America’s bold new trio aims for Olympic figure skating gold while serving as role models for a new generation

MILAN (AP) — The trio of American women aiming for Olympic figure skating gold Tuesday night are not the delicate ice princesses of the past.

There’s Amber Glenn, a powerful 26-year-old and LGBTQ+ rights activist whose career has taken off just when most figure skaters are thinking about retiring. The three-time reigning U.S. champion’s outspoken opinions 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, the former phenom who retired at 16 only to launch a comeback that resulted in the first world title for an American woman in nearly two decades. Liu’s streaked blonde and brown hair, prominent frenulum piercing and maverick aura have made the 20-year-old a hero to alternative, punk and emo audiences.

And there’s Isabeau Levito, perhaps the closest thing to the innocent image of teenage predecessors like Tara Lipinski and Sarah Hughes, until you take the 18-year-old away from the cameras, and her burning wit and biting sarcasm shine through.

They dubbed themselves “Blade Angels”, an homage to “Charlie’s Angels”, after rejecting suggestions such as “Powerpuff Girls” and “Babes of Glory”, which they feared could lead to some trademark problems. (As if Milan needed more.)

I’m a new kind of role model for a new generation of American girls.

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They also represent the last chance to salvage a disappointing Olympics for American skaters.

“I really like that we’re all different,” Levito said, “and we all have our own strengths and personalities, and our own ways that we want to look and feel. 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 would finish at 18”

Glenn grew up in Plano, Texas. Her father, Richard, is a police sergeant and her mother, Cathlene, a fitness instructor. He represented the United States internationally for nearly 15 years, which happens to be Lipinski’s age when he won Olympic gold.

It’s hard to become more unabashedly American. Yet some critics still questioned his loyalty on the eve of the Cortina Games in Milan, when Glenn responded to a question about the political climate for the LGBTQ+ community under President Donald Trump.

“I hope I can use my platform and my voice during these Games to help people stay strong in these difficult times,” she said. “A lot of people will say, ‘You’re just an athlete. Stick to your job. Shut up about politics.’ But politics affects all of us.”

Glenn probably wouldn’t have taken such a bold stand ten years ago, when he all but abandoned the sport.

But throughout her career, she has faced an eating disorder head-on, which is all too common in the sport. He spent time in a mental health facility to control his depression. He learned to manage ADHD. And he came to understand his sexuality; Glenn identifies as pansexual, meaning she is attracted to people regardless of sex or gender.

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“I’ve been through a lot,” Glenn told The Associated Press. “It took many, many years to get to this point.”

He now has an Olympic gold medal in his Winter Games debut after helping the United States defend its title in the team event.

“I walked away from the sport. I came back. At one point, I hated it. Every time people asked me, ‘Oh, should my kids play this?’ I would say, ‘No, never,'” Glenn said. “But I’ve seen the people around me grow, and how the figure skating environment has changed, and how we’re trying to change it. And in doing so, 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 previous Olympic experience. But just like Glenn, she had come to hate the sport by the time she finished sixth at the Beijing Games, so much so that she quit altogether. He was 16 years old at the time.

“I really hated skating when I stopped. I mean, I really didn’t like it,” Liu told the AP. “I didn’t care about the competitions. I didn’t care about the places. I didn’t care about the skaters. I didn’t care about my schedule. I just wanted to, like, escape. I don’t want anything to do with it. I hated the fame. I hated social media. I didn’t like interviews. Like, I hated everything.”

It took moving away for Liu to finally find herself.

The same little girl who was dropped off at the skating rink by her father in the morning and picked up in the evening, and who thirsted for friends her own age while living and training alone in Colorado, began to explore: Liu climbed Mount Everest Base Camp, checked off items on her ever-growing to-do list, and enrolled at UCLA to study, perhaps fittingly, psychology.

“I learned so much. I met so many new people,” Liu said. “I had to exercise my free will and push myself in different ways.”

She began contemplating a return two years ago, after going skiing and experiencing an adrenaline rush unlike anything she’d felt since hanging up her skates. Liu didn’t know where it would take her – certainly not the first world title for an American since Kimmie Meissner in 2006, and certainly not another Winter Games – but she knew she loved the feeling of skating again.

Everything in Liu’s life has meaning now, including the striking horizontal stripes in her hair. They are meant to represent the growth rings of a tree. There are currently three, and like a tree, Liu plans to add another every year.

“I felt like a puppet or a canvas used by other people,” she said. “Now I do things for myself.”

“They have no idea what you really are like”

Levito has always admired Russian figure skater Evgenia Medvedeva, perhaps the most dominant women’s skater of the mid-2000s, who was heavily favored to win gold at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games but ended up with the silver medal instead.

“She was so cute. I just wanted to have that angelic energy that I feel like she has,” Levito told the AP. “Amber and Alysa have their own distinct style, and she was more like me. My style is, I don’t know, put together. I don’t know how to say it.

“The image of the ice princess,” Levito said, after a long pause, “which is silly to say.”

Mainly because it is just that: 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 city that hosted the Winter Games. But by taking her away from cameras, photographers and the prying eyes of the world, her sarcastic, bordering on vulgar sense of humor will rise to the surface.

At the U.S. Figure Skating Championships last month, Levito was asked what her favorite quality was about Liu, who was seated next to her. “I would like to say something but I won’t,” Levito said, before giving in to a little prodding: “She keeps her hoes on her toes,” he said.

“I think it’s so funny,” Levito said later, reflecting on that day. “On the Internet they say, ‘Our Isabeau is no longer a child,’ when they have no idea what you really are like. I just don’t want to say the wrong things in front of the media.”

So Levitus plays it safe. He puts on a sort of mask for the public, projecting the image he thinks people want to see.

Just as Glenn and Liu have people who can identify with them, there are many people who can identify with them.

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AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics