This is part of Slate’s 2026 Olympics coverage. Read more here.
At the outset of the Milan Cortina Games, I thought that America could have a historic Olympics in figure skating, with realistic gold-medal hopes in four of the five events. Team USA started by winning the team event, but has since struggled to live up to that golden potential. Madison Chock and Evan Bates fell just short of gold in ice dance and America’s firmest lock for a gold, Ilia Malinin, crashed out into eighth place in men’s singles.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementOnly the women’s event remains, and the U.S. squad, also known as the Blade Angels, is the strongest in decades. Going in, I thought they might snap Team USA’s 20-year medal drought in women’s figure skating by leaving the 2026 Games with two of the three medals. After the short program, however, two angels have fallen, and only one American, reigning World Champion Alysa Liu, remains in the hunt for gold. Luckily for American fans, she appears to be the exact right person to handle that pressure.
On Tuesday, though, the story of the night wasn’t the U.S. team—it was the extraordinary strength of the Japanese women. No country has ever swept the ladies’ podium in figure skating. In 2022, the “Russian Olympic Committee” came close, finishing in first, second, and fourth in a harrowing women’s event. The only skater who stood in the way back then was Japan’s Kaori Sakamoto, who won bronze, and has reigned in the four years since. (Ultimately, the fourth-place finish for 15-year-old Kamila Valieva was wiped from the books because of Russia’s systematic doping program, so it could never have been a sweep anyway.) Now it’s Sakamoto who might lead a historic sweep, as the three Japanese women all sit in the top four after Tuesday night, and no Russians stand in their way.
Well, that’s not exactly right. There is one Russian who could factor into the medals here, but for the purposes of the International Olympic Committee, 18-year-old Adeliya Petrosian is competing as an “Individual Neutral Athlete,” a designation given to 13 athletes from Russia and Belarus who were vetted by the IOC to confirm that they do not support the war in Ukraine and are not tied to military agencies. Petrosian does have a very controversial tie, however, in that she is coached by Eteri Tutberidze, the coach at the center of the Valieva doping scandal. Tutberidze is not allowed to have any formal involvement with Petrosian as a coach once the competition begins, but cameras cut to her stalking the bowels of the arena, like an It Follows creature haunting all of us who like our figure skating ethical. Not content to let her controversial ties end there, Petrosian elected to skate her short program to the music of Michael Jackson. Adeliya, I want to give you a fair shot here, but you make it so hard!
Petrosian was a wild card coming into these Games as she has been absent from the international scene, only competing once on the senior international level at an Olympic qualifying event in Beijing in September 2025. She allegedly has a quadruple loop among her arsenal of jumps, but it has only ever been completed in Russian domestic competitions. She’s also been battling injuries.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAmid this weighty context, Petrosian acquitted herself well in the short program. She completed a double axel, a triple lutz with her arms over her head for extra points, and a triple flip-triple toe combination. The audience seemed to welcome her warmly, not holding her country of origin against her.
I did get the sense that being deprived of international experience has left her a bit stunted in her artistic growth. Her presentation felt juvenile at times and the choreography bordered on cornball. (Is a moonwalk even impressive when it’s on ice?) But strong planning and technique earned her high levels on her elements and a personal best score that would stand in first place until the favorites took the ice. After the short program, she sits in fifth place, 5.82 points out of first and 3.7 points off the podium.
It took another teenager making her Olympic debut to top Petrosian’s marks. Seventeen-year-old Ami Nakai has yet to compete at a World Championships at the senior level, but she seems to be peaking at the exact right time. Continuing a trend of pandering to the Italian crowd, Nakai skated to selections from La Strada, music that felt soaring and youthful and matched the sparkle in her performance. She was one of two women planning a triple axel, and she absolutely nailed it as the first element in her program. She also completed a triple lutz-triple toe combination and a triple loop in what would end up being the most difficult short program of the night.
Like Petrosian, she lacks a bit of the refinement of her more experienced peers, but there was something at once classic and fresh about her. Nakai reminded me of Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face whereas Petrosian reminded me of a Michael Jackson impersonator you’d hire for a bar mitzvah. This short program radiated joy and sunshine and was enough to earn a personal best score of 78.71, the highest score this season outside of Kaori Sakamoto.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAlysa Liu was the first to skate in the final group of women. Nakai’s short program score was still in first place, and Liu had to try to overtake it without a triple axel among her planned elements. What the reigning World Champion lacked in planned program content she made up for in style, performing to Laufey’s “Promise” with a short program that is artistically my favorite of any skater’s this season.
Liu is a powerful and fast skater, but what I love most about her presentation is her ability to use stillness and isolated simple movements to captivate us. She opened with a picture-perfect triple flip and continued with a double axel straight out of a spread eagle. Her hardest obstacle came last: a triple lutz-triple loop combination, the most difficult combination attempted in the event. Liu pulled it off with aplomb, causing me to involuntarily shout in joy and relief. The combination would later be dinged by the judges for being slightly underrotated, but it was otherwise an impeccable performance, with Liu floating across the ice in an ethereal manner, each movement seeming to flow straight from her heart. It was a personal best score for Liu but not enough to overtake Nakai’s triple axel advantage. After the short program, Liu sits in third place, only 2.12 points off the leader.
Next up was Isabeau Levito, the 18-year-old from New Jersey, but who might as well be a surrogate for Team Italy. Her mother is from Milan and her grandmother still lives in the city, a mere 13 minutes from the Olympic arena. Like many other skaters at these Games, Levito went with an Italian theme, choosing a “Sophia Loren Medley” that includes “Zoo Be Zoo Be Zoo,” a song perhaps most famous for its chilly reception from Don Draper on Mad Men. Levito escaped the Mad Men curse here, delivering a performance that oozed grace, refinement, and star quality.
The balletic Isabeau Levito. Matthew Stockman/Getty ImagesOf all the skaters, she seems the most like a ballerina; every move is finished all the way down to the fingertips. She completed a triple flip-triple toe combination, a double axel, and a triple loop, although the latter was judged a quarter turn under-rotated. She has some work to do in improving her grade of execution marks, the “bonus” the judges reward for how well you perform each element. Her score of 70.84 points stands in eighth place after the short, 5.75 points behind a podium position. While a medal is probably out of reach for Levito, it was an impressive debut on Olympic ice, prepping her for 2030 and giving her the type of high-pressure experience that Ilia Malinin vocally lamented he never had coming into these Games.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe next skater on the ice, Sakamoto, is the best all-around skater in this event. Possessing technical excellence, artistic refinement, and mental strength, the Japanese icon just screams Olympic champion. In her short program on Tuesday night, she lived up to the frontrunner expectations. Sakamoto intends to retire after these Olympics, and thus her performance to “Time to Say Goodbye” by Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman carries extra weight for figure skating fans. While this performance may feel dedicated to her devoted fans, when Sakamoto skates it seems as if she’s doing it just for herself.
Kaori Sakamoto, triumphant. WANG ZHAO/Getty ImagesShe executed a triple lutz, a flowy double axel, and a triple flip-triple toe combination in a skate of such high quality that you could show it to a young skater as the gold standard of performance. A very critical technical panel did end up dinging her for a quarter under-rotation on her triple toe loop and an unclear edge on her triple lutz. The few points she lost there might have been what cost her the lead, as she sits in second place after the short program, only 1.48 points behind her countrywoman Nakai.
Next up was U.S. National Champion Amber Glenn, who has had a long road to these Olympics. At 26, she is the oldest American to qualify for the Olympic women’s figure skating event since 1928. At her best, Glenn is one of the most exciting skaters in the world, but she has openly discussed her struggles with the mental side of the sport. There was a lot of pressure riding on her here: In addition to competing for the United States, she is also proudly representing queer skaters, as she is the first openly queer woman to represent the U.S. on the Olympic figure skating team. Adding to all that pressure? She received a message of support from Madonna this week, wishing her luck with her “Like a Prayer” short program.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementWhen her performance began, Glenn seemed unfazed by the high stakes. The only woman besides Nakai planning a triple axel in the short program, she landed that jump right away, causing me to leap out of my seat with joy. Next, she fought hard for a triple flip-triple toe combination, but stayed vertical. Then, disaster: She “popped” her planned triple loop, only completing a double. This wouldn’t be the end of the world in the free skate, but in the short program a triple is required here, and thus a double earned her zero points. While it didn’t look like a huge mistake on television, it was enough to end her Olympic dream. As strange as it may sound, it would have been more advantageous, points-wise, for Glenn to fully rotate a triple, wipe out, and crash into the boards.
Amber Glenn almost had it. ANTONIN THUILLIER/Getty ImagesAfter that moment, the energy seemed to drain from her performance; you could tell her mind was still fixated on that costly mistake. Glenn left the ice crying and continued to weep in the “kiss and cry” area. “I had it,” she told her coach, knowing that one revolution in the air, a split second of motion, would have been enough to put her among the top scores of the night. Unfortunately, she sits in 13th place after the short program, another American unable to overcome the high-stakes pressure of the Olympics.
The last skater of the night was Japan’s Mone Chiba, who fittingly skated to Donna Summer’s “Last Dance.” The 2025 world bronze medalist shook off the bad vibes in the arena to pull off an exuberant skate that placed her firmly in the medal hunt. Chiba completed a triple flip-triple toe, a double axel, and a triple lutz in a performance that felt capital-F fun amid all the heavy music choices of the event. Her performance was notable for her lovely posture and technique, a quality that commentator Johnny Weir called soigné, which has now become my Word of the Day. Chiba is in fourth place after the short program, only 2.59 points behind Alysa Liu.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementWith her American compatriots likely out of the running for the podium, Liu remains Team USA’s last hope for a figure skating medal. Liu has competed at the Olympics before, only to gracefully step away from the sport, thinking her career was over. She stunned the world by returning last year, winning the World Championships in her first season back. And perhaps most shocking, Liu has expressed that she hasn’t really felt nervous competing since her return to skating
I’m almost in disbelief when I tell you that Liu seems to be skating just for fun. If any other skater says that they just want to go out there and enjoy themselves on the ice, I will insist that they are lying. Liu is the first one I actually believe. Interviewed after her short program, she said that her first thoughts after her music ended were: “I wish it were longer.” She just wanted more time out on Olympic ice to take in the moment. She’s calmly confident and claims to be fine with any outcome. I’ve maybe never seen such wonderful mental health before?
Is Alysa Liu the anti-Malinin? She once had a quadruple lutz (she was the first American woman to complete one) but very unlike the Quad God, she decided she didn’t want to attempt it anymore, deciding instead to protect her body from injury and focus on other aspects of her skating. Furthermore, since she decided to stop caring about placement she has never skated better.
On Thursday, we’ll see if her free skate is enough to end the 20-year Olympic medal drought for American women. The path there, however, lies in Liu remaining mentally carefree, the secret weapon to her comeback. As she put it herself, “I don’t feel like my life is on the line anymore.”
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