BOSTON — The red, white and blue skating party had just ended Saturday night. For the first time in history, the United States had won three of the four disciplines at a world figure skating championships, the last and least surprising of them coming with another majestic athletic masterpiece from American wunderkind Ilia Malinin.
Then the fire alarm sounded at TD Garden.
Everyone out. Even you, Ilia.
The now two-time world champion had just been seated for one last interview, but that wasn’t happening anymore. The timing of the loud and incessant beeping was annoying, but also fitting: It signaled the instant ending of one skating season, and the immediate beginning of another.
At the same moment the American conquest of international figure skating at the 2025 world championships was over, the 2026 Winter Olympic season began, with the knowledge that Malinin and his cohorts would reassemble in little more than 10 months in Milan, Italy, to do it all again when it matters most.
Rarely has the United States gone into an Olympics with this much promise in what traditionally has been the most popular of all winter sports. Only twice have the Americans won two gold medals in figure skating at a Winter Olympics, in 1956 and 1960. Since then, it has been either one, or zero.
Next February, the United States has a very good chance of winning three: Malinin is the strong favorite in the men’s event, three-time world champions Madison Chock and Evan Bates also are in an excellent position to win the gold in ice dancing, and the United States should win the team competition, which became an Olympic event in 2014, and which the U.S. won in 2022 after Russian star Kamila Valieva was caught doping and was finally disqualified, dropping her team out of first place.
The ice is slippery and anything can happen, but there is absolutely no doubt that if everyone stays healthy, the United States is going to be sending an extraordinarily talented group of figure skaters to Italy.
What about the magical Alysa Liu, the 16-year-old retiree who unretired a year ago and stunningly won the women’s world championship here at 19? She will be favored to win a medal, but the Russians will be allowed to send one female skater to Milan, and whoever that ends up being, she will be very good. Of the nine medals given out in the last three Olympic women’s events in 2014, 2018 and 2022, Russia won five — all by different Russian women — including all three golds.
This is the same Russia that was banned from participating in the last few world championships due to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. For that reason, it cannot participate in the Olympic team figure skating competition in 2026, making it all the more likely the Americans will win that event.
If Liu or countrywomen Amber Glenn or Isabeau Levito do win a medal in the women’s event, it will be the first Olympic medal for an American woman since Sasha Cohen’s silver in 2006. That is an amazingly long drought for a nation that had been a perennial power in women’s skating for decades.
Malinin, 20, who rode six quadruple jumps to a reliably massive victory Saturday night, believes three gold medals out of the five Olympic skating disciplines (pairs is the other) is “definitely a possibility” in 2026.
“All of us would have to show up for the Olympics and really be on our ‘A’ game, be 100 percent confident, 100 percent ready,” he said. “I think that all of us as athletes will be able to take our time, find our own plans, do what we need to do to get ready to train before those Olympics, and once we get there, just really try to skate our all there.”
A couple of minutes after he said those words, the fire alarm went off. It turned out that there apparently was nothing untoward happening in the Garden, but in more ways than one, it was time to get going.
