Alysa Liu is left to carry the hopes of the “Blade Angels” into the women’s free skate at the Milan Cortina Olympics after Amber Glenn and Isabeau Levito didn’t get the scores they were looking for to dominate the top spots in the short program.
Liu, the 20-year-old reigning world champion who came back after retiring four years ago, delivered a stellar short program that featured a triple lutz-triple loop, the hardest combination that any woman tried Tuesday night, and sat two points back of Japan’s Ami Nakai (78.71) and right behind Kaori Sakamoto (77.23) on the leaderboard.
“I can’t even describe how different it is,” Liu said after her carefree performance in which she scored 76.59. “I mean, just the fact that my family and friends are here and the fact that it’s not COVID and the fact that I am here with programs that I love and I’m proud of enough to like, show people and like, rep and, like, I love my dresses a lot. Like I’m super confident in myself, in everything. It goes beyond my skating.”
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Things didn’t go nearly as well for the rest of the American team in the individual event.
The youngest member of the U.S. figure skating team at the 2026 Winter Olympics, 18-year-old 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.
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Glenn, the three-time reigning U.S. champion, was right in the 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 her 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, was the difference in being a contender entering the free skate.
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“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.
It was not the way Glenn wanted to end a night that began with the euphoria of a message from Madonna, the “Queen of Pop,” whose song “Like A Prayer” serves as the soundtrack to her free skate. Madonna had seen a clip of the short program and sent a video to Glenn, telling her, “Go get that gold.”
The 26-year-old is the oldest U.S. women’s singles skater to compete in an Olympics in 98 years, according to U.S. Figure Skating. She’s also the first out LGBTQ woman to skate at an Olympic Games.
Glenn already has one gold 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 event. The last U.S. woman to become an Olympic champion was Sarah Hughes in 2002, and the last to medal was Sasha Cohen, who took home silver in 2006.
The free skate is scheduled for Thursday, Feb. 19, at 1 p.m. ET.
