Four years ago, the U.S. figure skating team had its worst results ever at the Winter Olympics.
The 2022 team named after the U.S. Championships ended Sunday could do better than 2018 – although it may not be a substantial improvement, and the assessment of it will depend largely on Nathan Chen’s performance in men’s singles.
Read MoreIn a span of less than 15 minutes, everyone watching the men’s short program at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships saw a summary of the last decade in men’s singles skating.
You had a 17-year-old, Ilia Malinin, whose Instagram handle is @quadg0d, burst onto the senior nationals scene with a demonstration of why that choice of sobriquet was not self-aggrandizing and how fast a mastery of big jumps can push a skater toward podiums at significant events. He is a young man for these times in the sport.
And next you had a 27-year-old, Jason Brown, who competed in his first senior nationals 11 years ago, using his mastery of movement, expression and edge work as he fights to stay on podiums without the big jumps that bring big rewards in the sport’s judging system. His skating is timeless and yet relatively out of fashion on contemporary score sheets.
Malinin and Brown each was brilliant in his own way during a competition Saturday in which the overall level was extraordinary, with Nathan Chen and Vincent Zhou taking command at the top and others, like Jimmy Ma and Camden Pulkinen, earning career-best scores with performances that commanded full attention.
“That was a pretty incredible competition,” Zhou said, “not just in U.S. history but in relation to ISU international competitions. Definitely an insane, high-level event.”
Read MoreIt was something of a war of attrition, the women’s singles event at these 2022 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Nashville, with Covid or physical issues eliminating one contender after another.
So it was no surprise that the survivor, Mariah Bell, was a skater who had doggedly stuck it out, season after season, before battling through the free skate Friday to win a first national title in her ninth try.
At 25, Bell also became the oldest U.S. women’s champion in the 95 years since Beatrix Loughran won at 26 in 1927.
And, most importantly, no matter that the decision won’t be announced publicly until Saturday afternoon, Bell also claimed a spot on the U.S. team headed to the 2022 Winter Olympics next month in Beijing. The other two places will almost certainly go to Karen Chen, who finished second, and Alysa Liu, forced out of the free skate after testing positive for Covid earlier Friday.
Read MoreIt is simple, really, what Gracie Gold wanted out of her eighth and possibly final appearance at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships.
“This nationals for me is the cherry on top of what I consider a pretty successful comeback attempt,” Gold said a day before the women’s singles event began with the short program Thursday in Nashville.
Truth be told, just coming back constituted a considerable success for Gold, given the multiple issues – eating disorders, depression, anxiety – she had dealt with for several years. She missed the 2018 and 2019 nationals and battled just to qualify each of the past three seasons.
At 26, Gold came to this one in a better place competitively than she had been in a long time. At her final qualifying event last November in Georgia, she showed flashes in her short program of the skater who had won national titles in 2014 and 2016 and finished fourth in the 2014 Olympics.
“I’ve had lots of good training over the past two or three months,” Gold said Wednesday. “I have been really proud of myself and my team and all the hard work that we’ve done, so my goal is to really show that and kind of show off a little bit like old times.
“The short program in Georgia was really nice and long overdue. I hope to have a similar outcome tomorrow.”
This one was even nicer – on the score sheet and in the way Gold reacted, a wide smile on her face for nearly the final minute of a 2-minute, 40-second program that ended with the crowd at Bridgestone Arena on its feet to applaud.
Read MoreAbout 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.
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Philip Hersh, formerly Olympic specialist for the Chicago Tribune, has covered 20 Olympic Games. He often uses sport as a way to write about the culture of a country or athlete. READ FULL BIO
