MILAN — Alysa Liu is left to carry the hopes of the “Blade Angels” into the women’s free skate at the Milan Cortina Olympics.
The reigning world champion was the only one of American’s vaunted figure skating trio to put herself in contention for gold after the short program Tuesday night. Liu landed a triple lutz-triple loop, the hardest combination that any woman attempted, and sat only two points back of leader Ami Nakai and right behind her Japanese teammate Kaori Sakamoto on the leaderboard.
“I am really happy about how I skated,” Liu said, “and my siblings, my best friends and a ton of my family is out there. And I saw them on the warmup. I also saw them during my program, so, I don’t know. It was a really cool moment, because they never come to watch like this. I’m really glad I did super well. I felt super grounded and I connected with my program on another level.”
Things didn’t go nearly as well for the rest of the American team Tuesday night.
Isabeau Levito was dinged for under-rotating her triple loop and got leveled down for her step sequence, which is where she tends to pick up points on the competition. It left her in eighth place and a long shot to climb her way onto the podium Thursday night.
Amber Glenn, the three-time reigning U.S. champion, was right in the medal mix until her final jump.
After landing a huge opening triple axel — Glenn and Nakai were the only ones in the women’s field to attempt the 3 1/2-revolution jump — she kept the momentum going with a triple flip-triple toe loop. But something seemed amiss as Glenn approached a triple loop, and she wound up bailing out of it. The resulting double loop became an invalid element and earned her no points.
The lost points on the jump, somewhere in the range of seven or eight, took away any chance of being a medal contender.
“I had it,” Glenn told her coach, Damon Allen, as she tried to hold back the tears stepping off the ice.
“It’s not over,” he replied, giving her a hug.
It certainly was not the way Glenn wanted to end a night that began with the euphoria of a message from Madonna. Her song “Like a Prayer” serves as the soundtrack to Glenn’s free skate, and Madonna had seen a clip of the short program and sent a video to Glenn, telling her, “Go get that gold.”
Glenn already has one from the team event on the opening weekend of the Winter Games. Liu also has one from that event.
Now, it’s up to Liu if the Americans are going to bring home a medal from the individual competition.
She also can salvage what has been a largely frustrating Olympics for U.S. Figure Skating. While it won the team event, ice dancers Madison Chock and Evan Bates were left with a bittersweet silver medal thanks in part to some questionable scoring by the French judge, while two-time world champion and Olympic favorite Ilia Malinin crashed out of the men’s free skate.
Liu has experience on this stage, having finished sixth at the 2022 Beijing Games. She also has a carefree attitude after going through a brief retirement, which allowed her to learn a whole lot about herself and put figure skating into perspective.
Liu was asked whether she thinks she can beat the Japanese on Thursday night.
“I don’t think about stuff like that,” she replied. “Whether I beat them or not is not my goal. My goal is just to do my programs and share my story and I don’t need to be over or under anyone to do that.”
