I set a tweet storm personal best today.
Pushed to do it after what Papadakis & Cizeron, Zagitova, Medvedeva and Tursynbaeva accomplished on the ice in Japan.
So much fantastic skating, in so many ways.
Read MoreOk, I’m going to try something here. And, not, it’s not because it’s the easy way out. It’s because I said everything I wanted about Day I of the World Figure Skating Championships in a 14-item Twitter thread…and a couple later tweets.
So, in a bow to 2019 short-form journalism, here they are:
Read MoreTwenty-five seconds into her short program Thursday, Alysa Liu made history.
She was the first woman to land a triple Axel in the short program at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships.
Not bad for a 13-year-old making her senior debut at nationals.
And not enough for Liu. She wants to make more.
“She definitely wants to be the youngest champion,” said her coach, Laura Lipetsky. “That’s in the back of her head.”
It won’t be easy. Liu, second after the short program, likely will need another historic performance to overcome reigning champion Bradie Tennell, who takes a 2.71-point lead into Friday’s free skate.
But one would not be wise to discount the possibility of Liu pulling it off.
For the whole story on NBCSports.Com, click here:
And for a brief story on Bradie Tennell taking command of the short program, click here:
The idea was to show Alysa Liu what her future might look like and for her to get comfortable seeing herself in that picture.
So Samuel Auxier, U.S. Figure Skating’s international committee chair, arranged for Liu and her coach, Laura Lipetsky, to attend the junior and senior Grand Prix Final competitions earlier this month in Vancouver.
“Having judged and watched the Junior Grand Prixes, it was clear our skaters competing their first time in them were often very intimidated by the Russian and Japanese ladies,” Auxier said.
He soon realized that Liu isn’t intimidated by much.
“At first, she was amazed by the Russian ladies, but then (she) wanted to get out there and show them her triple Axels,” Auxier said.
That’s right, triple Axels.
The triple Axels Liu, 13, plans to show in the senior competition at next month’s U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Detroit.
Read MoreBradie Tennell had awakened at 4 a.m., as usual, and arrived at the Twin Rinks Ice Pavilion in Chicago’s northwest suburbs by 6 a.m., as usual. Now it was early afternoon, and the 2018 Olympic team event bronze medalist was on her sixth of seven 30-minute training session of the day.
It is a workload that befits her personality on and off the ice: relentless, no-nonsense, a grinder in a sport where the surface glitz often hides the lunch-bucket labor that figure skaters put in daily on rinks like this one.
Not all of her training days are so intense. Her coach of 11 years, Denise Myers, insists that the 20-year-old Tennell cut back at times to make sure she stays healthy after having had her skating career threatened by back problems in both the 2016 and 2017 seasons. So there are days with reduced jumping and days with no jumping at all and days with fewer sessions and fewer full program run-throughs.
“I like to take as long as I need to get everything done,” Tennell said. “I don’t really count the hours.”
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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
