Alysa Liu, two-time U.S. National champion, recently returned to competitive figure skating after a two-year break. We chat with Alysa about her life since the Beijing Olympics, her interests and passions, and how her skating is going this season.
Oona & Gage Brown: “We try to find joy in whatever we’re doing”
Oona & Gage Brown open up about how they're staying motivated to compete at the 2025 Prevagen U.S. Figure Skating Championships, despite ongoing financial challenges.
Bratti/Somerville Talk About Their Rollercoaster Year
U.S. ice dancers Emily Bratti & Ian Somerville talk about their career highlights and challenging moments in 2024.
Zingas and Kolesnik: “We’re here for the long run”
U.S. ice dancers Emilea Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik talk about his move from Ukraine, how the war affects him, and their partnership and programs.
Fabbri/Ayer: “We plan to turn everyone’s heads”
Competitive ice dance is all about female and male partners creating beautiful shapes and stories together on the ice. Behind the scenes, however, the sport has struggled with issues of gendered power imbalances, and Olympic champion Gabriella Papadakis recently wrote about how female partners are often undervalued. Fortunately, this is not the case for rising …
Continue reading Fabbri/Ayer: “We plan to turn everyone’s heads”
Golubeva/Giotopoulos Moore: “We’re trying to mature our skating”
This week in Halifax, a new season starts for Anastasia “Nastia” Golubeva, 18, and Hektor Giotopoulos Moore, 22, who represent Australia. It’s the couple’s fourth season competing together, and their results have been good: They placed 8th at Worlds in 2023 and 10th at last spring’s Worlds. This season, they hope for continued growth. Golubeva …
Continue reading Golubeva/Giotopoulos Moore: “We’re trying to mature our skating”
Vaananen/Clerici: “We know we can win and compete at higher levels”
In recent decades, Finland has taken an ever-greater role in ice skating, hosting major events and fielding successful skaters. Kiira Korpi and Laura Lepisto won medals in women’s singles, Juulia Turkkila/Matthias Versluis are top ice dancers, and of course, Finnish synchronized skating teams have won nine World championships. But pairs skating has not been part …
Continue reading Vaananen/Clerici: “We know we can win and compete at higher levels”
Summer Sizzler: Season Preview for U.S. Skaters
All photos courtesy of Janet Liu For top U.S. skaters, this season started and will hopefully end in Boston, MA. The past few weeks saw several skating events in the Boston area: Cranberry Cup, the season’s first ISU Challenger Series competition; Champs Camp, the U.S. federation’s high-performance training camp; and Summer Sizzler, a show held …
Continue reading Summer Sizzler: Season Preview for U.S. Skaters
Fear/Gibson: “The crowd is part of our team”
Every skater dreams of World and Olympic glory, but for some, it’s more realistic than others. From the outside looking in, it might initially have seemed a long shot that Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson would one day challenge for those podiums when they first teamed up in 2016. At the time, Lilah Fear’s top …
Continue reading Fear/Gibson: “The crowd is part of our team”
McBeath/Parkman: “We learned a lot this season”
Sometimes the best-laid plans get disrupted by a stroke of fate. That’s what happened to Katie McBeath and Daniil Parkman in January at the 2024 Prevagen U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Columbus, OH. McBeath, 29, and Parkman, 25, a brand-new pairs team, got everyone’s attention in the short program at Nationals with their big triple …
Continue reading McBeath/Parkman: “We learned a lot this season”