From Grief to Gold Medals: How Boston Healed and Celebrated Figure Skating

Alysa Liu had done it. The American brought the house down, spinning in the middle of the ice before going down momentarily to one knee then stopping with the music and raising one hand to the sky. She put her hand to her head in disbelief with a smile so electric it could power a small country as she repeated “Wow” over and again, her golden dress shimmering in the lights.

It was the culmination of an epic storyline. Liu walked away from skating two years ago. Now at 19, she had returned, captivating the crowd with a cartwheel before going on the ice for her short program. In the long program, she performed to “MacArthur Park” by Boston native Donna Summer, as the TD Garden crowd roared as if it was a Bruins or Celtics game.

For one week in March, the ISU World Figure Skating Championships took over Boston. It was the epicenter of remembrance and sorrow, of mourning lives gone too soon but also of celebrating the rebirth of careers and the revitalization of an organization. The figure skating community came together as it does each year, and in this year in particular, it thrilled those who attended and heightened the expectations ahead of next February in Milan.

Keeping Their Memories Alive

We’ll get to the skating in a bit. First, we have to talk about the memorial.

On the first night in Boston, the ice was bathed in soft purple and blue light, reflecting into the crowd. On this night, it was not about performances, records, medals. This was more than the things that can be measured on a scoreboard. This was about lives that were lost too soon, many of them too young to bear.

It was on January 29 in Washington when a plane crash took the lives of 67 people; 28 of them were involved in figure skating, including 11 young athletes and four coaches. On the opening night in Boston, the figure skating world came together to reflect.

“The skating family is very tight, so it hit very close to home,” ISU Director General Colin Smith said. “We need to honor, we need to remember, we want to have this celebration of skating as well as a mark of respect.”

On this night, one by one, they paid their respects. Maura Healey, the governor of Massachusetts. Michelle Wu, the mayor of Boston. ISU President Jae Youl Kim, followed by Sam Auxier, the then-interim CEO of U.S. Figure Skating. In between the speeches were the photos of those lost. The videos in slow motion, photos of when they were young, some of them forever young now as the names scrolled on the video boards. They were brothers, sisters, daughters, sons, smiles in so many of the photos, so much of their lives still ahead of them before one fatal moment.

The final speaker, Doug Lane, was selected to represent the families. He lost his wife and son in the crash. He talked about his family, his speech halting at times with emotion. It was almost too much to bear, the impossible sadness, the realization this was not some terrible nightmare, this was real and this had struck into the hearts and souls of dozens who wanted to know why them but also knew they would never get an answer.

Lane was there on behalf of the Skating Club of Boston, which lost six of their own in January. It is perhaps the most historic club in U.S. figure skating; chartered the same week the Titanic sunk, the Skating Club of Boston is where Olympic gold medalists Dick Button and Tenley Albright trained, where Olympic medalists Nancy Kerrigan and Paul Wylie and scores of U.S. junior and senior champions learned how to jump and spin.

It is also a club that knows unfortunately how to deal with tragedy. En route to the 1961 World Championships in Prague, the entire 18-member U.S. Figure Skating team died in a plane crash. Of the 73 people killed, 10 were members of the club, including five skaters. Boston Skating Club Executive Director Doug Zeghibe was 4 years old when it happened.

“I had a sense that something really terrible had happened and never conceived that something like that could happen again,” he said. “(January) was so horrific. Having it happen and slowly unfold and realizing the enormity of the loss, it was definitely surreal — like, how could this happen again?”

Through tragedy came comfort. Those from the club who lived through the 1961 tragedy, like Zeghibe, took time to console those at the club in present time.

“We certainly took a break in the depths of the tragedy,” Zeghibe said. “Moving through it has really given the membership a reason to come together to celebrate our sport and to celebrate it in a way that was still tied to those we lost, because they were so deeply embedded in the sport. So in a strange way, we feel like we’re sharing this with the members we lost.”

The generational passing down of legacy, or passion for sports and resiliency through tragedy — that’s Boston. Sports is the anchor in a city that is getting progressively younger and diverse each day. It’s a city that lives history every day around the North End, a city that reveres tradition whether it’s the Celtics, Bruins, Red Sox or Patriots. It’s a city of over 650,000 people that comes together like a small town when needed.

“There’s an underlying fabric of where our commitment to sports and sporting excellence and fandom connects in a remarkable way with a story of resiliency and enduring and building something like we’ve been doing for the last four centuries in this city,” said David O’Donnell, Meet Boston’s vice president of strategic communications.

It is, to paraphrase what David Ortiz said in the days after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing … their (bleeping) city. It is a phrase that some may use elsewhere in the world. Nowhere does it land with the resonance that it does in Boston.

“There’s a close personal connection here to the city and what happened,” O’Donnell said. “It is another chapter in this story of somehow when tragedy and sport intersect, there is a unique way that Boston is able to navigate that, that makes people be able to feel the moment and celebrate the moment and commemorate people in a way that is both sad and proud at the same time.”

It felt that way on this night. Because the world championships were in Boston, the memorial hit even deeper, fans in the stands wiping away tears (and more than a few people in the press gantry as well). No city wants to have to deal with tragedy; in Boston, they know how to honor those through tragedy, perhaps more than any other city.

“You could hear a pin drop and you can’t put into words what that meant,” said Bob Dunlop, U.S. Figure Skating’s senior director of events. “You talk to someone in figure skating, the first word they always use is family — and I think you see that here. U.S. Figure Skating, working with the Skating Club of Boston and working with the ISU, it’s been bigger and better than we could have ever hoped for.”

Home, On The Ice in Boston

Watching figure skating on television is one thing. Being there in person is another. Think of going at your hardest physical limits for four minutes without a break, on a slippery surface that could make you fall any second, gliding along on a skate blade an eighth of an inch thick, jumping in air and landing on one leg, then spinning all over the place without getting dizzy.

The ISU was back in Boston for the first time since 2016, having been heartened by the experience less than a decade ago and knowing that the U.S. market is a crucial one, especially with a future Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games on the horizon.

“2016 was a pretty outstanding success on every level,” said Zeghibe. “When a city like Boston comes together, whether it’s Meet Boston, the hotels, the arena, transportation companies, local sponsors, it takes a village to put on an event of this size. I think that’s one reason Boston is so successful is it’s big enough to handle events like this, but small enough that folks come together and work together.”

In Boston, fans know the sport well. When Kimmy Repond of Switzerland fell on her first two jumps of the long program, she got a big round of applause when she landed the next two, with the audience clapping along with the music near the end of program to keep her going. When Kaori Sakamoto’s long program was nearly perfect, putting her in the lead until Liu charged ahead, the two-time world champion received a standing ovation.

“It’s part of our culture to want to host international events,” said Dunlop. “This one’s been on our radar for a long time. And we’ve built a history here in Boston.”

The world championships came at a great time for Boston in the calendar. The city was just off hosting the wildly successful NHL Four Nations Face-Off and the Blast Rainbow Six Invitational at the MGM Music Hall at Fenway Park in February. With so many iconic Boston events, such as the marathon in April bookended by the Head of the Charles Regatta in October, the early spring period is a spot where bringing in events such as the world championships work from an economic standpoint.

“Traditionally, our visitor season doesn’t really start until closer to the marathon,” said O’Donnell. “Anything we can have that pushes either into the first quarter or late into the fourth quarter are things that we’ve been investing in very seriously.”

There have to be serious conversations with all the stakeholders before bidding even begins on an event years in advance like the world championships. The Garden is home to two teams, the NHL’s Bruins and NBA’s Celtics, that play regularly in the winter and would have to go on extended road trips. There are also other events at the Garden, which had a booking every day the week before ISU came to town: a Bruins home game, followed the next night by a Celtics game, followed by a concert, then two days of Hockey East competition.

Clancy Wolf, the TD Garden’s event manager, and her team then had to get to work quickly. Once Hockey East ended on Friday by 11 p.m., the ice had to be rebuilt. Whereas hockey ice is kept around 17 degrees, figure skating ice needs to be softer, around 24–26 degrees, so the skaters can glide more easily around the ice and dig into the surface upon takeoff on jumps.

The thickness of the ice also was important, with at least four centimeters of ice needed above the painted logos so when skaters dig into the surface before a jump, the logo still looks clean for television and streaming. Add to that the load-ins throughout the back of house for media, sponsors and competitors plus signage and as Wolf said, “it’s been an adventure the last month for our ice crew.”

There’s also the international branding for the Garden and Boston. Logan International Airport has dozens of international flights and is within minutes of the Garden, making the trip in for anybody — especially with the ISU’s large Asian following — an eye-opening breeze. Within the United States, of course people know Boston, of course people know of the Garden.

But that may not be the case abroad, so with events like figure skating, Blast esports, or upcoming events such as the 2026 FIFA World Cup, sports can tell the story of Boston globally in different ways to attract visitors for the first time, and then hopefully multiple times.

“You think of us as a huge sports destination, but then you look at all the 65 colleges and universities, then all of the sports — if it’s basketball, if it’s rowing, if it’s the Boston Marathon — there’s a reason why these college graduates stay because they see the passion and we’re a melting pot of cultures,” said Paul Griffin, Meet Boston’s director of global events and industry alliances. “Moving forward, people can recognize that we are a global destination for large sporting events and we can compete against the Londons, the Tokyos, the Cape Towns, the Sydneys.”

From Sadness Comes Celebration

The remembrances of those whose lives perished in January did not stop after the opening night. If anything, each performance became an extended tribute as the United States put on an electric set of results.

Madison Chock and Evan Bates shone brighter than anybody during the short program as competitors made the Garden feel like a 1970s-era nightclub with everything short of a disco ball and rainbow lights. They cruised through the long program to win their third world title in a row, the first U.S. team to ever do so.

Ilia Malinin won the men’s singles title, heralding his reign and heightening the anticipation that even his rivals admit may be an inevitable gold medal in Milan. The “Quad God” spun through the air with both grace and force, telling fans on the video board “Let’s Have Fun” before electrifying the Garden with his skills.

Alisa Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov, who train at the Boston Skating Club, put on the best performance of their lives in the long program, collapsing into each other’s arms at the end, unable to hold in the emotions of their accomplishments. They sat in the kiss-and-cry area holding photos of those lost in D.C., finishing sixth and earning the U.S. a third pairs spot in Milan for the first time in multiple Olympic cycles.

“Oh, my God,” said Zeghibe, leaning back in his chair. “Whatever the country, whoever the athletes are, our fans just appreciate great performances. And when it’s your hometown kids, there was a connection between them and this audience that was like no other. It was electric, really. There’s no other word for it.”

Amber Glenn, who entered the long program in ninth place after a fall in the short program the night before, fought back and moved up the scoreboard to fifth place, hitting the triple axel that she had fallen on not even 24 hours later. Isabeau Levito, who finished fourth in what was an injury-marred season and at night’s end, walked through the backstage media area and was surprised by Scott Hamilton, her face a mix of shock and awe as he told her how much he enjoyed watching her performance.

And then there was Liu, who showed the world why her return to the sport is so welcomed. In all, Team USA won gold in three of the four disciplines, the first time it has ever done so in a world championship.

“Amazing crowds, amazing supporters who really appreciated what was happening on the ice,” said Smith. “When you have such an educated crowd and large crowd, it was amazing and it just made everything pop. You can put on the show, you can put in new ideas and innovation but if you don’t have the crowd energy behind it, it’s never the same.”

As the pairs competition ended Thursday, the energy at the Garden spilled out into the night ­— some looking for a drink at the bar, some heading to tour buses to go back to their hotel. Others took the quick walk to the Courtyard North Station around the corner and crammed into elevators, exulting in having seen the best in the world at their very best.

“Were you at the skating?” asked one woman in the elevator. “Wasn’t it spectacular?”