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MILAN — Polish skater Kamila Sellier suffered a serious injury in the sixth quarterfinal of Friday night’s 1500m short-track speed skate and was taken from Assago Ice Skating Arena to a nearby hospital. Polish officials indicated that she was in good spirits, even raising a thumbs-up as she left the arena. 

Late in the quarterfinal, Sellier appeared to lose her footing and slipped, colliding with the United States’ Kristen Santos-Griswold. In the ensuing accident, Santos-Griswold’s skate caught Sellier on the face. Sellier slid into the protective retaining wall, and medical crews raised a sheet around her to protect the scene from the audience. She was stretchered from the ice. 

Konrad Niedźwiedzki, press attache for the Polish speed skating team and a 2014 Olympian, informed reporters at the arena that Sellier had suffered a cut on her cheek and eyelid that required stitches. Other reports indicated that Sellier had potentially fractured a cheekbone and suffered severe swelling.

“We are waiting for what the hospital tests will show,” Niedźwiedzki said, via translation. 

One of Sellier’s teammates, Natalia Maliszewska, appeared visibly shaken as she spoke with reporters. “My thoughts are with her,” Maliszewska said in Polish. “I can’t think of anything else.” 

“These aren't common accidents, but they do happen,” Sellier’s teammate Gabriela Topolska said in Polish. “Kamila already has one of them, from a skate on her face. Kamila has a cut in her skin, with stitches.” 

Sellier has won several European speed-skating medals, most recently a silver medal in the 2000m mixed relay at the European short track speed skating championships in January.

Santos-Griswold was disqualified from the race, which continued after the injury timeout.

MILAN — As she skated around the Assago Ice Skating Arena rink, moments before the most important routine of her life, Alysa Liu caught sight of her teammate Amber Glenn near the kiss-and-cry couch. Glenn, devastated after Tuesday night’s program, had skated a spectacular routine of her own nearly two hours before. As Liu drew close, she gave Glenn a congratulatory thumbs-up. 

“What are you doing?” an exasperated Glenn replied. “Go skate!” 

So Alysa Liu did. And she won herself a gold medal, smiling all the way. 

There are no record books to measure such things, but it’s entirely possible that no Olympian has ever smiled as much as Liu did on Thursday night, executing a brilliant, virtually flawless free skate that vaulted her from third place into first. She smiled when she stepped onto the ice, she smiled when she spotted Glenn, she smiled through her lutzes and loops and salchows, she smiled when she pointed her left finger to the sky to close out her routine. And she smiled — and giggled a triumphant laugh — when she skated right up to the rinkside camera and bellowed, “That’s what I’m f***ing talking about!” 

That is the entire joy of the Alysa Liu experience — giddiness, confidence, joy, serenity — and gold-medal-winning talent. At an Olympics where so many others have crumbled under the pressure, she literally laughed in pressure’s face. 

“She’s not like us,” her coach Phillip DiGuglielmo said, beaming in the afterglow of her victory. “The rest of us here would be like, ‘Oh my God, I’m nervous. I can’t do this. I have a million voices in my head.’ She has one voice in her head and it says, ‘I got this.’”

“The feelings I felt out there were calm, happy, confident,” she said after coming off the ice, drawing out pauses between each word. “Of course I had fun. But I’ve been having fun all the time.” 

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Her story remains a remarkable one: a champion at the intermediate, junior and national levels from 2016 to 2020, she made the 2022 Olympic team … and then decided she was done with skating. Completely, thoroughly, slam-the-door done. She enrolled in classes at UCLA, she spent time with friends, she traveled the world … all the parts of a normal life denied to competitive figure skaters. 

Somewhere along the line, though, she decided to come back to skating, decided that this was the way she could best express her abundance of ideas, in fields far from the ice. Get her started talking about music or fashion or choreography, and she’s likely to spiral off in giddy delight about her latest inspiration or creation.

“I think I have a beautiful life story, and I feel really lucky,” Liu said. “I’m glad that a lot of people are now watching me so I can show them everything I’ve come up with in my brain.” 

Liu rediscovered a love of skating, and skating loved her back. In short order, she rose from retirement to world champion to, now, Olympic gold medalist — the first American woman to win an individual gold medal since 2002. 

“I 100 percent believe that if she had not stepped away, she would not be here right now,” DiGuglielmo said. “Giving her that break — not just stepping away, she shut the door — her body got healthier, her mind …. was sparked, all those things that make you into the person you are.” 

What’s most remarkable about Liu is this: for an Olympian, she’s remarkably unfazed by the Olympics themselves. She visualizes something larger, something beyond the Olympic stage, which is truly an achievement given that she’s still 20. 

“I don’t need this,” she said, holding up her gold medal. “What I needed was the stage. And I got that. So I was all good, no matter what happened. If I fell on every jump,” she said smiling, “I would still be wearing this dress.” 

Someday, a few more Winter Olympics down the line, we might look back on Alysa Liu’s 2026 performance as the start of a revitalization of interest in the sport of figure skating, the way Dorothy Hamill inspired thousands of young skaters after her 1976 gold. And even if not, we’ll still have this one true memory of one perfect night on the ice. 

“When you enjoy doing something, you can excel at it,” DiGuglielmo said. “She can really show that you can do what you love, do it really well, and win the Olympics.”

Her medal around her neck, her skates swapped for sneakers, Liu paused for a thought. “I felt so connected with the audience,” she said, and then laughed. “Oh! I want to be out there again!”

GABRIEL BOUYS via Getty Images

MILAN — Redemption is possible, at least on the rink. After a single missed element in the short program doomed her best chance at a medal, Amber Glenn returned to the Olympic ice Thursday night and delivered a much more composed free skate. The audience at Assago Ice Skating Arena heralded her arrival on the ice with applause, and congratulated her on the conclusion of her program with a standing ovation. 

Starting the night in 13th place, Glenn finished her free skate with a score of 147.52, good enough for a conditional first place with 12 skaters left to go. She skated to a medley of “I Will Find You” by Audiomachine and “The Return” by CLANN, and appeared in control, confident and even grateful, pumping her fists and gratefully touching her heart as she skated off the ice. 

“This close,” she said to herself, knowing a slight bobble on her final jumping pass stood between her and near perfection on the routine.

She may leave Milan with only one medal, the team gold she earned last week, but she also leaves with her head held high and her self-esteem reclaimed.

Glenn and her Team USA teammates Alysa Liu and Isabeau Levito arrived in Milan two weeks ago riding a surge of nationwide popularity. The “Blade Angels,” as they dubbed themselves, were a perfect trio — the heartfelt Glenn, the quirky Liu, the understated Levito. They’d shown so much talent, so much promise — all three are national champions — that talk of a podium sweep even took flight. At the very least, one of them would almost surely break the American medal drought that’s existed in women’s figure skating since 2006. 

For Glenn, the first cracks started to show in the team event. Tasked with handling the free skate element — Liu had handled the women’s short program — Glenn was uncharacteristically tentative, ending her routine in third place. 

"If an average person were to watch, they'd probably be like, 'Oh, it's fine. Just a few little things (went wrong), but as skating people we know, there were many, many, many points left out on the table,” Glenn said afterward. “I did not feel or perform the way I wanted to. I physically didn't feel great. My legs were feeling heavy, I was tired, I just didn't feel my best, and I've been practicing here incredibly.”

The United States still claimed the team gold for a second straight Olympics, but Glenn’s face betrayed her anguish and fear that she’d cost Team USA a gold right up until the final results were announced. 

“I think I had some fatigue and I need to really manage that going into the individual event,” Glenn said at the time. “But I'm really proud of the mental strength that I've built over the years to be able to get through some mistakes in the beginning and really fighting in the second half.”

She had no idea that much worse was yet to come. Glenn and her fellow Blade Angels had more than a week between the team event and their individual events, a long time to maintain Olympic-level intensity. 

When Glenn finally took the ice for her short program on Tuesday, she began with a triple axel, a jump so difficult only one other skater in this year’s women’s event landed it. After another successful element, she prepared to do a triple loop, a relatively routine jump; virtually every Olympian on Tuesday’s program completed one. But a slight loss of balance meant she only did two loops instead of three, giving her zero points for the entire element. 

That loss sent her plummeting down the standings; she finished the program in 13th place, more than 11 points behind leader Ami Nakai of Japan. She was visibly devastated, and left the arena after only the briefest of interviews. 

Glenn returned to the ice on Thursday night with an opportunity to rewrite her narrative. She executed the jump she missed two days earlier and rallied to put up a score that will certainly move her well up the leaderboard. But no matter how her final routine went, she would leave Milan as a gold medalist. 

MILAN — Quick, name the skater who’s been on the ice more than anyone this Olympics. No, it’s not Alysa Liu or Ilia Malinin. The skater who’s spent more time on the ice than any Olympian won’t medal at these Games, but he’s nonetheless opening up the image of skating in an entirely new way. 

After every skater finishes their routine, Jordan Cowan steps onto the ice to accompany them to the kiss and cry couch. He circles them, capturing their emotions while deftly skating backward to accompany them off the ice. There are plenty of jobs that one can step into with no experience, but “skating cameraman” most definitely is not one of them. 

Cowan grew up in Los Angeles, but fell in love with ice dancing and moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to train. He was good, too, joining Team USA as an ice dancer; alongside partner Anastasia Olson, he finished 7th in the U.S. national championships in 2012. 

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All the while, though, he was working with video, making funny clips and enjoying himself. A child of Los Angeles, his first love was film. After he retired from skating, he observed how cameras in ballroom dancing were revolutionizing the viewing experience. Steadicams can move with the dancers, bringing a new dimension of intimacy to shows like “Dancing with the Stars” and “So You Think You Can Dance.” 

And then an idea hit him: What if a camera could move with skaters? 

Cowan is a freelance videographer, working in Madison Square Garden filming the Knicks and Rangers. But he knew there was an untapped opportunity for on-ice filming, so he began developing his own Steadicam rig, a hybrid of various systems and equipment tailored specifically to his needs. He founded On Ice Perspectives to provide skating camerawork for TV and national competitions. He’s filmed three U.S. championships, including breakout moments with stars like Amber Glenn: 

The Olympics represent a new level of fame and responsibility. “This is a very traditional kind of sport, filmed mostly the same way for the last 50 years,” Cowan says. “Fans love the tradition of ice skating. So having a camera on the ice is a very important privilege. I respect it a lot.” 

In these Olympics in Milan, Cowan enters the rink after the skaters have finished their routines, giving a sweeping, cinematic view of their faces in joy or devastation. He skates in slow, sweeping arcs around them, carrying a camera — he says it weighs about as much as a heavy bag of groceries — out in front of his chest, capturing the spectrum of emotion on skaters’ faces. 

“I recognize and respect their emotional privacy,” he says. “I’m trying to bring the audience closer to the story, getting the audience to empathize. The skaters understand that I’m not there to put a camera in their face, but to show them in the best light possible.” 

He also tries to remain unobtrusive. Two skaters he’s filmed before — Great Britain’s Lewis Gibson and Canada’s Paul Poirer — were excited to see he was on the ice … but only when they saw him filming other skaters. They hadn’t even noticed him while he was on the ice in front of him. 

“That’s the best feedback I can get,” Cowan says. “I’m not taking anything away from the skaters on the ice.” 

That’s in part because he blends into the ice. Cowan sports a sharp custom-made white suit, a tribute, he says, to the fashionable host city of Milan. 

“Sometimes I’m caught in a wide shot,” he says, “so instead of trying to make a feeble attempt to hide myself, I tried to match the mood of skaters in expensive designer costumes.” 

Saturday night will bring the famed skater’s gala, an exhibition of the figure skating medalists and special invitees where Cowan will get the opportunity to shine. “That’s my specialty. I love filming live shows,” he says. “It’s a celebration, a performance to please the crowd.” Freed of the concerns about competition, both Cowan and the skaters will be able to cut loose, enjoy the pleasure of performing, and bring the audience along for the skate. 

“Being on ice, getting to film skaters during their tricks, having people at home watch it live and behind the scenes,” he says, “it’s even better than a front-row seat.”