Bob Sledding: An Olympics Preview

            
Yes, Bobsledding is back -- because the Winter Olympics from Milan, Italy, start on Friday.  And I’m already in training for my traditional vegetating in front of the TV watching all the various NBC “Family of Olympic Channels.”
 
Some background to today’s video and a heads-up on one thing to watch for during the Games.
 
Like many, I enjoy watching figure skating.  (Figure skating, not ice dancing which I find ludicrous and shouldn’t be an Olympic “sport.”)  As much as I like figure skating, though, I – like I suspect almost all people who watch – have absolutely no idea what judges are looking for that makes a successful skate.
 
When normal viewers cry out that a skater was robbed by the judges, it’s generally ludicrous (especially for years since judges’ scores have been made far more transparent).  When I hear this from a friend, I say, “What is a triple lutz?  What is a double axel?  What is a flying camel – and how does it differ from a Hamill camel?  On a lutz, what foot do skaters jump off of and what side of the blade must they land on?”  If you can’t answer any of that – and I can’t – and so much more, then it's really not possible to know if, let alone say a skater got cheated.
 
Most viewers (myself included) don’t even watch what a judge is looking for.  We watch the skater’s body and their arms flailing and their face.  What judges watch, most importantly, are…the skates.  The part that actually matters.  Every once in a while I do try to watch the skates – but since I don’t have much of a clue what I’m looking for, it gets boring, and I go back to watching the body, arms and face.
 
So, what makes an incredible skate to watch for we lay viewers may have zero to do with if it was a good skate for judges.  Sometimes, often perhaps even, they overlap.  But when results for a jump can come down to tenths of a point, it’s what judges are looking for when a skate touches the ice that only matters.
 
That’s the background.
 
Putting that aside now, this is about a great skater to watch.  She’s also a great skater for judges, but that’s off the point here.  Here, the topic is – oh, man, is she a joy to watch.
 
A few weeks ago, I was watching the U.S. National Figure Skating Championship.  The top three women skaters would be the ones who make the Olympic team.  And boy howdy were there top three incredible to watch.  The fourth place finisher was wonderful – but she was outpaced by the top three.  Not just for “fun to watch,” but their points separated them from the pack.  They were that good.
 
And all three have terrific stories that make them even more interesting to watch for the Milan Olympics.
 
Those top three are Amber Glenn, Alysa Liu, and Isabeau Levito.
 
Amber Glenn, who won, was defending her two consecutive national championships, so she’s now the current three-time national champion.  She's the first female skater to win three national championships in a row in 20 years, since Michelle Kwan won eight in a row (that ran to 2005).
 
Isabeau Levito, who took the Bronze Medal, is an 18-year-old whose mother is from Milan, where the Olympics are being held!  Moreover, her grandmother actually still lives in Milan!
 
And for all that, Silver Medalist Alysa Liu has the best story of all.  She was the U.S. National Champion, winning twice in a row at the bizarre age of 13 and 14.  And got a Bronze Medal at the World Championship.  Then COVID came along, there was no skating – and she discovered how much she loved being a kid and having her life back.  And so, at age 16, she retired.  Then after 2-1/2 years, she realized how much she just absolutely loved skating, for the art and joy of it.  She contacted two of her former coaches, said she wanted to train again and recently came out of retirement.  One of those coaches told her it was such an uncommon thing to do for older skaters – for many reasons, not the least of which her body was completely different – it just wasn’t done, and he kept trying to talk her out of it, until he was completely sure she was unrelentingly serious and would put in the difficult work.  (She also told him, yes, she was an older skater now, “But I’m only 18.”)  So, the two former coaches signed on, even if there was little hope of doing all that well on the world stage.  And this time, Liu insisted, they would be a team, with her being more involved in all decisions, rather than like when she was 13.  And then this past year…she won the World Championship!  And finished second, as noted, in the U.S. Nationals a few weeks ago.
 
I have no idea how they’ll do at the Olympics, because the world competition is so high.  But at least as a starting point, however they do, all three American skaters are great. 
 
Amber Glenn has a classic style that is meticulous and so elegant.  A three-time champion.  You marvel at her skating.  Mastery on the ice.
 
But for a pure amateur viewer, like me, ignorant of how technical and artistic scoring actually works, as superb as Amber Glenn is and remarkable to watch for her excellence, I found the other two the most fun. That's how terrific the team of three is.
 
Isabeau Levito has a youthful spirit, with speed, athleticism and focus, and tinged with the uncertainty of how someone so young will do on the world stage.
 
And Alysa Liu...well, as you may have figured out, this is about Alysa Liu.  She was pure joy and total exuberance flying around the ice.  She’s said in interviews that she doesn’t care about the points she gets, for her -- having nothing to prove -- it’s just about skating and bringing her art to the audience.  And while it’s hard not to imagine that she does at least care in many ways about the points, whatever she says, when you watch her skate, and you watch her reaction on the ice immediately after, and you see her in the waiting area, not nervous at all but beaming and so happy to have skated, unfazed by the score she’s gotten to put her (for the moment) in first place, you get the very real sense that for the most part, she truly means it.
 
There’s one other thing, as well, that speaks to the unbridled enthusiasm she brings to her skating.  Most skaters compete with their program for the entire year before the Olympics in order to perfect it and make each movement almost muscle memory.  She, however, changed her program only a month ago, and skated to a new, especially effusive Lady Gaga piece.
 
(Side note:  whereas all the announcers call her “Alysa Loo”, when I’ve heard her interviewed, she says “Lee-oo.”)
 
Okay, enough of this, on with the show!  Here then is what I’m talking about, that free skate at the U.S. Nationals about three weeks ago.  It's a total joy.  For as serious as the moment is, the skate throughout much is almost playful.  Combined with the involving reaction of the excited crowd growing as the program builds.  And there’s one point, about four minutes in, near the end, where she throws in a little move (nothing technical that she’ll even get a single point for) that just leaps out as the quintessential example of showing the liveliness how she skates.  It’s a move that’s so fluid and fun -- so much so, so different from the rest of the program that I need say nothing else, you’ll know it when you see it. And hear it, too, by the cheers.
 

​And a reminder, though she finished second at the U.S. Nationals, she is the reigning World Champion.  But again, this here isn’t about who’s “best” – because I don’t know, I'm not qualified to determine that.  Just who I thought was the most fun to watch.  And at such a high, World Champion level.
 
(By the way, while waiting for the scores at the end, you likely noticed briefly the other two skaters of the final three -- Amber Glenn warming up on the ice, and Isabeau Levito also waiting to see if her score got passed.)
 
And as a bonus video, here’s a segment that “60 Minutes” did on Alysa Liu that aired right before the U.S. Nationals.  It does a very good job telling her story – and my favorite part are the interviews with her two coaches who are very open and honest about how ludicrous they thought her comeback was. 
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Okay, I think I should add one extra, because it shows something quite unique in a competition like this.  I've watched quite a few individual and joint interviews between the three ladies who made the U.S. national figure skating team.  And I don't know if I've ever seen such intense rivals so overwhelmingly friendly and pulling for one another. 

Here's a short video of the three together at the U.S. Nationals -- but the huge thing to keep in mind is that...this is during the competition.  Not after they know how they all finished.  This is after the short program, with the final free skate still to come, and the outcome still uncertain.  And it's not only clear how well they get along (Isabeau Levito, the youngest, is a bit shy, so it doesn't come through as​ much as with the others, though in separate interviews she talks eloquently about the strong friendship between the three), but that's the focus of the questions here.

It's just one more thing about the figure skating competition at the Olympics upcoming that make it all the more fascinating.
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