For Alexa Knierim, Brandon Frazier, a historic world pairs’ title is reason to continue skating

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For Alexa Knierim, Brandon Frazier, a historic world pairs’ title is reason to continue skating

They had been together so little time, barely a season of true international competition when you factor in the year disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and yet Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier had still accomplished so much.

So, at the end of a whirlwind 2022 season, when they missed the national championships after Frazier contracted COVID but returned for landmark performances by a U.S. pair at the Olympics and world championships, they inevitably came to a career crossroads.

Should they be satisfied with what they already had done competitively, finishing on the high of skating flawlessly to become the first U.S. team to win the pairs’ world title since 1979? Should they end on that high that followed having won an Olympic team event medal and earning sixth place in the individual event at the 2022 Winter Games, the best U.S. pairs’ finish at the Olympics since 2002?

Or should they keep competing to see how much more they could do, both in terms of tangible results and the intangible quality that makes a pair more than two individuals skating together?

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In return to Yale, Nathan Chen goes back to his future

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In return to Yale, Nathan Chen goes back to his future

When Nathan Chen returns to Yale late this summer after a two-year leave of absence, his housing arrangement will make Chen think he is going back to the future.

“I feel like I’m a returning first-year,” said Chen, actually a rising junior.

He has a room on Yale’s Old Campus, where the residence halls are primarily occupied by first-year students. It is where he lived the first time around after matriculating in the 2018-19 academic year.

The difference this time is Chen also wants to feel present on campus in a way he could not during his first two years of college, when he jammed studies and an international figure skating career into days that seemed too short.

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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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