Picture-Illustration: by The Reduce; Images: Getty Photos
Final Sunday, the U.S. figure-skating group took gold on the 2026 Milan Winter Olympics, though to many people at house, they had been winners lengthy earlier than that. On TikTok, fan edits abound of the trio referred to as the “Babes of Glory,” or as they like, the “Blade Angels”: Alysa Liu, a rock-star 20-year-old from the Bay Space with a smiley piercing, bleached hair rings, and a whatever-bro angle; Amber Glenn, a proudly queer 26-year-old from Dallas who loves Star Wars and cat eyeliner; and the candy, wisecracking 18-year-old New Jerseyan Isabeau Levito, the newborn of the group. Shut pals who’ve competed alongside each other for years, the three have achieved many spectacular feats of their sport. However their best triumph is over the concept you have to undergo to be the perfect.
We’re all too conversant in the punishing star athlete pursuing greatness in any respect prices, a trope visited again and again in Hollywood movies like Black Swan or The Smashing Machine and documentaries like Netflix’s Cheer. On the Olympics, it has performed out within the thwarted comeback of 41-year-old skier Lindsey Vonn, who pushed by way of knee surgical procedure and a torn ACL solely to crash 13 seconds into her race. She fractured her left leg and needed to be airlifted from the monitor. In distinction, the U.S. ladies’s figure-skating trio are proudly and defiantly tired of their very own ache. It’s their evident love for themselves and their friends that makes them so pleasant to observe.
Each Liu and Glenn stepped again from aggressive determine skating at pivotal moments of their careers and returned on their very own phrases. Raised by a single father who fled China as a political refugee as a younger man, Liu started skating on the age of 5, and at 13, she turned the youngest U.S. nationwide champion in historical past. However after putting sixth on the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, she shocked the figure-skating neighborhood by abruptly deciding to retire on the age of 16. She needed to be a traditional teenager. In retirement, she mentioned on 60 Minutes, “I used to be lastly ready to hang around with my siblings, do stuff with them like a traditional household, and attend my pals’ birthday events. It’s loopy, I had by no means achieved any of that earlier than.” She hiked Mount Everest and road-tripped together with her pals. Then she shocked the figure-skating neighborhood once more by deciding to return underneath the situation that she would dictate her personal coaching routine: “Nobody’s going to starve me or inform me what I can or can’t eat.” On Thursday, her new mind-set paid off — she turned the primary American girl to win a gold medal in determine skating since 2002.
Glenn began her profession on the similar age, and by 8 years outdated she was competing at junior nationals. However intense stress triggered her to spiral; she developed an consuming dysfunction and extreme despair, impacting her capability to carry out on ice. “Our coaches would pit us in opposition to one another, and at 10 years outdated, we had been pressured to have this competitiveness and comparability — it’s so poisonous,” she instructed Time. She reacted poorly to the primary antidepressant she was prescribed and struggled to speak about her psychological well being. Ultimately, after intervention by a pal, she switched drugs and spent every week at an inpatient facility. “I spotted that ‘Okay, even when I come out of right here and by no means skate once more, I do know I’ve the chance to nonetheless make a superb life for myself,’” she mentioned. In 2019, after she watched American ice dancer Karina Manta come out as bisexual, she got here out too. She is the primary brazenly queer feminine U.S. Olympian.
Sports activities followers have grown to see athletes as metaphors from which we extract tales about human endurance and nationwide glory. The American ladies of determine skating are saying fuck that — they’re individuals first. Their skating applications aren’t expressions of simply technical mastery but additionally private style. Glenn stepped away from social media after receiving hate from Trump followers incensed by her criticisms of the president. However this week, she went again to Instagram and shared a photograph of her and Liu with the caption: “They hate to see two woke bitches profitable.”
As a long-suffering perfectionist whose relentless self-criticism has nearly by no means resulted in higher efficiency — and a local of Amber Glenn’s hometown of Plano, Texas — I’ve discovered all of this heartening to see. I used to be particularly floored by Glenn’s remarks after a shaky efficiency within the ladies’s free skate. Although she was dissatisfied, she didn’t beat herself up over it: “I’m actually happy with my psychological perseverance on the market … I’m going to reset, recuperate, get out of the village on the market, and act prefer it’s an entire new competitors, as a result of it’s,” she instructed NBC L.A. Win or lose, she’s already achieved us a fantastic service.
A earlier model of this put up incorrectly said that Alysa Liu’s father is from Taiwan. He immigrated to the U.S. from China when he was 25.
This put up has been up to date.
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