At the age of 16, the American Alysa Liu ended her figure skating career, at 19 she is at the top and prevents the fourth World Cup triumph from the Japanese woman.
This story is like a fairy tale! The 19-year-old American Alysa Liu crowned her comeback with the World Cup title of figure skaters.
The leader after the short program also showed the best freestyle in the sold -out TD Garden of Boston and prevailed with 222.97 points ahead of defending champion Kaori Sakamoto from Japan (217.98). For the USA it was the first World Cup gold among women by Kimmie Meissner since 2006, German runners were not at the start.
Liu had ended her career at the age of 16 and only returned to ice a year ago. “This is a crazy story,” she said at NBC: “I don’t know how I managed to come back and become world champion. I would never have thought of that.” In 2022 she had already won World Cup bronze.
Figure skating World Cup: Favorite Sakamoto missed another title
Sakamoto missed her fourth title in series, but improved to the silver rank after the disappointing short program that she had only completed as fifth. After Lius freestyle, she warmly congratulated her competitor on the ice and soon looked ahead towards the 2026 Olympic Games in Milan.
“It is an important experience for me to feel the burden of this defeat. Now I can be an outsider, a challenger who goes forward and strives up,” said Sakamoto. But Liu also starts the winter games motivated. “Personally, I can get much better,” she said.
Bronze went to Japanese Mone Chiba (215.24) in Boston, who was in second place after the short program. For the first time since 2003, the women’s competition took place at the World Cup without German participation, the German champion Kristina Isaev had had to end the season prematurely due to injury.
“It is very annoying for the association and also a setback that we could not send a lady this season that the minimum standard of the World Association was able to meet,” said sports director Claudia Pfeifer from the German ice skating union.