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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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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Alysa Liu performed for the people, especially her family, in Olympic short program

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Alysa Liu performed for the people, especially her family, in Olympic short program

Over the two seasons since Alysa Liu returned to figure skating, she has found happiness in performing for the audience rather than for the judges who decide what place she gets in competitions.

Because that audience for the 2026 Olympic short program included her four younger siblings, who had never been able to see their sister skate in either of the two phases of her career, Liu was even more overjoyed at the opportunity to perform for them.

She saw them, sitting with her father and her best friend, during the six-minute warmup that preceded her taking the ice as the first skater in the final group Tuesday night on Milan. She looked at them while heading into her double Axel jump and during her footwork sequence.

“I performed to the people and, like, they're right there, so I performed to them specifically,” Liu said. “It was a really cool moment.”

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

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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.

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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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