MILAN (AP) — The trio of American women aiming for Olympic figure skating gold Tuesday night are not the graceful ice princesses of yesteryear.
There’s Amber Glenn, a 26-year-old powerhouse and LGBTQ+ rights activist whose career took off just when most figure skaters are considering retirement. The three-time and reigning U.S. champion’s outspoken opinions on everything from politics to the trading card game “Magic: The Gathering” have her a polarizing figure at the Milan Cortina Games.
Then there’s Alysa Liu, the one-time phenomenon who only retired at the age of 16 to launch a comeback that resulted in the first world title for an American woman in almost twenty years. Liu’s blonde and dark brown streaked hair, prominent frenulum piercing and maverick appearance have made the 20-year-old a hero of the alt, punk and emo crowd.
And there’s Isabela Levito, perhaps the closest to the innocent image from teen pastors like Tara Lipinski and Sarah Hughes, until you pull the 18-year-old away from the cameras and her sharp wit and biting sarcasm shine through.
They called themselves the ‘Blade Angels’, an homage to ‘Charlie’s Angels’, after rejecting suggestions such as ‘Powerpuff Girls’ and ‘Babes of Glory’, fearing it could lead to trademark issues. (As if they needed more of that in Milan.)
They are a new kind of role model for a new generation of American girls.
They are also the last chance to save a disappointing Olympics for American figure skaters.
“I really like that we’re all different,” Levito said, “and we all have our own strengths and personalities, and our own way that we want to look and show up. I really love it because even though we all have the same passion for the sport, and we have very aligned goals.”
‘I thought I would be ready at 18’
Glenn grew up in Plano, Texas. Her father, Richard, is a police sergeant and her mother, Cathlene, a fitness instructor. She represented the US internationally for almost 15 yearswhich happens to be how old Lipinski was when she won Olympic gold.
It’s hard to become unapologetically American. Yet some critics nonetheless questioned her loyalty on the eve of Milan’s Cortina Games, when Glenn answered a question about the political climate for the LGBTQ+ community under President Donald Trump.
“I hope I can use my platform and voice during these Games to help people stay strong during these difficult times,” she said. “A lot of people will say, ‘You’re just an athlete. Stick to your job. Keep your mouth shut about politics.’ But politics affects us all.”
Glenn probably wouldn’t have taken such a bold stand a decade ago, when she almost quit the sport.
But over the course of her career, she has tackling an eating disorder head-on, which happens all too often in sports. She spent time in a mental health facility to come to grips with her depression. She learned to deal with ADHD. And she started to understand her sexuality; Glenn identifies as pansexual, meaning she is attracted to people regardless of sex or gender.
“I’ve been through a lot,” Glenn told The Associated Press. “It has taken many, many years to get to this point.”
Now she has an Olympic gold medal from her debut at the Winter Games after her help the US defends its title in the team event.
“I left the sport. I came back. At one point I hated it. Whenever people asked me, ‘Oh, should my kids get into it?’ I’d say, ‘No, never,'” Glenn said. “But I’ve seen the people around me grow and how the environment of figure skating has changed, and how we’re trying to change it. And by doing that, we’ve created an environment that I enjoy being in every day.”
‘I hated skating when I stopped’
Liu is the only member of the U.S. women’s team with any previous Olympic Games experience. But like Glenn, she had grown to hate the sport by the time she finished sixth at the Beijing Games. that she quit altogether. She was 16 years old at the time.
“I really hated skating when I quit. I really didn’t like it,” Liu told the AP. “I didn’t care about competitions. I didn’t care about places. I didn’t care about skaters. I didn’t care about my programs. I just wanted to get away. I don’t want anything to do with that. I hated fame. I hated social media. I didn’t like interviews. I hated everything.”
It took Liu walking away before she finally found herself.
The same child who was dropped off at the rink by her father in the morning and picked up in the evening, and who longed for friends her age while living and training alone in Colorado, began to explore: Liu climbed to Mount Everest base camp, checked off items on her ever-expanding bucket list and enrolled at UCLA to, perhaps fittingly, study psychology.
“I learned so much. Met so many new people,” Liu said. “I had to exercise my free will and push myself in different ways.”
She started considering a comeback two years ago, after she went skiing and got a rush of adrenaline she’d never felt since hanging up the skates. Liu didn’t know where it would lead — certainly not the first world title for an American since Kimmie Meissner in 2006, and certainly not another Winter Olympics — but she knew she loved the feeling of skating again.
Everything in Liu’s life now has meaning, including the striking horizontal streaks in her hair. They are intended to represent the annual rings of a tree. There are currently three, and like a tree, Liu plans to add a new ring every year.
“I used to feel like a puppet or a canvas for other people to use,” she said. “Now I do things for myself.”
‘They have no idea what you are actually like’
Levito has always admired Russian skater Evgenia Medvedeva, perhaps the most dominant women’s skater from the mid-2000s, who was a heavy favorite to win gold at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games, but won the silver medal instead.
“She was just so beautiful. I just wanted to have that angelic energy that I feel like she has,” Levito told the AP. “Amber and Alysa have their own style, and she was more like me. My style is, I don’t know, composite. I don’t know how to put it into words.”
“The ice princess statue,” Levito said after a long silence, “which is a stupid thing to say.”
Mainly because it is just that: an image.
Yes, there is a sense of purity surrounding Levito, whose mother, Chiara, emigrated to the U.S. from Milan thirty years ago, and whose grandmother remains in the host city of the Winter Games. But when you take her away from the TV cameras, photographers and the prying eyes of the world, her sarcastic, bordering on vulgar sense of humor rises to the surface.
At the U.S. Figure Skating Championships last month, Levito was asked about her favorite character in Liu, who was sitting next to her. “I want to say something, but I won’t,” Levito said, before succumbing to a little encouragement: “She keeps the hoes sharp,” she said.
“I think it’s so funny,” Levito said later, looking back on that day. “The internet says, ‘Our Isabeau isn’t a baby anymore,’ when they have no idea what you’re actually like. I just don’t want to say the wrong thing in front of the media.”
So Levito plays it safe. She wears a kind of mask in front of the audience and projects the image she thinks people want to see.
Just as Glenn and Liu have people who can identify with them, there are a lot of people who can identify with them.
