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≡ WINTER GAMES PREVIEW ≡
“In terms of Team USA, it should be a great team. High expectations. Might be the deepest, most talented contingent that the U.S. is going to send for an overseas Winter Olympics.”
That was NBC’s Terry Gannon, who will announce the figure skating competitions at the Milan Cortina Olympic Winter Games, starting off a media briefing last Thursday with his analysts, 1998 Olympic champion Tara Lipinski and two-time U.S. Olympian Johnny Weir.
Lipinski went further on the U.S. squad, especially the women’s trio of World Champion Alysa Liu, three-time U.S. champ Amber Glenn and 2024 Worlds silver medalist Isabeau Levito:
“I truly believe this is the best team that I’ve seen in possibly over 20 years. There hasn’t been a U.S. woman on top of an Olympic podium since 2002, but this women’s team, we’re calling them ‘the big three’ and for good reason. There could be multiple medals, multiple U.S. women on top of that podium and it’s just very exciting to feel the excitement coming back into the sport.
“Obviously I am biased, but figure skating is the premier event at the Winter Olympics. This year it feels extra special. …
“[A]s Terry mentioned, out of the four disciplines, I think that the U.S. could come home with three Olympic gold medals and one of them being for Ilia Malinin. He is man-on-the-moon type material. Once-in-a-generation type skater. The things he does I thought I’d never see in my lifetime. Whatever he does, I know it’s going to be a historic skate. If you sort of look back at what he’s done this season, he’s almost competing in a different competition than everyone else, winning events by 75 points.”
Lipinski then broke down what to expect from the three U.S. women’s stars:
● “We can start with Alysa Liu who is the reigning world champion. If you look back in history and the track record of winning the world champions before an Olympic Games, it really sets her on the right path to not only be the favorite to win this Olympic gold medal but to bring it home and she us having a comeback like I have seen before in this sport. It’s definitely not one of pressure. It’s one of joy and passion and love for her sport and I think that’s what’s connecting her to millions of people at home.
“She’s so relatable and so authentic in the way that she performs and competes and she also has this unique ability, which I think everyone is trying to figure out what it is and then copy it, but she is skating in her own little bubble without pressure because she really feels that she’s doing this for herself and she’s taking full ownership over her skating. And she doesn’t feel the expectations that you would think she would and that gives her the edge to be able to compete under pressure.”
● “Then you have Amber Glenn, which her story of perseverance is just incredible. Johnny and I have both commentated Amber from pretty much the start and seen how she’s grown and really come into the woman that she is. And she is so special and I think important for our sport the way that she’s so open and vulnerable about her mental health issues and struggles and how she overcomes the doubts and the pressure that she faces and over the last two years – she’s in her 20s, which is definitely not old, but in figure skating terms it is older and she’s proven what you can do at any age if you work at it. She has a triple Axel which she’s the only American woman putting that into competition right now from the big three. The way she performs is so special. Because of her vulnerable she connects to the audience that way.”
● “And then Isabeau Levito really is that – I call her that skater in the snow globe. She is that quintessential ballerina that was put on ice. She brings elegance and grace and charm and she is a perfectionist. As beautiful and sparkly are her costumes, underneath it all is desire and will.”
Weir noted that the Team Event will come first:
“The Team Event will be hotly contested but I would say that Team USA are heavy favorites at this point. The team event is going to be a great way to start for U.S. figure skating fans and even for people that only tune in every four years for the Olympics and don’t watch the trials and tribulations of the skating season on a whole every season. I think that it will just be the most magical way to start.”
He also commented on an important rule change:
“[A]fter the last Olympic [Winter] Games, the age minimum for skaters to compete in the Olympics was 16 and since that Olympics they changed it to 17, first of all, in hopes that it would help elongate the careers of many of the top women because for a while, we saw an influx of young talent from Russia specifically that would they had two seasons where they really shone brightly and then they would go away and we would never see them compete in international competitions again because there was another 13, 14, 15-year-old there to take their place.
“I think the International Skating Union did a clever thing in aging that age minimum to 17 for Olympic Games and for senior-level competition.”
The trio will be busy in Milan with the figure skating starting on 6 February – the day of the opening ceremony – and continuing through 19 February with just three days off thrown into the schedule.
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