A Russian ball at figure skating worlds? Women’s medal sweep possible, not probable

/
A Russian ball at figure skating worlds? Women’s medal sweep possible, not probable

A year ago, three Russian women seemed ready to have a ball at the world figure skating championships.

A debutante ball.

Not only was Russia’s “A” team (each first name began with that letter) composed of first-year international seniors, there was a good chance they would sweep the medals, joining a 1991 U.S. trio as the only women to have done that at worlds.

After all, Aliona Kostornaya, Anna Shcherbakova and Aleksandra Trusova had finished first in all six 2019-20 Grand Prix events, each winning two, and they swept both the Grand Prix Final and European Championships podiums in that order.

Not only that, all three had the same coaching team, headed by Eteri Tutberidze in Moscow.

And then …

Read More

Karen Chen hopes to reprise helping U.S. gain third women’s figure skating spot for upcoming Olympics

/
Karen Chen hopes to reprise helping U.S. gain third women’s figure skating spot for upcoming Olympics

Karen Chen could not help herself. Even while trying to narrow her focus only to the free skate she was about to do at the 2017 World Figure Skating Championships, the bigger picture distracted her 17-year-old mind.

As she came out for her warm-up with the leading six skaters after the short program, Chen, in her first senior worlds, glanced at the overall standings on the video board in Helsinki’s Hartwall Arena. The numbers showed that her veteran teammate, Ashley Wagner, then 25, competing in her seventh worlds after winning silver the year before, had a free skate result that left her in danger of losing ground from her seventh place after the short program.

That meant the United States was in danger of not having a third women’s spot at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics, which had happened at two other Olympics when countries earned entries, in 1994 and 2010.

It meant Chen, fifth after the short program, not only realized but also admitted knowing that in this individual sport, this performance wouldn’t be only about her.

That will also be true at the 2021 World Championships beginning Wednesday in Stockholm, where Chen and reigning U.S. women’s champion Bradie Tennell are trying to earn a third women’s entry for their country at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. Whether the denouement is as dramatic as in 2017 is yet to be seen.

Read More

Reigning champ Nathan Chen doesn’t hide his anxieties about getting to, competing at figure skating worlds in Sweden

/
Reigning champ Nathan Chen doesn’t hide his anxieties about getting to, competing at figure skating worlds in Sweden

Nathan Chen could have given a blandly optimistic answer to a question of whether he had any concerns over the long flight (with a connection) to get him from Los Angeles to Stockholm for next week’s World Figure Skating Championships.

Chen could have given a similarly anodyne response to a question about his concerns about staying safe and healthy once he is on the ground in Sweden for nine days.

But during a Zoom teleconference last week, the two-time defending world champion chose not to do either a Pollyanna or a Pinocchio about issues related to travel and the competition environment at a worlds taking place during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Read More

Serendipitous addition of Jeremy Abbott to Alysa Liu’s coaching team helping her work through growth spurt

/
Serendipitous addition of Jeremy Abbott to Alysa Liu’s coaching team helping her work through growth spurt

Serendipity is part of this story. And both happenstance and coincidence also played a part in how Jeremy Abbott became a full-time member of Alysa Liu’s coaching team this fall.

Abbott describes the way it all developed as “organic,” a word he also uses to explain the process Team Liu is using to further her growth as a skater. It is a word that seems especially appropriate for Liu this season, when organic physical changes have challenged the two-time reigning U.S. women’s figure skating champion.

Four months past her 15th birthday, Liu is some three inches taller, with longer limbs and a different center of mass, than she was at this point a year ago. All that has made it harder for her to spin in the air as quickly as she could.

Read More

Another Medvedeva stunner: pandemic sends her back to old coach after bitter split led her to Orser, who says her departure was amicable

/
Another Medvedeva stunner: pandemic sends her back to old coach after bitter split led her to Orser, who says her departure was amicable

During the Russian Figure Skating test event last weekend, when Brian Orser and Yevgenia Medvedeva were bridging the 5,000-mile span between him in Toronto and her in Moscow via video chat, they laughed about how different the atmosphere seemed than it had been at the same event two years earlier.

Orser would tell me Wednesday morning he had no idea during those weekend conversations that the bridge linking them was on the verge of collapse under the weight of separation caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

A few hours before Orser called me, what Medvedeva had told him Tuesday became public: she was making the stunning move of returning to her previous and longtime coach, Moscow-based Eteri Tutberidze, whom she had left in an acrimonious split three months after the 2018 Olympics.

“She (Medvedeva) and I agree if there was no pandemic, we would not be having this discussion right now,” Orser said.

So, there was a bittersweet irony in Orser’s recollection of his earlier conversations with Medvedeva, 2016 and 2017 world champion and 2018 Olympic silver medalist.

Read More