is that young because of how much has happened to her in the past four years, all of it in the public eye.

Liu has gone through adolescence under the relentless glare of a spotlight she attracted in January 2019, at age 13, by becoming the youngest U.S. women’s singles champion ever. She was a prodigy who would bear huge expectations for two seasons before she was even eligible to compete at the senior level in her sport.

It all was so easy at the start, with one landmark achievement after another, a second U.S. title in 2020, victories on the Junior Grand Prix circuit, history-making triple axel and quadruple jumps.

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