Skate America 2025 Day 3 Recap

While the reigning U.S. world champions came out on top, the most important thing -- at least for me -- happened during warmups.

My time in Lake Placid has sadly come to an end, but not before an incredibly memorable day at Skate America.

Before I get to the skating, I wanted to take a moment to thank all the skaters who took the time to take a picture with me or just chat with me about the sport. It’s so refreshing and humbling (and honestly still a little confusing to me) when these high level athletes thank me for what I do for the sport. I’m like “I’m just a guy who loves skating and loves posting about it on the internet,” but I truly appreciate that they appreciate what I do (even if much of the credit goes to Apple for making a phone that makes it easy for me to take such high quality videos).

And, most importantly, a huge thank you to Alysa Liu for this moment.

You can’t see me behind the trans flag I was holding, but Alysa saw the flag and took the time to look up at the video board to make sure it was on screen when she gave it heart hands, which is so meaningful given what is going on with U.S. Figure Skating’s anti-trans policies. I got to personally thank Alysa for this after the event, and she said she was happy to do it, because she has a sister who is trans. I just hope USFS was paying attention all weekend.

Now, on to the skating, which kind of feels secondary in the bigger picture right now, but was still quite amazing.

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Free Dance

I know I’ve gushed about the rhythm dance theme this season (and I might be the last one on ‘90s Island) but the free dance from all 10 of these teams was just so beautiful. I wish I could put every single one of them in this post, but at the rate this hotel WiFi uploads video, I might be here until next week.

So instead I’ll give you the winners, reigning world champions Madison Chock and Evan Bates.

They posted a free dance score of 127.81, a season’s best, which gave them an overall score of 212.58 this weekend. That was a four-point improvement on their score from Cup of China, and put them ahead of Laurence Fournier-Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron of France (211.02 at GP de France) for the highest score on the Grand Prix circuit this season.

Chock and Bates finished more than 15 points ahead of silver medalists Marjorie Lajoie and Zachary Lagha of Canada, with Evgeniia Lopareva and Geoffrey Brissaud of France taking home the bronze. LaLa are right on the border of qualifying for the GP Final, and it could literally come down to a score tiebreaker after next week’s Finlandia Trophy.

One of my favorite programs outside of the winners was the free dance from Phebe Bekker and James Hernandez of Great Britain. This was their first ever Grand Prix assignment (they finished eighth), and they’re headed to their second one next week. Their Romeo & Juliet free dance is just gorgeous from start to finish.

I mean, just look at the intensity on their faces (and I’m so lucky this moment happened right in front of me). This is how you do Romeo & Juliet.

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Women’s Free Skate

I truly hope Alysa Liu is serious when she says she’s going to bring back her Lady Gaga free skate for the season (either at the GP Final — which she’s now qualified for — or at nationals), but seeing the world championship-winning MacArthur Park program is always a delight.

Liu was second coming into the day, but put up a 140.54, which was not only a season’s best, it was the third-highest free skate score of her career in an international event, behind only her performances at worlds and World Team Trophy last season. It was more than enough to make up the difference between her and silver medalist Rinka Watanabe of Japan, who led after the short program but had only the third-best free skate of the day, score-wise.

I could genuinely pick about a half-dozen performances to be my favorite outside of the gold-medal winning one, including Starr Andrews’ emotional skate to the sound of her own voice (she is a lovely singer, who sang the national anthem before Friday’s events), Wakaba Higuchi’s farewell to the Grand Prix circuit, Ekaterina Kurakova’s crowd-pleasing Moulin Rouge, Josephine Lee’s gorgeous Scheherazade… you get the picture. So I’ll give you the incredible Jaws program from Italy’s Lara Naki Gutmann.

Shark Naki was in third place after the short program but slipped to fourth on Sunday, behind Anastasiia Gubanova of Georgia. The margin between them was a mere four-tenths of a point (204.69 to 204.29). Just incredible, and heartbreaking for Gutmann. Right now Gubanova is sixth in the GP Final standings, but with both Mone Chiba of Japan and Amber Glenn of the U.S. headed to Finlandia Trophy with a gold already in hand this season, that position won’t hold up. Still, it’s been a strong bounce back season, including her performance at the Milan qualifying event, after a disappointing skate at Worlds in March.

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I’ll be back in the Disney On Ice swing of things this week, and have a few more shows I’m attending between now and the end of the year. Then, before you know it, it’ll be time to head to St. Louis for 2026 U.S. nationals.