ALLEN, Texas — Isabeau Levito and Bradie Tennell are separated by nearly 10 years in age — which can be two generations in figure skating — yet once again they shared a stage on Friday night.
Levito, the 17-year-old who already owns a world junior title, a U.S. senior title and, most recently, a senior world silver medal, topped the Skate America women’s short program with 68.43 points.
Tennell, the 26-year-old who had two of the last three seasons wiped out by injury, was 1.44 points behind.
They are in first and second going into Saturday’s free skate. The last time a U.S. woman won a fully international Skate America was in 2016, when Ashley Wagner and Mariah Bell went one-two.
SKATE AMERICA: Broadcast Schedule | Results
Levito was expected to be here. She’s the only woman in the field who finished in the top eight at March’s worlds, taking runner-up to three-time champ Kaori Sakamoto of Japan.
After what Levito called a 2023-24 campaign that had “ups and downs and ended on a high note,” the focus this season is two words, her coach since age 4 said: stay calm.
“She’s worked hard. She’s getting mature. She’s getting older. She grew a lot,” coach Yulia Kuznetsova said, specifying that Levito is three inches taller than a year ago. “She’s not a little girl anymore who can jump 1,000 times a day and be perfect, so we need to make sure she’s safe, she’s healthy, physically and mentally, and she’s well prepared.”
Levito, skating to “Moon River,” originally performed by Audrey Hepburn in the 1961 film “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” was clean save for an under-rotation on her opening triple Lutz-triple toe loop combination.
Same for Tennell in her “Lord of the Dance” short program about an hour earlier. Tennell finished her skate by pumping her fist, yelling “Yeah!” and putting her hands on her head.
A few minutes later, Tennell stepped into the mixed zone and bore her feelings from the last year — since she broke an ankle in a fall while training on the morning of Halloween.
“It was worth every day of doubt, every small setback, every moment of can I ever get back to this level again, just to come out and skate like that,” she said.
Tennell felt the crowd clap and cheer during a step sequence late in her program. She thought she might never get to hear something like that again.
“Five months off and two surgeries is kind of a major ordeal,” she said. “I mean they literally had to go and move my ankle bone back into place because it had shifted in the socket. I wasn’t sure I was ever going to be able to jump again.”
It is the two-time U.S. champion Tennell’s latest comeback. As a teen, she spent the summers of 2015 and 2016 in a back brace due to stress fractures. Then she took bronze in her senior Grand Prix debut at Skate America in 2017.
“Skate America is special because it was the first Grand Prix I ever did,” she said Friday night. “It kind of catapulted me into the mainstream.”
After being the top American at the 2018 Olympics (ninth place), she missed the entire 2022 Olympic season due to a right foot injury.
Tennell rebounded from that to place second at the 2023 U.S. Championships, joining the champion Levito for a press conference for the top three finishers. They sat next to each other and took questions again Friday night.
In the 21 months between the 2023 U.S. Championships and 2024 Skate America, Levito earned her first Grand Prix win, then posted the best finish by an American woman at worlds in eight years.
Tennell moved from France to New Jersey in May 2023, then suffered the season-ending ankle break while her suitcase was open to pack for a month-long trip to Asia for her 2023 Grand Prix events.
She messaged the news to Benoit Richaud, who began choreographing for Tennell in 2017 and has also become one of her coaches.
“Then I called her, and I said, ‘Look, we’ve been through difficult moments already. We’re going to do the same,’” Richaud said. “‘You’re going to heal. We’re going to take time. Let’s not forget the main goal. The main goal is Olympic Games. We still have a lot of time to be ready, and I’m sure you can be there.’”
Tennell deliberately didn’t watch last season’s nationals or worlds.
“It was too painful,” she said.
Physically, too. Tennell struggled to get off the couch at times in her recovery. She was motivated by an old picture of her skating as a kid in a pink hat. She was determined to come back for that little girl, and for the athletes who have injuries so serious that they can’t return.
“Some days, I would fall, and I would just lay there, and I’d be like, oh my God, this is so hard,” she said, “and then I would think back to how it felt to step on the ice and hear them say, representing the United States of America, and just the thrill that I get every single time I hear that.”
After all that, she felt the nerves before her on-ice warm-up at Skate America. Until she peered and saw ISU Grand Prix Series signage circling the arena.
“I just looked at it, took a deep breath, and I was like, this is for all of those moments that I doubted that I would be able to come back here and skate at this level again,” she said. “So I really just kind of felt that in my heart and took that with me throughout the program.”
2024 Skate America Results
Women’s Short Program
1. Isabeau Levito (USA) — 68.43
2. Bradie Tennell (USA) — 66.99
3. Rinka Watanabe (JPN) — 66.54
4. Wakaba Higuchi (JPN) -- 66.12
5. Nina Pinzarrone (BEL) -- 62.85
6. Kim Min-Chae (KOR) -- 60.66
7. Elyce Lin-Gracey (USA) -- 60.22
8. Livia Kaiser (SUI) -- 58.72
9. Olga Mikutina (AUT) -- 56.81
10. Yuna Aoki (JPN) — 56.51
11. Sofja Stepcenko (LAT) -- 44.56
12. Lea Serna (FRA) -- 42.85
Pairs’ Short Program
1. Riku Miura/Ryuichi Kihara (JPN) — 77.79
2. Ellie Kam/Danny O’Shea (USA) -- 70.66
3. Anastasiia Metelkina/Luka Berulava (GEO) -- 68.64
4. Maria Pavlova/Alexei Sviatchenko (HUN) -- 65.11
5. Alisa Efimova/Misha Mitrofanov (USA) -- 63.05
6. Anastasia Vaipan-Law/Luke Digby (GBR) -- 61.31
7. Milania Vaananen/Filippo Clerici (FIN) -- 60.23
8. Katie McBeath/Daniil Parkman (USA) -- 56.69
