Latest news with #2024WorldChampionships
NBC Sports
25-03-2025
- Sport
- NBC Sports
Isabeau Levito back from injury at figure skating worlds, recalling a perfect moment
Isabeau Levito still draws a beaming smile when asked about the 2024 World Championships, even though more recent months have been some of the most difficult of her figure skating career. Levito, who between the ages of 13 and 15 won U.S. junior, world junior and U.S. senior titles, took silver at last March's senior worlds in Montreal, three weeks after her 17th birthday. She matched the best U.S. women's finish at worlds since 2006 (when Kimmie Meissner won). Levito stepped on the Bell Centre ice for that free skate 'overwhelmed and stressed.' When she finished her clutch four-minute program, she had an eye-popping look of astonishment. Nick Zaccardi, That all belied the confidence she developed in the prior two months, since falling three times in her 2024 U.S. Championships free skate (she ended up third in defense of her 2023 national title). 'I really locked into my training like a machine,' she said last week. 'I just drilled into it, and then by the time I got to worlds, everything was like breathing to me. My programs were just like tracing the back of my hand.' Levito placed the silver medal on a shoulder-level shelf on her New Jersey bedroom wall. 'You could just see it all the time,' she said. 'It was always looking at you.' This week's World Championships in Boston will mark the first time she'll skate injury-free in a top-level competition since last year's worlds. 'I'm not going into this worlds thinking I have to podium. I have to be like last year. I have to do better,' Levito said. 'I barely have been able to skate this season, barely been able to compete this season. So I'm just glad that I'm competing again and that I'm in shape again.' She began feeling right foot pain in practices leading up to last October's Skate America, the first event of the fall Grand Prix Series. She skated through it to place third, then underwent an MRI and learned it was a bone injury. A stress reaction. She withdrew from her second Grand Prix event in November. In all, Levito spent most of three months off the ice and some of it in a boot. She would take three weeks off, try to come back and have to stop again. The cycle repeated. She filled the time with pre-calculus, psychology, economics and chemistry, working on her senior year of online schoolwork. It was the longest she had ever been sidelined by injury, 'and the hardest to come back from,' she said. Levito withdrew one week before January's U.S. Championships. Then the week of nationals, she was able to do a single Lutz without pain. A U.S. Figure Skating committee put her on the three-woman team for worlds, pending she show readiness closer to the competition. So Levito flew to Milan — her mother's hometown and where her grandmother still lives — and competed in the 2026 Olympic test event from Feb. 19-20. Levito estimated she skated 'at 50%" there. She had done just one free skate run-through in practice before performing it in front of an audience and judges in Italy. Still, Levito got the job done with her runner-up finish, showing enough progress with her triple jumps to secure her spot in Boston. 'Especially my free program, I was very fatigued from the get-go,' she said. 'Some of my friends from Bergamo that were in the stands were like, 'Girl, you were fighting from start to finish. We saw you fighting.' 'If I didn't know myself so well, I would have been nervous, like, oh my god, am I going to land the triples in the second half? Because it's the free program, and I haven't run it many times. But knowing myself, I would never let that happen. Never let myself go down in competition like that because I'm tired.' Levito started feeling like herself again two weeks ago. Last Tuesday, she said her coaches would probably assess her readiness at 85%. 'She's looking OK. She's looking good right now,' Yulia Kuznetsova, her coach since age 4, said last Thursday. 'I don't want to make any predictions or any promises because Isabeau did miss three months of skating.' Levito's silver medal from 2024 is no longer on the shelf. She — and the medal — moved to a new room in her house. 'Sometimes I try to think of what I was thinking before that (2024 Worlds) free program,' she said. 'I have no idea. I just felt like I wasn't even thinking the whole program. But before I knew it, it was done, and I had done it so well, and it was just completely because of the training. 'It just felt so right, and it was just such a high moment in my life. It was so perfect.'
Yahoo
15-03-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Kristen Santos-Griswold rests at short track worlds after relay collision
American Kristen Santos-Griswold sat out Saturday's races at the World Short Track Speed Skating Championships to rest after colliding with another skater in a relay on Friday. Santos-Griswold collided with Canadian Danaé Blais in the first round of the mixed-gender relay in Beijing. Blais crashed first in an area where teams were making relay exchanges. Blais got up and began taking steps to avoid incoming skaters, but couldn't get out of the traffic area entirely before Santos-Griswold skated into her after making an exchange. Medical professionals tended to the skaters for one to two minutes before each skated off the ice slowly with one person holding each's arm. Santos-Griswold held padding to her mouth. She was later taken to a hospital as a precaution, according to the International Skating Union. 'While she is not seriously injured, she is pretty banged-up and whether she races tomorrow, we will make that decision in the morning," U.S. head coach Stephen Gough said Friday, according to the ISU. U.S. Speedskating later posted that Santos-Griswold would rest Saturday before making a decision on whether to race on the last day of worlds on Sunday. "Our top priority is the health and well-being of our athletes, and we look forward to her full recovery," the post read. Blais posted that she will miss the rest of worlds due to injury. The final rounds of the women's 1000m were Saturday, with Belgian Hanne Desmet taking the title. The final rounds of the women's 500m and 1500m are Sunday. Santos-Griswold won a medal in all five events at the 2024 World Championships, including her first world title in the 1000m. This season, she became the third American to win an overall season title as the top-ranked skater combining results across the 500m, 1000m and 1500m. Kristen Santos-Griswold kept skating after Olympic heartbreak and is better than ever Kristen Santos-Griswold is coming off the best season for a U.S. short track speed skater in over a decade. Nick Zaccardi, Nick Zaccardi,
