2024 Skate America Preview

Putting the SkAm in Skate America.

The 2024 Grand Prix series starts TOMORROW (Friday, 10/18)! The skating is starting FOR REAL. I’m wearing my dinosaurs-on-skates socks in anticipation.

Here are the stories I’m watching this weekend— it’s really one big gossipy and potentially terrible story and a bunch of smaller things. Let’s start with the big one.

Isabella Flores and Ivan Desyatov withdrew from competition at the last minute— what happened?

Bella and Vanya won the coveted Skate America host spot for Ice Dance. Every country to host a Grand Prix event gets a host spot for each discipline— this means they can select anyone from their country to compete in an event, regardless of World Standing points or previous international placements. It’s a huge opportunity for an up-and-coming team; it could give someone their breakout moment, and it shows that the federation has confidence in you. For Team USA, they typically host a “skate off” to select their host picks. Bella and Vanya haven’t competed on the Senior Grand Prix before, and they would have been psyched to get this.

But they suddenly withdrew from competition on Wednesday morning, even after Bella posted about Skate America on her socials the day before. And here’s where the plot thickens— they were replaced by Jeffrey Chen and Annabelle Morozov.

Some of you immediately did the math in your head and gasped or at least chuckled. For those of you who didn’t, let me try to explain.

Bella Flores was part of that Bermuda Triangle of Ice Dance partner swapping— her previous partner (Dimitry Tsarevski) dramatically ghosted her before Nationals a couple of years ago, but he later resurfaced to skate with Katarina Wolfkostin. Meanwhile, Katarina was skating with Jeffrey Chen, but it seems like he maybe broke off their partnership unexpectedly based on the wording from an Instagram post that she later edited to sound like it was a more mutual partner dissolution. I’m guessing an adult in her life intervened, but who really knows what happened there. It seems like Katarina came out ahead because Jeffrey tends to either fall or cause his partners to fall (and there are RUMORS he is under SafeSport investigation, ALLEGEDLY, though no one seems to know why he’s under investigation). So then, Jeffrey moved on to skate with a junior skater, Yahli Pedersen, which only lasted for a season before he switched to the hot new bombshell entering the Villa: Annabelle Morozov, who previously skated for Russia and whose father is an infamous Russian Ice Dancer and coach. Annabelle’s father clearly pulled her out of Russian Ice Dance when it became clear they would be staying home for the next Olympic cycle, and then he shipped her off to America (where she has citizenship because she was born here) to start over in another powerful Ice Dance federation.

Did you track all that? It boils down to this: Bella and Vanya were replaced by a Russian Ice Princess whose father isn’t exactly known for his above-board dealings.

This could be a Nothing Burger. People withdraw from events all the time. Injuries happen and people get sick. But here’s the thing giving me pause— Bella is a scrapper. She once got the police involved when her partner stopped taking her calls, and she is clearly working the Tessa/Scott playbook to get social media attention to build her audience. She has GOALS. She is not going to sit out of her big moment on International Broadcast because she has the sniffles. Also, she’s Very Online— her socials are regularly updated. She didn’t say a word about the withdrawal until late last night. And her post didn’t give a reason:

Naturally, when there’s an information vacuum, the people of figure skating Twitter will rush to fill the space. At the moment I am sending this, there is no actual confirmation of anything. I am pretty nervous this is about to get very dark, but it’s really not fair to declare that just yet. Top speculations:

• USFS decided they would rather put their weight behind Annabelle and Jeffrey and forced Bella/Vanya to withdraw. Daddy Morozov was some how involved. I don’t personally buy it. If USFS wanted to do something like this, they would not have waited until the last minute to pull that lever. Still, I laughed at the “did you withdraw or were you withdrawn” memes.

• There’s some personal issue that arose that they don’t want to talk about yet— injury, illness, family emergency, etc.

• And the latest speculation based on a vague-tweet from a very gossipy source who is sometimes right but often wrong, so take this with a margarita of salt— someone is under investigation for something. You can absolutely track this down on Reddit if you want to chase this rabbit.

I was looking forward to telling you about their bonkers Poor Little Things free dance, among other reasons. I’m hoping their withdrawal is related to something innocuous, for all involved.

And now on to an assortment of less sordid juicy little snacks to tempt your figure skating taste buds:

Battle of the Secret Russian Nepo Babies With Annabelle and Jeffrey entering the fray, the Ice Dance event now has TWO Not-So-Secret Russians who previously competed for Russia and who are also the daughters of prominent Russian coaches: Annabella Morozov, daughter of Nikolaj Morozov & Diana Davis, daughter of the Dread Pirate Eteri. I think Diana has the edge in this competition simply because she’s been competing with her partner longer, but I’ll be curious to see how their scores compare.

Speaking of Eteri…. she will be in the building, and I very much look forward to watching everyone else react to her. Despite the fact that Russian skaters are banned, Russian coaches seem perfectly welcome. Eteri is coaching a Georgian male skater, and he just HAPPENS to be at the same competition as her daughter. What a coincidence! He also just happens to be competing at Diana’s other event, Cup of China. How lucky! Don’t tell me this woman doesn’t still have the ear of SOMEONE at the ISU.

American Women! Isabeau is the World Silver Medalist! Elyce has the highest Senior Woman score so far this season! Bradie Tennell is a veteran with murder in her eyes! I don’t think they’ll actually sweep the podium because there are so many other strong Women skaters at this event, but there’s a small chance they could. And in what order?? I’ll fall asleep tonight speculating about this in my head. It will be wonderful and I will dream of ice castles and Kristy-Tonya-Nancy in Munich.

Can another American team unseat Kam/O’Shea? I think the very seasoned Danny O’Shea saw Alexis Knierim unofficially retire and realized he has a pretty good shot at an Olympic team if he could just find a good enough partner. He’s not wrong. The other Team USA Pairs are not really cutting the mustard. But Kam/O’Shea are beatable— they’re not that far ahead. I’m eying the other two teams here to see if they can make it interesting for the race to be the top US team.

Is Pairs about to get really competitive actually? Speaking of Pairs, they’ve been pretty snoozy since the Olympics. Everything seemed to be a two way horse race between Knierim/Frazier and Miura/Kihara. And then a two way horse race between Miura/Kihara and Deanna & Partner. But now there’s suddenly a lot of teams who found their groove, and the events are feeling much more competitive. At this event, Miura/Kihara are the favorites. But the Hungarians and the Georgians are here, too, and they look pretty solid. In the words of Gabriella Montez and Troy Bolton, this could be the start of something new.

How close will Ilia get to breaking the Nathan records? Nathan Chen’s World Records are as follows: 335.30 for Total Score and 113.97 for Short Program. Ilia already surpassed his free program record last year at Worlds. So far, Ilia’s been held back by his artistry, but I’d wager those records will fall conveniently before the Olympic season, artistry or no. The question is how soon will they let him blow past Nathan and by what margin.

Some Dudes I’m curious about: Donovan Carillo and Kevin Aymoz, for very different reasons. Mexican skater Donovon is delightful and entertaining, and he’s got a full season of Canadian coaching under his belt. I’m hoping he starts to emerge as a serious competitor this season. Kevin, on the other hand, seems like he is really going through it. He’s essentially given up mid-skate during his last four competitions. I’m very nervous for him.

Some Ladies that have my interest: Wakaba Haguchi and Nina Pinzaronne. Wakaba is kind of like Bradie— a former Olympian, making a comeback after some time away. I’d like to see her seize the moment this weekend. And with Loena backing out of competitions, is now the time for Nina to make a run at being the Belgian Supreme?

Exactly how messy will Chock and Bates be? NBC is airing a “practice cam” for Skate America, and skating twitter is very skeptical about the Chock and Bates short program they saw during practice. They’re skating to a mash up of at least 12 songs. Yes. 12. One for every year they have skated together? I watched a snippet of it, and it felt like those old commercials for CD collections where they play the chorus and move on to the next song. Seemed a little frantic to me. And the people who actually understand Ice Dance seem to think they are not up to snuff right now. But will that matter? Or will they coast through on the strength of their World title? OR…is this the moment Lilah Fear gets on the board as an Olympic contender? This could be like Michelle opening the door for Tara at the 1997 Worlds all over again.

And as always, I am curious to see what Johnny is wearing and what he makes Terri Gannon wear so that they will match. I guess I will also be interested in what Tara wears, but I just have a hard time with people who put enormous bows on their baby girls. (If this is you, I’m sure that when you do it, it’s actually really tasteful and cute. Your baby is obviously the exception here.)

Some Other Resources:

The full list of entries for each discipline: Men, Women, Dance, Pairs.

What is the Grand Prix Series? So You Want to Watch Figure Skating has a great explainer.

They also have information on how to stream the event, which might be useful for those of you outside of the US.

US fans— you can watch everything on Peacock and most of it on E! and NBC. Here’s their planned schedule:

For actual technical skating commentary, I follow Jackie Wong on Twitter or Threads. Here are his previews for SkAm: Women, Men, Pairs, Dance (not yet posted when I sent this).

And, if you’re curious, here are my takes on the Main Characters of the whole season: Pairs, Men, Dance, International Women, American Women.

If you’re looking to follow along with me on social media, I’m sorry to say I’m terrible at posting regular thoughts during events because I end up slack-jawed and staring at the screen or absorbed in other people’s commentary. However, you’re welcome to follow me on my personal Twitter , The Nice Capades Instagram, or The Nice Capades Threads because I do sometimes manage a string of thoughts during an event. One of you asked if we could use Threads instead of Twitter because of the Musk of it all. I completely get it and wish I could entirely abandon Twitter. Unfortunately, the skating fandom is pretty international and many countries don’t have Threads, yet, so the skating world is still pretty dependent on Twitter. I stick around so I can see what they’re saying.

Three Non-Figure Skating Things- Three Things I Recently Wanted to Buy But Didn’t:

• A collection of Pride and Prejudice stickers, but only because I want the one specific Bennet sisters sticker that’s on top. And then I realized that was not a great plan because this Amazon shop is probably ripping off a ton of individual creators, and what if I don’t even get that specific sticker? What would I even do with 60 Pride and Prejudice stickers? (Better question— what wouldn’t I do?)

• These ruffled Bombas Wicked socks. I’m not even that excited about Wicked. I’m just really into fancy socks lately.

• A very tiny, white pitcher. My local hardware store had a jar full of them, and they were so cute and little. One could imagine filling it with milk or cream and then pouring it into one’s coffee like an aristocrat at a fancy hotel breakfast. I might actually go back for this one.

What’s Next: Back on Sunday for a Skate America debrief!