BEIJING — At exactly the moment Kamila Valieva began her fateful, disastrous free skate Thursday night in the women’s figure skating competition at the Beijing Olympics, Alysa Liu walked into a corner of the interview area beneath the Capital Indoor Stadium stands, still in her light blue skating dress and Team USA jacket, and began to talk about her greatest skating night ever.
“I’m really happy,” the 16-year-old Liu said, her voice a gush of silliness, wonder and delight. By then it was clear she was going to finish seventh in the competition, far higher than she had imagined, and the thought made her giggle.
On a television to Liu’s right, Valieva, the Russian star who had been seen as unbeatable, tumbled to the ice. The reporters gathered in the room shouted a collective “Ohhhhhhhhh!” Liu, who was blocked from the screen by a crowd of people nearby, turned her head. “What happened? She asked.
“[Valieva] fell,” someone said.
Liu shrugged.
“Oh,” she replied in a tone that suggested Valieva’s skate was the least important thing on her mind.
For everyone else, Valieva was the biggest sports story of the moment. The 15-year-old whose positive doping test and ensuing victory in the Court of Arbitration for Sport that allowed her to compete had devoured the Olympics. Her skate started under a fog of gloom and anger and sorrow.
But in this room, only a short walk from the ice where Valieva was skating, Liu wasn’t thinking about Valieva or doping or the Russian skaters or any of the things that obsessed the adults around her. Only a year older than Valieva, the main thing she cared about was that she had come to the Olympics and skated well and saw many of her skating friends. And because of all this, she began to cry.
“I’m just like … and so many of my friends are here, and they, like, trained so hard and went through a lot, and they, like, finally did really good at the Olympics,” she said before she began to sob.
When she stopped crying, she said they were sobs of joy.
“I’m really happy for everybody and myself, too,” she said. “[The Olympics] exceeded my expectations. I didn’t think I was going to do this good here, and I made a lot of friends along the way, and I got to see them here.”
On the television screen, Valieva’s collapse was complete. Liu couldn’t see what almost everyone else in the room was watching. But even if she could, it didn’t matter. Valieva’s Olympics and hers were nothing alike.
Through smiles and tears, Liu talked about the day barely more than a month ago when she was told at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships that she had tested positive for the coronavirus. She was sure the test meant she couldn’t go to Beijing, even though she was Team USA’s top female skater. She said she had already accepted the fact she would never live her childhood dream of skating in the Olympics when the text arrived from a U.S. skating official telling her she had made the team.
Everything after that felt like a gift.
She talked, too, about her surprise at getting to Beijing and finding that she wouldn’t be confined to her room as she had feared but could wander freely around the Athletes’ Village, which she still couldn’t believe had a mall. She didn’t want the Olympics to stop.
For a brief time, she even led Thursday night. She came off the ice, heard her score and prepared to turn right toward the changing rooms, but an official stopped her and said to go left, into the green room, here, where the current top three skaters wait until someone with a higher score pushes them out. Her teammate, U.S. champion Mariah Bell already was there, having been No. 1 herself for a brief time. And even though Bell is nine years older than Liu, the two of them laughed and shouted and took selfies.
They got so loud that an official had to knock on the door and tell them to keep their voices down.
“My baaaaaaddd,” she said she told the official in a silly, singsong voice.
On the television screen, Valieva’s score appeared, announcing the Russian’s fourth-place finish. Another “Ohhhhhh!” filled the room.
Liu stopped.
“Valieva finished fourth,” someone said.
“Oh, okay,” Liu replied.
Then she started walking toward the door that led out of the arena. Suddenly she stopped. She had forgotten her skates, having put them on the ground beside her when she stopped to talk.
“No, I don’t lose my skates,” she said with an eye roll that indicated she forgets her skates all the time. Teenager stuff.
A few minutes later, Valieva came into the room. She moved quickly past the reporters, looking at no one. She said nothing. A press room official walked behind her. A Russian guard walked a few feet behind. Her eyes were red. Her Olympics were ruined.
Valieva kept walking, moving fast toward the door on the very path where moments before Liu had skipped while carrying her forgotten skates on what been her greatest skating night ever. And for two girls, only a year apart in age, their Olympics couldn’t have been more different.
