ST. LOUIS — On the ice, Amber Glenn was putting together another brilliant free skate, landing the opening triple axel that has become her hallmark and eventually putting the final touches on a program destined to earn her a third consecutive U.S. Figure Skating title.
Off the ice, Alysa Liu was cheering her on.
With her newly dyed halo hairdo going viral, Liu had stuck around after her own spectacular showing inside of the packed Enterprise Center, and she didn’t seem to care Friday night that Glenn was about to push the reigning world champion to the silver medal.
“She trains so hard,” Liu said, “and to ska2te a clean program, it’s so deserving.”
Glenn ultimately finished with 233.55 points to become the first back-to-back-to-back national champ since Michelle Kwan’s last title in 2005, while Liu wound up second with 228.91 points. Isabeau Levito earned the bronze medal with 224.45 points and, more than likely, the final women’s spot on the American squad headed for the Winter Games.
The official team announcement comes Sunday.
“I felt like I was going to throw up. My stomach has been bothering me all day. Woof,” Glenn said. “Fake it ’till you make it. I took that to heart. I was just trying to get in touch with my body and get a feel for the ice, and I think my years of experience kicked in.”
Earlier in the night, Alisha Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov defended their pairs title despite a couple of mistakes, including a scary moment when Mitrofanov was nearly clipped by Efimova’s skate. They finished with 207.71 points to outdistance Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea, who were second with 197.12, and the team of Katie McBeath and Daniil Parkman.
Now comes a nervous wait to see whether Efimova and Mitrofanov can compete at the Olympics.
While he is a U.S. citizen, born in Wisconsin and raised in Texas, the 26-year-old Efimova was born in Finland and has competed for Germany and Russia along with her native country. Only citizens of the nation they represent are eligible for the Olympics, though, and while Mitrofanov and Efimova are married and she has a green card, she has not received an American passport yet.
The Skating Club of Boston, where the couple trains, has been working with U.S. senators and U.S. Figure Skating officials to get the three-year waiting period for citizenship expedited. But time is running out before Sunday’s deadline to announce the team.
The Americans have qualified the maximum three women’s spots on the Olympic team.
They only have two spots in pairs.
Efimova and Mitrofanov would get one, should her citizenship get approved at the last minute. Kam and O’Shea are near locks to make their first Olympic team, while McBeath and Parkman are unable to go because he likewise does not have U.S. citizenship.
That could leave U.S. Figure Skating to make a judgment call on the second pairs team it sends to the Milan Cortina Games.
Emily Chan and Spencer Howe rallied from eighth after a difficult short program to finish fourth with 186.52 points Friday night, while the up-and-coming team of Audrey Shin and Balazs Nagy were less than two points behind in fifth place.
Yet ahead of them all were Efimova and Mitrofanov, the clear-cut best of American pairs skating.
Their free skate, set to “Where Do I Begin?” from the 1970 Arthur Hiller romantic drama “Love Story,” was intended to be a tribute to two-time Olympic champions Katia Gordeeva and Sergey Grinkov, who was just 28 when he died of a heart attack in 1995.
Efimova and Mitrofanov opened with a beautiful triple twist, but then a sequence went awry after their triple salchow when he fell during a double axel, and Efimova nearly wiped his forehead with her skate blade. She also struggled on their side-by-side triple toe loops later in the program, but a strong finishing sequence left no doubt that they would repeat as champions.
Then it was the women’s turn to take center stage.
Levito was up first among the American “big three,” performing with her trademark balletic style in a sparkly blue dress to music from the 1988 Italian coming-of-age film “Cinema Paradiso” — just image that on the ice in Milan next month.
Her free skate score represented a season-best and thrust Levito into first place.
“First time competing at nationals in an Olympic year being age-eligible for the Olympics, so there was extra pressure,” the 18-year-old Levito said. “I was happy that I could rely on my training to get me through my program.”
Liu clapped when Levito’s score was read amid her own warm-up, then ripped through the debut of her new free skate set to a medley of Lady Gaga songs. It was a performance every bit as good as Liu’s showing at the world championships in Boston last year, when she became the first American to stand atop the podium in two decades.
The pressure was on Glenn to respond. And did she ever.
From her opening triple axel, the only 3 1/2-revolution jump that any of the medal contenders attempted, to the final chords of music, the 26-year-old from Plano, Texas, had the crowd on its feet. Glenn skated off to a standing ovation, then broke down in tears along with her coach, Damon Allen, when her huge score was read over the arena loudspeakers.
She was soon joined in the kiss-and-cry area by Liu and Levito, the likely U.S. triumvirate for the Milan Cortina Games, who will be trying to earn the American women their first medal since 2006 — and perhaps their first gold since 2002.
“If we do our jobs in Milan,” Glenn said, “then more than likely someone is going to be up there.”