MILAN (AP) — Three U.S. women’s figure skating gold medal contenders were no longer the dainty ice princesses they once were on Tuesday night.
Amber Glenn is a 26-year-old powerhouse and LGBTQ+ rights activist whose career began to take off at a time when most figure skaters were considering retirement. The three-time defending U.S. champion’s candid views on everything from politics to the trading card game “Magic: The Gathering” made her a polarizing figure at the Cortina Games in Milan.
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Then there’s Alysa Liu, a former prodigy who retired at 16 and came back to win the first world title for American women in nearly two decades. Liu’s striped black and white hair, prominent lace-up piercings and non-conformist demeanor have made the 20-year-old a hero among the alternative, punk and emo crowds.
And there’s Isabeau Levito, perhaps the closest thing to the ingénue of teenage forefathers like Tara Lipinski and Sarah Hughes, whose searing wit and acerbic sarcasm shine brightly until you take the 18-year-old away from the camera.
After rejecting suggestions such as “The Powerpuff Girls” and “Glory Babies,” they called themselves “Blade Angels” in homage to “Charlie’s Angels,” which they worried might cause some trademark issues. (As if they need more of this in Milan.)
They are the new role models for a new generation of American girls.
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It’s also the last chance for U.S. figure skaters to salvage a disappointing Olympics.
“I really love that we’re all different,” Levito said. “We all have our own strengths and personalities and the way we want to look and perform. I think that’s really cool because we all have the same passion for the sport and we have very aligned goals.”
“I thought I was done when I turned 18.”
Glenn grew up in Plano, Texas. Her father, Richard, is a police officer and her mother, Catherine, is a fitness instructor. She has been representing the United States internationally for nearly 15 years, which is exactly the age Lipinski was when she won her Olympic gold medal.
It’s hard to be more unabashedly American. However, some critics questioned her loyalty on the eve of the Cortina Games in Milan, when Glenn answered questions about the political climate for the LGBTQ+ community under President Donald Trump.
“I hope I can use my platform and voice throughout the Olympics to help people stay strong during difficult times,” she said. “A lot of people would say, ‘You’re just an athlete. Stick to your job. Shut up and talk about politics.’ But politics affects us all.”
A decade ago, when Glenn nearly quit the sport, she might not have taken such a bold stance.
But during her career, she faced head-on the issue of eating disorders, which are all too common in the sport. She spent time in a mental health facility to manage her depression. She learned to cope with ADHD. She came to understand her sexuality; Glenn identifies as pansexual, meaning she is attracted to people of different genders.
“I’ve been through a lot,” Glenn told The Associated Press. “It took many, many years to get to this point.”
Now, she has an Olympic gold medal in her first Winter Games after helping Team USA defend its team title.
“I quit the sport. I came back. At one point, I hated it. Whenever people asked me, ‘Oh, should my kid play this sport?’ I would say, ‘No, never,'” Glenn said. “But I’ve seen the growth of the people around me, how the environment of figure skating has changed, and how we’ve worked to change it. And in doing that, we’ve created an environment that I love being a part of every day.”
“When I quit, I hated skating”
Liu is the only member of the U.S. women’s team with previous Olympic experience. But like Glenn, she began to sour the sport when she finished sixth at the Beijing Olympics that she quit altogether. She was 16 years old at the time.
“When I quit, I really hated skating. Like, I really didn’t enjoy it,” Liu told The Associated Press. “I don’t care about the competition. I don’t care about the place. I don’t care about the skaters. I don’t care about my program. I just want out. I don’t want anything to do with it. I hate fame. I hate social media. I don’t like interviews. Like, I hate it all.”
It was only after Liu left that he finally found himself.
The kid who was dropped off by her father at the rink in the morning and picked up in the evening, who longed for friends her own age while living and training alone in Colorado, began to explore: Liu climbed to Everest’s base camp, checked off items on her ever-growing bucket list, and enrolled at UCLA to study psychology, which might be a good fit.
“I learned a lot. Met a lot of new friends,” Liu said. “I had to use my free will and push myself in different ways.”
She started thinking about a comeback two years ago, when she went skiing and experienced an adrenaline rush unlike anything she’d felt since hanging up her skates. Liu doesn’t know where this will lead — certainly not the American’s first world title since Kimmie Meissner in 2006, and definitely not another Winter Olympics — but she knows she loves the feeling of skating again.
Now, everything in Liu’s life makes sense, including the dramatic horizontal stripes in her hair. They represent the growth rings of trees. There are currently three rings, and Liu plans to add one more ring every year, just like a tree.
“I used to feel like I was a puppet or a canvas that other people were using,” she said. “Now I do things for myself.”
“They don’t know what you are like”
Levito has long admired Russian skater Evgenia Medvedeva, perhaps the most dominant female skater of the mid-2000s, who was favored to win gold at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics but ended up with silver instead.
“She was so beautiful. I just wanted to have that angelic energy that she had,” Levito told The Associated Press. “Amber and Alysa have their own unique styles, and she’s more like me. I don’t know what my style is put together. I don’t know how to express it.
“The image of the ice princess,” Levito said after a long pause, “that’s a stupid thing to say.”
Mainly because it’s just an image.
Yes, there is a sense of purity surrounding Levito, whose mother Chiara immigrated to the United States from Milan three decades ago and whose grandmother still lives in the Winter Olympics host city. But when she’s away from the television cameras, photographers and the prying eyes of the world, her sarcastic sense of humor emerges, bordering on the crude.
At last month’s U.S. Figure Skating Championships, Levito was asked what her favorite quality was about Liu, who was sitting next to her. “I want to say something, but I won’t say it,” Levito said, before giving in to a little prodding: “She’s keeping her guard up,” she said.
“I thought it was so funny,” Levito later said, recalling that day. “The internet is like ‘our Isabeau isn’t a baby anymore’ when they don’t know what you’re really like. I just don’t want to say the wrong thing in front of the media.”
So Levito erred on the side of caution. She puts on a mask of sorts for the public, projecting the image she thinks people want to see.
Just like Glenn and Liu have people they can relate to, there are a lot of people they can relate to.
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AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics