Chelsea Liu and Balazs Nagy will make their Grand Prix debut as a team this weekend at Skate America in Texas. Earlier this fall, they finished just off the podium at Autumn Classic International in Montreal, Quebec. Without question, it’s been a good start for their new partnership.

Yet, arguably, Liu and Nagy shouldn’t be here. 

Or, at least, it’s a bit of a wonder that they are here. Because, between them, Liu and Nagy have seen a lot in this sport. Some of the hurdles they’ve overcome are common to many figure skaters. Others are perhaps unique to pairs skating, in recent years, and illustrate just why this discipline can be so hard to get right.  

Liu, 23, has had eight concussions in her skating career. Eight. Nagy, 25, has had surgery on both shoulders. The duo have both had multiple former partners. Nagy trained for several years with coach Dalilah Sappenfield, who was later investigated and sanctioned by SafeSport. Both Nagy and Liu skated abroad for a while (he in Hungary, she in China) in search of the right partner, only to have those ventures fail. And Liu’s last partnership, with Danny O’Shea, ended in 2021 after one of the scariest on-ice accidents ever seen at a skating competition.

With all these challenges in their rearview mirror, no one would have been surprised if either Liu or Nagy walked away from the sport. And for a while, both did. After their last partnerships ended, neither skater really knew if they’d be back. Nagy said he “fell out of love with the sport” for a while. Liu contemplated retirement.

But in May, they surprised the skating world when Nagy informally announced their new partnership via an Instagram post. “We’re back,” he said simply, sharing a video of him and Liu doing a spectacular triple twist. Since then, the team has been training at Great Park Ice in Irvine, CA, in the pairs group coached by Jenni Meno and Todd Sand. 

No one quite knew what to expect from this unexpected new pairing. But in July, Liu and Nagy entered and won Glacier Falls Summer Classic, a national qualifying series (NQS) competition. And they finished just off the podium at Autumn Classic in Montreal. In the mixed zone at that event, the pair was upbeat and positive.

“I’m really happy with this partnership. I’m really happy with Chelsea and the training team,” Nagy declared.

For her part, Liu called Nagy “an extraordinary partner” and “my inspiration” in an Instagram post after the event.

How, after so many difficulties, did these two athletes find a road back to competitive skating? At Autumn Classic, we spoke with them to learn more about their journey.

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For Chelsea Liu, it all started when she was six years old and followed her older sister onto the ice. For several years, Liu trained in both figure skating and gymnastics. She began pairs skating early, when she was only 10. She competed at the Junior Grand Prix level, first with Devin Perini, then with Brian Johnson. Liu and Johnson placed 5th at the 2016 ISU Junior World Championships and skated two seasons as seniors before ending their partnership.

“I had multiple injuries–a few concussions, a couple of ankle surgeries,” Liu said of her career to that point. “When my partnership with Brian [Johnson] ended, the Chinese federation reached out to my mom and asked if I was still skating, and if I’d be interested in a tryout with one of their pair boys. We had a two-week-long tryout. And I thought, ‘This is a different opportunity, where I can learn in a different environment, because I’ve always been in one place.’ I’d been with Todd [Sand] and Jenni [Meno] since the very beginning of my competitive pairs career. So I went to China for about a year. And the partnership didn’t work out; I got hurt again.”

Liu returned to the United States around the same time that the covid-19 pandemic hit. She enrolled in college classes.

“Then I realized I was a little bored and wanted to get back into skating,” Liu said. “So, I reached out to Todd and Jenni and asked if I could come back in and have a meeting and get back to skating with them. It took a while, because there were seemingly no options [i.e., available partners] at that moment.”

She started practicing informally with 2016 U.S. pairs champion Danny O’Shea. At the time, O’Shea was involved in a few partner tryouts. 

“He had other options. It just mutually benefited us to practice together with someone who had experience–that way, we could keep up our skills,” Liu explained. “Then after that, we decided to skate together.”

Liu and O’Shea’s partnership looked promising, and they received a coveted Skate America slot in fall 2021. However, a month later, the pair experienced a terrifying fall from a dance lift at a competition in Warsaw, Poland. Both Liu and O’Shea were left lying helpless on the ice, with concussions. It was a very scary moment for the skaters, their team, and everyone watching. Ultimately, the accident led to the end of the partnership and an extended break for Liu.

“I thought I was done skating. That was my eighth concussion,” Liu said. “After that, I just didn’t really want to risk my health any more. I wanted to live a normal life. I was finishing out my last year of college.”

Yet, somehow, Liu decided to come back to the sport. 

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Nagy, meanwhile, had been on his own odyssey. Originally born in Budapest, Hungary, to Hungarian parents, Nagy’s family moved back and forth between the U.S. and Hungary when he was growing up. Similarly, Nagy bounced back and forth between representing the United States and Hungary in skating.

In late 2017, he started skating pairs in the United States, teaming up with Kate Finster and moving to Colorado to train with Dalilah Sappenfield. Finster and Nagy were in Colorado until fall 2020. 

“Then I left, and I ended up getting hurt, and I had surgery,” Nagy said. “So I sat out for about six months. I got a call from the Hungarian federation, at the time. They offered for me to skate with them. They had a partner and a coach and everything ready to go. A part of me always wanted to skate for Hungary, because I was born there. So I went and  jumped in. I did that for a season, training in Russia. And then I fell out of love with the sport, so I stepped away for a little bit. I had surgery again–my other shoulder. While I was recovering from that one, that was when I reached out to U.S. Figure Skating, and said I wanted to skate again and compete. And that’s how I ended up coming back.”

Nagy started tryouts. Eventually, his road led to Great Park Ice. And Liu.

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For eight months after the accident with O’Shea, Liu focused on her recovery. 

“The most [exercise] I did was walk up and down the stairs in my house,” she said. 

But gradually, she again started to feel the itch to return to the sport. Her parents were supportive, encouraging her to go after her skating dreams, if she still wanted to. It wasn’t a decision she made lightly. 

“As I got more concussions, I became really strict with my return-to-play protocol, working with my concussion specialist and doing therapy for vestibular training,” Liu explained. “I’ve never been back on the ice before I was fully cleared and ready to go, feeling 100% normal. I don’t have any long-lasting side effects, which I’m super-thankful for. I know [other] people have experienced fewer concussions with more severe long-term problems.”

Liu knows that some may question her return to the ice. But she’s confident in her decision.

“I’m grateful for everybody’s concern, truly,” Liu said. “It’s really nice to know that people care and want me to be healthy and live a good life. But I promise everyone that I am okay, and that I want to be here. This is what I want to be doing.”

Still, Liu took it slow at first.

“Last year, I was in and out of the ice rink–half skating, half not,” she said.

Then she tried out with Nagy in April.

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“Our first tryout was a one-hour session,” Liu said. 

“It was kind of last-minute,” Nagy added.

April was an unsettled time for the Meno-Sand pairs group. Coach Todd Sand had suffered a life-threatening heart attack in March during the ISU Junior World Championships, and his wife and co-head coach Jenni Meno focused on his treatment and recovery. So Liu/Nagy’s first tryout was perhaps a bit more informal than usual. Still, both skaters immediately sensed the potential.

“Right off the bat, a lot of our big elements, like [triple] twist and lifts, came together really well,” Liu said. “That was exciting. Our technique was naturally matched, so that made everything gel quicker. And when the big elements are good, you get this adrenaline rush.”

The duo had a second tryout afterward, to get Meno’s feedback and confirm that the partnership felt right.

“Our coaches were impressed with our skating skills and how naturally things gelled,” Liu said.

In May, the duo started training together, and Nagy made his Instagram post. 

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When I asked what drew them back to the sport–after so many concussions, injuries, and false starts–Liu and Nagy looked at each other and laughed a bit ruefully. They know it’s not an unreasonable question.

“I mean, I obviously love this sport,” Nagy said. “But beyond that, there’s a sense of fulfillment and passion. Every day you wake up, and you have a goal of something to work on, something to fix, something to improve. And not necessarily in terms of competition results. There’s that sense of satisfaction you get from performing an element–whether it’s a solo element or a crossover or an edge. With a pairs element, it’s even more so, because it’s both of you, and both of your timings. There’s this feeling … When you both do it perfectly, the way you should, and the whole thing works–I mean, that’s amazing.”

Liu mentioned the adrenaline rush of performing big pairs elements. Was that a factor in her decision to return?

“For me, absolutely,” Liu admitted. Both she and Nagy laughed. “I was a gymnast when I was younger–”

“Me, too,” Nagy said with a nod.

“So the whole tumbling, flipping stuff, I absolutely love it,” Liu said. “And the fact that I get to do this on the ice is amazing. I think something that connected us together at first was really how our experiences paralleled each other. They were very similar, yet different, experiences. And at the end of the day, we both just love this sport. We want to be here. We want to be the best athletes and people that we can be, and this sport allows us to do that.”

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Now that they’ve been skating together for a few months, Liu and Nagy say their favorite elements remain the triple twist and lifts. They wowed the audience at Autumn Classic with an innovative new lift they created themselves, which features Nagy lifting Liu from behind, with a reverse-flip-over-the-head-type entry. It’s the final, climactic lift in their free skate.

“I was like, ‘Chelsea, we should try this,’” Nagy said of the innovative lift. “So we just tried it on the ice. We didn’t go straight to the star [position] at first, because we wanted to see if the entry worked. Then I was like, ‘What if we go straight to the star?’ We tried it off ice, and then on ice.”

Working on lifts comes naturally for Liu and Nagy.

“Chelsea has a lot of experience and body awareness, having done gymnastics,” Nagy noted. “It’s relatively easy to move around and come up with new lift positions and lift ideas.” 

“It feels good to be able to do that with somebody,” Liu said. “We work really well together. Knowing you can trust your partner to be innovative and safe is really important.”

Throw jumps have been a bit more challenging. 

“We’ve both been through several training camps, so our [throw] techniques individually have evolved and changed. And sometimes it’s a bit more difficult to get on the same page,” Liu said. “But we’re taking the time to really work in detail and make sure that we’re safe. And trying to hit the harder throws, but not hurting ourselves, and keeping ourselves healthy.”

“Throws have definitely been the most difficult [in terms] of making them sync, because we have such different basic techniques,” Nagy noted. “Nonetheless, at home, we still manage to find a way to make them work. I think our timing is hopefully more in sync now, and it’s a matter of ironing out some more things, to put them in the program when they’re ready.”

For their programs this season, the duo selected music from a playlist that Nagy compiled. They’re skating to “Dive” by Ed Sheeran for their short program, choreographed by Adam Rippon. Their lyrical, romantic free skate is set to “A Thousand Times Goodnight,” from the 2013 film Romeo and Juliet, with choreography by Pasquale Camerlengo. Christine Fowler-Binder, one of their coaches, also helped choreograph the programs. 

“We had a lot of fun working with all of them and seeing how there’s different styles of choreography, different ways of putting a program together,” Nagy commented. 

“One of our biggest areas of focus is our skating quality,” Liu said. “We really value that every day at home with our coaches.” 

Nagy, who is new to the Meno-Sand group, praised their coaching approach.

“It’s a very calm, very orderly, and set way of training. Not emotional,” he said. “It’s pretty different from how I’ve trained in the past. It’s very structured, focused. We always have a plan. Every day, there’s something on the to-do list, if you will. It could be a program section, it could be a run-through, it could be an element we need to fix. And we just run through the list, check off the things that we need to do.”

As they prepare for Skate America and the rest of the season, Liu and Nagy are relying on their connection to help them grow. 

“We get along really well,” Liu said. “We have a ton of respect for each other, and that makes it easy to work together.”

“I’m really proud of what we’ve done in five or six months,” Nagy said. “And I’m excited to keep polishing our elements and make all of our skating better.”

It’s part of the creative mindset that Liu and Nagy want to bring to the sport. 

“We’re always trying to think of new things,” Liu said. “What else can we do a little better? We’re not just capping ourselves at one level.”

Liu and Nagy hope their creativity and big elements will take them to new heights at Skate America and beyond.