For one afternoon, the Winter Olympic Games came to Penn.
A special exhibition, American Gold Live, was held in the Class of 1923 Ice Skating Rink to showcase top contenders for the United States Olympic team for next year’s Winter Olympic Games and to raise funds for future generations of American skaters.
The stars of the show included reigning world champions Ilia Malinin and Alysa Liu, as well as reigning world silver medalist Isabeau Levito. The showcase also included a memorial honoring the skaters killed in the January American Airlines plane crash while returning from the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita, Kan.
The host of the event, 1988 Olympic champion Brian Boitano, expressed his excitement to support rising skaters through the fund.
“There’s never been a fund that has supported young skaters before, and we felt like keeping their memory alive,” Boitano said in an interview with The Daily Pennsylvanian. “From terrible, tragic things, some good things grow out of it ... I really feel that they will use the history of those young kids as something to help them move forward and help inspire them in their skating.”
Liu described the event experience as an opportunity to remember the victims.
“I think at least for me, being able to skate alone is such an honor, and I am grateful to be able to do it,” Liu told the DP. “And I think [this event] is a way where I can celebrate them in a way I know how to.”
Malinin expressed a similar sentiment.
“I knew a lot of the skaters, and a lot of them saw me as an inspiration,” Malinin said. “It was dreadful to hear [about the situation], but all of us want to keep them in our hearts.”
Their sincerity in the tribute showed directly on the ice.
The showcase allowed the audience to see a softer side of Malinin, Liu, and Levito’s skating, among others, compared with the more technical performances that are common at the Winter Olympic Games.
For the skaters, it was a moment “to just relax … and connect with an audience and skate to music that they really want to skate to,” said Boitano.
The arena was packed with families, friends, Penn students, and fellow aspiring skaters who were just a few feet from the rink. Unlike the traditional stadium venues these skaters are used to, the Penn Ice Rink offered an opportunity for the athletes to connect with the audience and create personable performances.
The showcase kicked off with Malinin’s performance, highlighting both his storytelling ability and command of difficult movements. Liu and Levito similarly offered skilled, emotional performances.
The event culminated with all of the skaters performing to the song “A Million Dreams” — a message to aspiring skaters in the audience and the athletes headed to the Winter Olympic Games.
Malinin shared that going forward, hopefully under Olympic lights, he hopes “to bring the newer generation to love and enjoy” the sport.
“It has been going really amazingly, and I am really just looking forward to training my hardest for the Olympics, and just getting there [as well as] hoping to be in the best shape again,” Malinin added.
Sports reporter Angel Shi contributed reporting.
