Isabeau Levito claims final nugget in U.S. gold rush at World Junior skating

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Isabeau Levito claims final nugget in U.S. gold rush at World Junior skating


One after another, the final four skaters in the women’s free skate at the World Junior Championships performed with assurance and compelling quality, brightening the end of a long and muddled figure skating season.

All did clean programs, the best by surprising Jia Shin of South Korea, who won the free and nearly upset favored Isabeau Levito of the United States for the title Sunday in Tallinn, Estonia.

Levito, gritting her way through the free and getting some benefit of the doubt from the judges, held on by just 0.54 points to become the first U.S. woman atop the world junior podium since Rachael Flatt in 2008. Compatriot Lindsay Thorngren earned the bronze.

Levito’s gold medal, following those in ice dance by brother-sister team Oona and Gage Brown and in men’s singles by Ilia Malinin, gave Team USA three of the four world junior titles for the first time since 2008.

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Commanding the ice again after recent downfall, Ilia Malinin wins world junior gold in runaway

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Commanding the ice again after recent downfall, Ilia Malinin wins world junior gold in runaway

When you pick “quadg0d,” for an Instagram handle, the hubris factor comes into play.

It did for Ilia Malinin in the free skate at last month’s World Championships, when the skating gods reminded him that ice is slippery for mortals trying to navigate it divinely on thin blades.

So Malinin found himself reassured to get back on solid footing as he won the World Junior Championships in a runaway Saturday in Tallinn, Estonia.

“I am relieved that I finished the season really, really good,” Malinin said.

He did it with junior record scores in the short program (88.99), free skate (187.12) and total (276.11), beating silver medalist Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan by 41.80 points. That was more than twice the previous largest winning margin, 19.12, by Adam Rippon of the U.S. in 2009.

And Malinin did it with four fully rotated quadruple jumps, reprising his dazzling free skate at the U.S. Championships, when his silver medal performance led to controversy after he was not selected for the Olympic team.

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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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With a surprising medal at worlds, Vincent Zhou starts to step out of his Olympic pit

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With a surprising medal at worlds, Vincent Zhou starts to step out of his Olympic pit

Vincent Zhou apologized a couple days ago for sounding like a broken record, stuck at the point of describing his Olympic nightmare, a story that sounded just as poignant and painful in every retelling.

The fates conspired to overwhelm Zhou last month in Beijing, leaving him to deal with the sadness of missed opportunities while spending a week in COVID-19 quarantine.

It was bad enough that a positive COVID-19 test forced him to withdraw from the singles competition after having helped the U.S. finish second to the Russian Olympic Committee in the team event. Then he lost the chance to celebrate the team medal in Beijing because the doping case involving Russian Kamila Valieva meant that medal presentation has been delayed until it is resolved, likely several months from now.

Finally, there was insult added to injury: when Zhou tried to board the bus for the Closing Ceremony, where he hoped to find some redemptive joy in his Olympic experience, an official said he had been identified as a COVID-19 close contact and could not go.

Three weeks later, waking up with the sense of being in what he called a “bottomless pit,” Zhou told his agent and coaches and others close to him that he felt his whole career has been a failure and for nothing.

In that mental state, he was ready to drop out of the World Championships in Montpellier, France, until another emotion took over, the feeling of not wanting to live with the regret of not having tried. Somehow, Zhou pulled himself together to do more than just try, and he wound up skating well enough to win the bronze medal, a result that reminded the two-time Olympian not to lose faith in himself.

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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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