With war at home in Ukraine, Anastasiia Smirnova and Danil Siianytsia persevere and embrace skating for the U.S.

/
With war at home in Ukraine, Anastasiia Smirnova and Danil Siianytsia persevere and embrace skating for the U.S.

There are thousands of threads in the tapestry of a life, with the sturdy and neutral monochrome warp threads covered by multiple colors of fine weft threads to create a scene that can pull together a moment in time or an enduring image.

Events can conspire to make the whole thing start to unravel, too, turning a settled and pleasant view into an unnervingly jarring one, and seemingly stable lives into ones full of uncertainty. That’s what has happened to the lives of U.S. pair skaters Anastasiia Smirnova and Danil Siianytsia.

In the weft of their tapestry, the azure blue and golden yellow threads of Ukraine’s flag combine with the coral red, bright white and navy blue threads of the United States. The colors illustrate the past, present and future of a team who left their native Dnipro, Ukraine two years apart to build sporting lives 5,200 miles away in suburban Minneapolis, where they train with coach Trudy Oltmanns.

Their move involved expected cultural and linguistic dislocation and separation from families, difficult but surmountable obstacles in an ever-more-connected world. None threatened the integrity and strength of either the warp or weft of their story.

“We had no problem adapting,” Siianytsia said in a recent Zoom interview, his English now fluent.

Then came last Feb. 24, when Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine began a war that has lasted nearly a year, tearing apart the fabrics of millions of lives.

Read More

Bold Isabeau Levito faces skating idol at Grand Prix Final

/
Bold Isabeau Levito faces skating idol at Grand Prix Final

The highlight of Isabeau Levito’s season so far came at Skate America in October.

It wasn’t the silver medal Levito won there, in her debut on figure skating’s senior Grand Prix circuit.

It was meeting the reigning world champion – and 2022 Skate America winner – Kaori Sakamoto of Japan.

“She is one of my idols,” Levito said of Sakamoto, who is also the 2022 Olympic bronze medalist.  “Right before her long program at worlds, you could see she was determined and strong and fierce.  Her eyes would obliterate you.

“That look and that fierceness and determination. . .I admire it so much, and I hope to have it someday.”

At only 15, Levito already belies her delicacy of movement on the ice with such powerful determination to reach her aspirations that she gets to meet Sakamoto again this week at the Grand Prix Final in Torino, Italy, where the senior women’s event begins Friday.

Read More

At age 14 and just 4-foot-9, figure skater Isabeau Levito within reach of senior podium at nationals

/
At age 14 and just 4-foot-9, figure skater Isabeau Levito within reach of senior podium at nationals

About 12 years ago, Chiara Garberi decided to check out the ice rink in her New Jersey neighborhood to see if it might be a place where she could skate for fun on weekends.

With her daughter, Isabeau Levito, in tow, Garberi arrived at a moment when competitive figure skaters were training. Levito, then age 2 ½, took one look at the situation and asked if she could go on the ice.

“I told her, `You need special shoes for that,’” Garberi recalled. “She saw a pair of rental skates next to the ice sheet and said, `Are those mine?’”

They would be, soon enough. Because what followed was a progression familiar to parents of kids who wind up in figure skating’s highest levels.

First came weekly learn-to-skate classes, which Garberi originally made a reward for her daughter if she finished her meals. Next, a year later, was asking a coach who was working with the beginners if Levito, at almost 4, was ready for a private lesson. (The answer was yes.) And then, a few years later, daily lessons. Now, all day at the rink, six days a week, with schoolwork fit in between and after skating sessions.

“Isabeau always tried to be better than everyone else, even in learn to skate,” said Yulia Kuznetsova, who has been Levito’s coach for 10 years.

Read More

By the numbers, Nathan Chen’s jumps add up to a new dimension of skating

/
By the numbers, Nathan Chen’s jumps add up to a new dimension of skating

Having basically exhausted the English language’s supply of superlatives to describe Nathan Chen’s skating over the past three seasons, I woke up Sunday morning looking for other ways to find context for what seemed his almost certain fifth straight U.S. title.

Without more than a gut feeling, which was intensified by his commanding execution Saturday of the most technically difficult short program he had done since 2018, I had a sense that Chen has had a remarkable success rate for several years in programs packed with the toughest array of jumps anyone ever has tried in the sport.

So, with the help of the data mining genius behind the invaluable web site skatingscores.com (who prefers anonymity), I set off to dredge through old scoring protocols to see whether statistical evidence supported my intuition about how consistently good Chen’s jumping has been during an unbeaten streak in 12 individual live competitions that began with the 2018 World Championships.

Read More

Adding more seats to its gravy train costs the IOC way more than it seems

/
Adding more seats to its gravy train costs the IOC way more than it seems

Sometimes things are hidden in plain sight.

And sometimes you find them deep in a publicly available document.

And sometimes they come to your attention because the keen eye of a colleague points them out, as, in this case, David Owen did for a recent blog on insidethegames.biz.

And the case in question is just another example of how International Olympic Committee members and those non-members who serve on IOC commissions live off the fat of the land.

And all these people are volunteers, ostensibly inclined to get involved with what is pretentiously called the Olympic Movement (capital “M” in IOC documents) out of an altruistic desire to help athletes in Olympic sports.

Altruism, it turns out, has its financial rewards, shared by an ever-growing number of people, as Owen detailed.

Read More