BOSTON — Alysa Liu leads the World Figure Skating Championships after the short program, bidding after a two-year retirement to become the first American women’s singles skater to win a world title in 19 years.
Liu, a 19-year-old who retired at 16, tallied a personal best 74.58 points Wednesday at TD Garden in Boston, taking a 1.14-point lead over Japan’s Mone Chiba going into Friday’s free skate (8 p.m. ET, NBC and Peacock).
Another American, 2024 World silver medalist Isabeau Levito, is third in her continued return after missing three months with a right foot injury.
The last U.S. woman to win a world title was Kimmie Meissner in 2006. The last time the U.S. won two women’s medals at worlds was also in 2006, when Sasha Cohen took bronze.
FIGURE SKATING WORLDS: Results | Broadcast Schedule
Liu, the youngest U.S. champion in history at age 13 in 2019, did a cartwheel before stepping onto the ice for Wednesday’s warm-up.
Then she turned in the best short program of her international career with a clean triple flip-triple toe loop combination, double Axel and triple Lutz.
Liu came into worlds seeded eighth in the field by best total score this season. Her lack of recent results meant she was the 18th starter of 33 women in the short, 90 minutes before the top-ranked women.
As she came off the ice, coaches Phillip DiGuglielmo and Massimo Scali each greeted her with “welcome back.”
Liu announced her comeback on March 1, 2024. She returned to serious training late last spring in the Bay Area after finishing her first year of classes at UCLA. Her first full competition back was in October. She was sixth and fourth in two fall Grand Prix starts, then placed second at January’s U.S. Championships.
“I believe my coaching team foresaw me getting back to this shape by this time,” she said. “I just closed my eyes and trusted them along the ride, and here we are.”
Liu said this performance was more meaningful because the World Championships were her last competition before she retired in 2022 (winning bronze).
“It’s so much more fun this time,” said Liu, who was tired of skating when she quit two months after placing sixth at the Beijing Olympics. “I really don’t think I wanted to do any competitions before, but now I really do want to just because (the) arena, crowd.”
Levito had her best short program of the season for third place. She was off the ice for most of November, December and January due to a stress reaction in her right foot.
She thought her season was over when she was still in pain a week before January’s U.S. Championships, having to withdraw before the event. A U.S. Figure Skating committee still put her on the three-woman world team due to her body of work over the previous year.
“While I didn’t feel the pressure of being world silver medalist last year, because of how I missed so much of this season, I felt like no one was really looking to see me take over the podium or something here,” she said Wednesday. “But I had a pressure in my mind of just making my federation proud because they put so much resources and efforts into getting me back into good form, and really believed in me just sending me here.”
Japan’s Kaori Sakamoto, the three-time reigning world champion, lost points by having a double-triple jump combination rather than a triple-triple. She’ll have to come back from fifth place to become the first woman to win four in a row since American Carol Heiss took five from 1956-60.
Amber Glenn, the U.S. champion and world’s top skater this season, is ninth after falling on her trademark opening triple Axel for the first time this season.
Glenn is the only woman in the world championships field to land the jump cleanly in competition this season, having done so in at least one program in all five of her events (all victories).
“To miss the first element is very hard, but I mentally fought through it,” she said. “I’m disappointed with the result, of course, but I’ll try my best (in the free skate).”
Later Wednesday, Japan’s Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara topped the pairs’ short program as they go for a second world title in three years.
They lead by 1.96 points over Italians Sara Conti and Niccolo Macii, the 2023 World bronze medalists, going into Thursday night’s free skate.
Defending champions Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps of Canada are seventh after a program filled with minor mistakes. Last year, Stellato-Dudek became at age 40 the oldest woman to win a world figure skating title.
Americans Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea and Alisa Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov are fifth and ninth, respectively. Their results after the free skate need to add up to no more than 13 (sixth and seventh, for example) for the U.S. to have a chance to qualify three pairs’ spots for the 2026 Olympics.
Worlds continue Thursday with the men’s short program (11:05 a.m. ET, Peacock, and 3 p.m., USA Network).
2025 World Figure Skating Championships Results
Women’s Short Program
1. Alysa Liu (USA) -- 74.58
2. Mone Chiba (JPN) -- 73.44
3. Isabeau Levito (USA) — 73.33
4. Wakaba Higuchi (JPN) -- 72.10
5. Kaori Sakamoto (JPN) — 71.03
6. Madeline Schizas (CAN) -- 69.18
7. Lee Hae-In (KOR) -- 67.79
8. Nina Pinzarrone (BEL) -- 67.74
9. Amber Glenn (USA) — 67.65
10. Kimmy Repond (SUI) -- 67.42
Pairs’ Short Program
1. Riku Miura/Ryuichi Kihara (JPN) — 76.57
2. Sara Conti/Niccolo Macii (ITA) — 74.61
3. Minerva Hase/Nikita Volodin (GER) — 73.59
4. Anastasiia Metelkina/Luka Berulava (GEO) -- 71.68
5. Ellie Kam/Danny O’Shea (USA) -- 68.61
6. Maria Pavlova/Alexei Sviatchenko (HUN) -- 67.45
7. Deanna Stellato-Dudek/Maxime Deschamps (CAN) — 67.32
8. Anastasia Golubeva/Hektor Giotopoulos Moore (AUS) -- 65.73
9. Alisa Efimova/Misha Mitrofanov (USA) -- 63.70
10. Lia Pereira/Trennt Michaud (CAN) -- 63.28
