Two-time U.S. figure skating champion Bradie Tennell competes for the first time in 18 months at Grand Prix England, live on Peacock this weekend.
Tennell, a 2018 Olympian who missed all of last season due to a foot injury, returns to a very different U.S. women’s scene.
She is the only active U.S. women’s singles skater with Olympic experience with Alysa Liu and Mariah Bell retiring earlier this year and Karen Chen on an indefinite, perhaps permanent, break while she returns to Cornell.
Tennell, who this summer relocated to France, was due to return at last month’s Japan Open but withdrew Oct. 6, citing an ankle injury that she said was going to keep her off the ice “for a few weeks.”
Grand Prix England Broadcast Schedule
At Grand Prix England, she faces a field that includes the top returning woman from last January’s U.S. Championships — world junior champion Isabeau Levito. Levito, 15, was third at nationals but too young for the Olympics.
Levito was second at October’s Skate America in her senior Grand Prix debut. If she makes the podium again this week, she’ll likely qualify for December’s six-skater Grand Prix Final. Tennell is the lone U.S. woman to qualify for any of the last five Finals.
Morisi Kvitelashvili of Georgia, fourth at last season’s world championships, is the men’s headliner in England.
World champions Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier, the Skate America winners, will look to become the first U.S. pairs’ team to win two Grand Prix events in one season. They are the No. 1 team in this week’s field given the absences of the world’s top pairs from Russia (banned indefinitely due to the invasion of Ukraine) and China (not entered in the Grand Prix Series).
Italians Charlène Guignard and Marco Fabbri lead the ice dancers after earning their first Grand Prix title in France last week.
Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson, second at Skate Canada two weeks ago, can become the second set of British skaters in any discipline to qualify for a Grand Prix Final (ice dancers Sinead Kerr and John Kerr in 2009). The Grand Prix Series began in 1995, a year after British dance legends Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean retired.
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The 2030 Winter Olympic host, expected to be Salt Lake City or Sapporo, Japan, is no longer targeted to be decided before next fall, the IOC said in announcing wider discussions into the future of the Winter Games, including the possibility of rotating the Games within a pool of hosts.
The IOC Future Host Commission was granted more time to study factors, including climate change, that could impact which cities and regions host future Winter Olympics and Paralympics. The 2030 Winter Games host is not expected to be decided before or at an IOC session next September or October.
Hosts have traditionally been chosen by IOC members vote seven years before the Games, though recent reforms allow flexibility on the process and timeline. For example, the 2024 and 2028 Games were awarded to Paris and Los Angeles in a historic double award in 2017. The 2032 Summer Games were awarded to Brisbane last year without a traditional bid race.
Italy hosts the 2026 Winter Games in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo.
There are three interested parties for the 2030 Winter Olympics, the IOC said Tuesday without naming them. Previously, Salt Lake City, Sapporo and Vancouver were confirmed as bids. Then in October, the British Columbia government said it would not support a Vancouver bid, a major setback, though organizers did not say that decision ended the bid. All three cities are attractive as past Winter Games hosts with existing venues.
U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee officials have said Salt Lake City is a likelier candidate for 2034 than 2030, but could step in for 2030 if asked.
The future host commission outlined proposals for future Winter Olympics, which included rotating hosts within a pool of cities or regions and a requirement that hosts have an average minimum temperature below freezing (32 degrees) for snow competition venues at the time of the Games over a 10-year period.
The IOC Executive Board gave the commission more time to study the proposals and other factors impacting winter sports.
The IOC board also discussed and will continue to explore a potential double awarding of the 2030 and 2034 Winter Olympic hosts.
Also Tuesday, the IOC board said that Afghanistan participation in the 2024 Olympics will depend on making progress in safe access to sports for women and young girls in the country.
On Monday, Human Rights Watch urged the IOC to suspend Afghanistan until women and girls can play sport in the country.
In a press release, the IOC board expressed “serious concern and strongly condemned the latest restrictions imposed by the Afghan authorities on women and young girls in Afghanistan, which prevent them from practicing sport in the country.” It urged Afghanistan authorities to “take immediate action at the highest level to reverse such restrictions and ensure safe access to sport for women and young girls.”
The IOC board also announced that North Korea’s National Olympic Committee will be reinstated when its suspension is up at the end of the year.
In September 2021, the IOC banned the North Korean NOC through the end of 2022, including banning a North Korean delegation from participating in the Beijing Winter Games, after it chose not to participate in the Tokyo Games.
North Korea, formally known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, was the only one of 206 National Olympic Committees to withdraw from Tokyo. The country made its choice in late March 2021, citing a desire “to protect our athletes from the global health crisis caused by the malicious virus infection.”
The IOC said in September 2021 that it “provided reassurances for the holding of safe Games and offered constructive proposals to find an appropriate and tailor-made solution until the very last minute (including the provision of vaccines), which were systematically rejected by the PRK NOC.”
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Justine Dufour-Lapointe, the 2014 Olympic moguls champion, is leaving the event to compete in freeriding, a non-Olympic skiing discipline.
“After three Olympic cycles and 12 years on the World Cup circuit, I felt that I needed to find a new source of motivation and had to push my limits even more so I can reach my full potential as a skier,” the 28-year-old Montreal native said in a social media video, according to a translation from French. “Today, I am starting a new chapter in my career. … I want to perfect myself in another discipline. I want to connect with the mountain differently. Above all, I want to get out of my comfort zone in a way I’ve never done before.”
Dufour-Lapointe said she will compete on the Freeride World Tour, a series of judged competitions described as:
There‘s a start gate at the summit and a finish gate at the bottom. That’s it. Best run down wins. It truly is that simple. Think skiers and snowboarders choosing impossible-looking lines through cornices and cliff-faces and nasty couloirs. Think progressive: big jumps, mach-speed turns and full-on attack. Think entertaining.
Dufour-Lapointe has retired from moguls skiing, according to a Freeride World Tour press release, though she did not explicitly say that in social media posts Tuesday.
At the 2014 Sochi Winter Games, Dufour-Lapointe denied American Hannah Kearney‘s bid to become the first freestyle skier to repeat as Olympic champion. Older sister Chloé took silver in a Canadian one-two.
Dufour-Lapointe also won the world title in 2015, then Olympic silver in 2018 behind Frenchwoman Perrine Laffont.
Chloé announced her retirement in September. A third Dufour-Lapointe Olympic moguls skier, Maxime, retired in 2018.
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