U.S. figure skating targets record medal haul at 2026 Olympics

MILAN — Amber Glenn achieved a lifelong goal, sealing her Olympic bid by winning her third consecutive U.S. championship last month. Her first celebration came with her opponents.

“We all deserve it,” Glenn said with her arms wrapped around national silver medalist Alysa Liu and bronze medalist Isabeau Levito.

The spirit of collaboration has brought U.S. figure skating into a new golden age. The 16-athlete team the United States sent to Milan may be the country’s strongest Olympic team in decades. With three reigning world champions and three current Grand Prix final champions, the United States is poised for one of its best Olympic Games ever in figure skating.

The U.S. record for most medals in figure skating at a single Olympics is five from 1956, when the U.S. swept the podium for the men’s singles competition. The country has never won three figure skating gold medals in one Games.

“We’re all in this together,” said Justin Dillon, U.S. Figure Skating senior director of athlete high performance. “We’re all working towards those goals. … I very much appreciate our athletes really wanting to outdo themselves, outdo each other but with respect and at the highest level possible.”

The United States is almost assured a repeat gold in the men’s singles event with Ilia Malinin, whose unmatched quad axel has him on a two-and-a-half-year winning streak. Ice dancers Evan Bates and Madison Chock are three-time defending world champions who return to their fourth — and likely final — Olympics together poised to earn the only individual medal that has eluded them.

And the women’s team has three strong contenders to end a 20-year Olympic medal drought. Liu is the reigning world champion and Grand Prix Final champion. Levito took silver at the world championships in 2024. Glenn outpaced both to win another U.S. championship.

Making her Olympic debut, the 26-year-old said she came through the sport between two generations of skaters. Glenn saw how the pressure of comparison impacted her older peers and wanted to ensure the culture among female skaters could be healthy for athletes coming after her. How she did it was by talking through her nerves with the athletes who knew exactly what she was feeling.

“To be able to have a good, healthy teammate-like relationship with those people, I think, has benefited all of us tremendously,” Glenn said. “Because we bring each other up rather than trying to just step on each other to get higher up.”

Amber Glenn, left, and Alysa Liu give each other a high-five while training at Milano Ice Skating Arena on Monday.

(Jamie Squire / Getty Images)

With three individual gold medals in sight, the United States is also favored to win team gold for the second consecutive Games. The team competition begins Friday with the rhythm dance and women’s and pairs short programs.

The opportunity for a second team gold medal comes after the 2022 Olympic title came with controversy. The United States finished second, but was awarded the gold after Russian skater Kamila Valieva was disqualified because of a positive drug test from a sample submitted two months before the Games. The medal ceremony was canceled. With the investigation hanging over the then-15-year-old competing in the premier event of the Winter Olympics, Valieva struggled during the individual competition and broke down in tears in the kiss-and-cry.

The doping scandal, combined with the pandemic, made it feel like “a dark cloud was over [the sport],” 2018 Olympian Adam Rippon said.

“If I was a young kid, I don’t know if that would motivate me or get me on my hands and knees to beg my mom to take group classes. All of those women ended up in tears,” Rippon said. “I think that this Olympics is going to be so different.

“I think that this Olympics, there’s going to be so many people who become more interested in skating and want to follow it year round. And also a lot of young kids who are like, you know what? I want to be just like Ilia. I want to be just like Amber Glenn.”

U.S. figure skater Ilia Malinin takes part in a training session at Milano Ice Skating Arena on Wednesday. Malinin is the favorite for gold in the men’s competition.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Interest in figure skating is already up. The women’s and pairs free skate competitions at the U.S. championships were NBC’s most-watched U.S. figure skating telecast since 2019, averaging 2.5 million viewers. The audience for the men’s free skate — where Malinin won his fourth consecutive national title — and ice dance jumped 51% from the corresponding pre-2022 Winter Games telecast to 2.2 million viewers.

Still, the sport is far behind its heyday when figure skating was the second-most watched sport in the United States after the NFL.

The 1994 women’s technical program, which featured Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding a month after Kerrigan was struck on the knee with a baton, drew the third-highest TV rating for any sporting event at the time. Only Super Bowls XVI and XVII were rated higher.

The sport was built on rivalries. Skating was a “dog eat dog” sport, said Brian Boitano, the 1988 Olympic champion who was pitted against Canadian Brian Orser in “The Battle of the Brians.” Opponents were friendly, but certainly not friends, Boitano said.

This golden age of skating is built equally on camaraderie and competition. The sight of Liu and Levito standing behind the boards, jumping and cheering for Glenn when she finished her free skate to win her third U.S. championship went almost as viral as Glenn’s winning performance.

“To see this team supporting each other like they have, I feel like that’s the thing that … can make people love them,” Boitano said. “They are so lovable, and they are so inspiring, and it’s so refreshing, especially in this day and age.”

Figure skaters (from left) Alysa Liu, Amber Glenn, Isabeau Levito and Bradie Tennell pose with their medals at the U.S. figure skating championships on Jan. 9.

(Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)

Younger skaters often ask the legends what the sport was like during the previous generation. Boitano recalls professional competitions, sold-out cross-country tours and TV shows. But the magic was the skaters on the ice, he said. The diverse cast of characters assembled over multiple Olympic cycles included Scott Hamilton, Boitano, Katarina Witt, Debi Thomas, Kristi Yamaguchi, Philippe Candeloro and Surya Bonaly.

Boitano is thrilled to pass the torch to the current generation knowing even the stars of his time couldn’t match this group’s success in one key area: The United States had never previously won three world championships in a single year.

“I honestly think if this crew can’t bring back the popularity of figure skating,” Boitano said, “I don’t think it can be done.”