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          Can U.S. figure skating carry this momentum to the Olympics?

          Alysa Liu won a surprise gold medal at the world championships this weekend. AP Photo/Charles Krupa
          • D'Arcy Maine
          Mar 29, 2025, 11:49 PM ET

          BOSTON -- Alysa Liu couldn't believe it.

          As she sat on the white couch, flanked by her two coaches, and with the eyes of everyone in the TD Garden firmly on her, she said -- or mouthed, it was impossible to hear much of anything with the enthusiastic noise of the crowd vibrating around the arena -- "What?" in disbelief. Her free skate score had just been announced to the crowd -- a 148.39 for a 222.97 total score -- and the realization hit her in an instant.

          She was the 2025 world champion.

          The 19-year-old then audibly said, "What the hell?" with a wide, expressive smile, still in apparent shock over what she had done.

          Liu's triumph was perhaps the most unexpected result of a memorable weekend. In addition to knocking off reigning three-time world champion Kaori Sakamoto of Japan and becoming the first American woman to claim the title since 2006, Liu had done it less than a year after returning to the sport following a two-year retirement.

          "I'm not going to lie, this is an insane story," Liu said on the television broadcast moments later. "I don't know how I came back to be world champion."

          And Liu's victory was just the start of a dominant, statement-making weekend from the American contingent, who collectively proved they were yet again the world's top skating power after relinquishing that claim in recent years. On Saturday afternoon, Madison Chock and Evan Bates captured their third straight ice dance world championship and hours later, Ilia Malinin closed the event -- with yet another high-flying performance that he's become known for -- to clinch his second consecutive title as the men's world champion.

          It marked the first time in history the Americans won three of the possible four world titles at a single world championship.

          "I feel very happy to be one of the three winning in [front of] a home crowd in America," Malinin said on Saturday night. "I'm really proud of the team that we were able to put up."

          Before the end of Malinin's skate, which included a crowd-deafening quad axel and a near fever pitch-inducing backflip, the home crowd was on its feet and roaring with an ovation usually only heard in the building in the postseason for the Celtics and Bruins. It was the culmination of four storybook days for the Americans, and the fans, and with less than a year until the sport's pinnacle at the 2026 Olympic Games, it was as if everyone believed it was a sign of what was yet to come.

          "To have three world champions in an Olympic season is so exciting," Gracie Gold, a member of the 2014 bronze medal-winning American team and two-time national champion, told ESPN at TD Garden on Saturday. "I'm feeling super optimistic [about Olympic medal chances]. ... It's such an important year. I think everyone is feeling optimistic. Who wouldn't be?"

          The United States has had no shortage of superstars in figure skating over the decades. The most decorated skaters, such as Michelle Kwan, Kristi Yamaguchi, Dorothy Hamill and Brian Boitano, remain well-known names in the country's sports landscape and collectively accumulated Olympic medals, world championships and various other titles from the sport's biggest events.

          But while Americans have continued to have strong podium success in ice dance, and Nathan Chen and the U.S. team earned gold medals in 2022 in Beijing, the Americans overall simply haven't had the same consistent results across the board. No American woman has claimed an Olympic singles medal since Sasha Cohen won silver in 2006, and the gold medal drought dates even further to Sarah Hughes in 2002.

          Liu, a prodigious talent with an impressive array of difficult skills from an early age, looked to be the best hope to reverse those fortunes, but she initially retired in 2022 as a burned-out 16-year-old following a third-place finish at the world championships.

          Perhaps in large part because of the struggles of the women -- once the most recognizable among all of the country's Winter Olympians -- interest in the sport, from viewership to participation, has waned in recent years.

          But the weekend in Boston seemed to prove the country had turned a corner. The combination of talented American skaters, buoyed by the partisan and sold-out crowds, and the absence of the Russians (the country has been barred from competition since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022) paved the way for a staggering showing.

          And it goes beyond those who earned world titles. All three American women finished in the top five on Friday -- something that hadn't happened since 2001. Isabeau Levito, who won silver at the 2024 worlds, finished in fourth place. Amber Glenn, who had been among the favorites entering the competition after a previously undefeated season, clawed her way back to fifth place after a challenging short program Wednesday.

          "I mean, 'Go Team USA,' that's kind of all I can say," Liu told reporters later. "I'm so proud of both Isabeau and Amber for putting up such great performances, such a great fight, and they were really fun to be with this week."

          She later added they all cheer each other on and feed off one another's success. (And even, in Liu's case, borrow Glenn's yoga mat ahead of competition.)

          "All of that just drives us to be better also for each other," she said.

          Chock, 32, and Bates, 36, have perhaps been the glue of the American contingent since the Olympics three years ago. The pair were members of the 2022 Olympic team that originally won silver and was upgraded to gold after the Russian Olympic Committee team was stripped of the top prize following a doping scandal. Chock and Bates have also won six world medals, including the past three world titles. And they have followed in a line of strong American duos. The country has medaled in the event in every Games since 2006.

          While neither of the country's other ice dance teams made the podium, both finished in the top 10. Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarenko briefly held the top spot during the competition and finished fifth. Caroline Green and Michael Parsons ended in ninth place. Bates praised both duos after the event Saturday, and said there was an "incredibly strong" pipeline in the discipline in the U.S.

          "Our goal is to be on top of the podium in Milan," he said. "This [victory] doesn't really change that."

          And following his rout at TD Garden, there is perhaps no one more assured of Olympic glory than Malinin.

          The 20-year-old is unassuming off the ice and was spotted throughout the week walking around the concourse at TD Arena during other events and cheering on his American teammates. But he is a certified superstar on the ice -- a "QuadGod" as his Instagram handle suggests, with degrees of difficulty so stratospheric that, like Simone Biles in gymnastics, he seems impossible to catch.

          After his mind-blowing short program Thursday, in which he took a three-point lead over eventual bronze medalist Yuma Kagiyama and more than a 15-point edge over the rest of the field, Malinin had received a adoring reaction from the crowd before he was even finished, and dazzled with his dizzying array of quad jumps and his signature "raspberry twist" move.

          Even Kagiyama couldn't hide his admiration.

          "I feel like his skating and his artistry, his expressions [are] getting better year by year," he said through a translator. "I'm starting to think he's invincible."

          On Saturday, Malinin further separated himself from Kagiyama and the rest with another mesmerizing and gravity-defying skate. With virtually every jump and skill lighting up the jumbotron in green, indicating it had been successful and earning bonus points for execution, the numbers piled up so fast it felt more like a video game than an artistic endeavor. His free skate score of 208.15 was over 15 points higher than anyone, and his final total score of 318.56 was 31.09 better than second-place finisher Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan.

          With one year to go before the Milano Cortina Olympics, Malinin seems to be in a league of his own, with everyone else battling for second place, and he will almost undoubtedly be among the faces of the Games and perhaps the face of Team USA. He has spoken about his desire to further popularize the sport, at home and across the globe, and will likely do just that with every viral performance and high-profile endorsement he secures. He did a backflip -- again -- on the ice after being introduced to the crowd as the world champion during the victory ceremony.

          Jason Brown, the 30-year-old sentimental fan favorite beloved for his artistry and passion but lacking some of the most difficult elements of his top-placing peers, had a nearly flawless free skate to finish eighth. Andrew Torgashev, the 2025 national runner-up, had a more challenging outing, falling twice during an error-prone free skate to land in 22nd place.

          The pairs competition was the weakest spot for the Americans in Boston, but even that can be considered a win. Because Alisa Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov finished in sixth, and Ellie Kam and Danny O'Shea in seventh, their combined result of 13 gives the country a chance to qualify three teams for the Olympics -- something that hasn't been done since 1994.

          "That would mean a lot," Mitrofanov told NBC Sports on Thursday. "It's bigger than us. That's something, actually [that] we kind of set a little goal in our heads [coming into worlds]."

          So now, the biggest question for the Americans in the sport is a simple one: Can they keep it up and dominate on the world's biggest stage in February in Italy?

          It certainly seems as if the country's top skaters, across disciplines, are capable of doing just that. But of course, the participation status of the Russians remains unclear, and there are still 313 long, unpredictable days until the Olympic team event gets underway.

          "A lot can happen in skating," Gold said to ESPN on Saturday. "Ice is slippery."