Dazzling teen Ami Nakai leads trio of Japanese skaters poised to win 1st women’s singles gold in 20 years
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Veteran sportswriter Richard Deitsch takes an international view of the Olympics.
Kaori Sakamoto makes people feel when she skates. Her performance in the team competition earlier at the Milano-Cortina Games was described by The Washington Post as “one of skating’s most moving programs of all time.” It was a skate that helped Japan land a silver medal.
The 25-year-old has won nearly everything in figure skating. A three-time world champion and reigning Olympic bronze medallist, the one prize that has eluded Sakamoto is an Olympic gold medal. She has already announced that this will be her last Olympics and on Tuesday evening at Milano Ice Skating Arena, she skated with freedom and abandon. She flowed. She skated to win.
Her score in the short program was 77.23, good for second place. But in a performance that makes you think big things might be coming in the free skate on Thursday, it was her dazzling 17-year-old countrywoman, Ami Nakai, who earned a season’s best 78.71 to take the lead. Think about this: Ami finished 15th at Japanese nationals just one year ago. What a rise.
The American Amber Liu sits in third at 76.59, a season’s best score. Amber Glenn, the three-time reigning U.S. champion, made a costly mistake (an invalid element during the program) and landed in 12th. No American has won gold in women’s figure skating since Sarah Hughes won in 2002 in Salt Lake City.
Mone Chiba of Japan enters the free skate in fourth place. Adeliia Petrosian, a Russian skating as an Individual Neutral Athlete is fifth. It’s close.
In her debut senior season, Japan’s Ami Nakai scored 78.71 points to lead the field, heading into Thursday’s Olympic figure skating women’s free program at Milano Cortina 2026.
If you want omens: The last and only time a Japanese woman captured gold in Olympic women’s figure skating also came in Italy. That was Shizuka Arakawa, who won at the 2006 Winter Olympics held in Torino. The free skate is set for Thursday beginning at 1 p.m. ET. Liu, Sakamoto and Ami will be the final three skaters, in that order.
The German bobsledder Francesco Friedrich owned both the two-man and four-man events in Pyeongchang and Beijing, making him one of the most successful pilots in the sport’s history. But his gold-medal run ended on Tuesday at the Cortina Sliding Centre. Friedrich and brakeman Alexander Schuller finished with a silver medal behind Johannes Lochner and Georg Fleischhauer. Lochner was behind Friedrich at the last Olympics but he was far and away the best in Cortina. His winning time was three minutes 39.70 seconds, topping Friedrich by a massive 1.34 seconds. The Germans swept the podium with Adam Ammour and Alexander Schaller in the bronze position.
Who will star on Wednesday?
Mikaela Shiffrin is on the short list of the best alpine racers in history, either gender, but she has struggled during the Olympics when compared to her dominance on the World Cup circuit. The American star has not won an Olympic medal in the slalom since the Sochi Games in 2014 — when she became the youngest woman to win gold in that event — and last won any Olympic medal eight years ago in Pyeongchang when she took gold in the giant slalom and won a silver in the combined. This is remarkable given Shiffrin has won 71 World Cup slalom races and 37 more in other disciplines, both records for men and women.
At the combined event last week in Cortina, Shiffrin struggled during her slalom run after teammate Breezy Johnson had the Americans set for a podium finish following a fast downhill. Wednesday’s slalom will be Shiffrin’s last race at the Games, and at 30, who knows how many Olympics she has left. The first run comes at 4 a.m. ET. The final run is scheduled for 7:30 a.m. ET Switzerland’s Camille Rast, who has gone neck-and-neck with Shiffrin this season, and Wendy Holdener, who won silver in 2018 and bronze in 2022, are major threats to win. Germany’s Emma Aicher had the fastest slalom run during the team combined.
Cross-country skiing will feature some big Olympic winners with the women’s team sprint free and men’s team sprint free. The women’s event (5:45 a.m. ET start) features Sweden’s Frida Karlsson, who has won two gold medals and one silver at the Milano-Cortino Games as well as Jesse Diggins, who helped the Americans win gold in this event in Pyeongchang. In the men’s event (6:15 a.m. start), Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo goes for career gold medal No. 10. If Norway wins the team event and Klæbo prevails in the men’s 50km mass start classic on Saturday, he’ll become the first man to sweep all six cross-country skiing events at the Olympics.
Olympic imagery
Numbers to know
4.3 million – Average viewership for the United States men’s hockey team group stage games on NBC and Peacock.
1,800 – Microphones used by the Olympic Broadcast Services to capture all the competition audio.
16 – Medals for France, the most the country has ever won at a Winter Olympics
15 – Age of United States halfpipe skier Abby Winterberger, the youngest competitor at the Olympics.
8 – Overall medals won by French biathlete Quentin Fillon Maillet, who became France’s most decorated Winter Olympian when France won team gold in the men’s 4 x 7.5km relay on Tuesday. Fillon Maillet has won five gold medals during his career.
What we’re reading around the web
► Their town was destroyed 40 years ago. Now, the Olympics have arrived. By Jacob Whitehead of The Athletic
► From Milanο’s drones to LA 28’s stardust and AI, Olympic broadcaster lays out vision for Tinseltown. By Karolos Grohmann of Reuters.
► How to avoid choking. By David Epstein of Range Widely.
► For Team USA, these Winter Olympics have not gone according to plan. By Matthew Futterman of The Athletic
► Swiss broadcaster pulls commentary questioning presence of Israeli bobsledder in Olympics. By Julien Pretot and Mitch Phillips of Reuters
► How British skeleton left the world in its tracks with golden Winter Olympics haul. By Andy Bull of The Guardian
► The cameraman who skates backward to capture Olympic triumph and defeat. By Colleen Barry of The Associated Press
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