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by Liz Leamy
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(27 August 2024) America’s premier skaters, including Ilia Malinin, the 2024 World champion, 2023 World bronze medalist and two-time U.S. titlist, Madison Chock & Evan Bates, the 2024 and 2023 World titlists, 2022 Olympic Team Event gold medalists and five-time U.S. champion, Isabeau Levito, the 2024 World silver medalist, 2023 U.S. titlist and two-time U.S. bronze medalist, Jason Brown, the nine-time ISU Championship Grand Prix medalist, 2015 U.S. champion, seven-time U.S. medalist and 2014 Olympic Team Event bronze medalist and Amber Glenn, the 2024 U.S. gold medalist and two-time ISU Championship Grand Prix medalist, along with many more of the country’s top contenders in singles, dance and pairs, all convened at the Skating Club of Boston in Norwood, Massachusetts this August to participate in its first annual Summer Sizzler. This unforgettable show was held Thursday August 15th as part of the 2024 U.S. Figure Skating Champs Camp at the Skating Club of Boston and drew more than 2,000 spectators, most of who had traveled amidst torrential rainy weather to cheer on the remarkable work and skills of this incredible group of athletes. For U.S. Figure Skating, this event represented a benchmark moment being that it marked the first time ever in which participants of the Annual Champs Camp had performed their programs and skills in front of a live audience in a show format. “I’m really excited to get to perform my program and have some audience feedback,” said Brown, whose dramatic short program to ‘The Legend of Tarzan’ which he plans to use for the 2024/25 season was a big hit with the crowd. “We love the sport, we love to perform.” In addition to Chock & Bates, Malinin, Levito, Glenn and Brown, this show’s roster also featured Alysa Liu, the 2022 World bronze medalist and two-time U.S. champion, Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea, the 2024 U.S. titlists, Maxim Naumov, the 2020 U.S. junior champion and 2024 U.S. fourth-place finisher, Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarenko, the two-time U.S. Championship medalists, Starr Andrews, the 2022 Skate Canada silver medalist, Jimmy Ma, the nine-time U.S. Championship contender, Logan Higase-Chen, the 2024 U.S. junior ladies champion, Josephine Lee, the 2024 U.S. silver medalist and the Skating Club of Boston’s Theatre on Ice Overture of Boston Team, among other notable performers.
Photo courtesy of Janet Liu and Skating Club of Boston For the athletes, this event served as a vital part of the whole week-long Champs Camp experience, in which they had also participated in an extensive series of on and off-ice training sessions and seminars with their coaches and U.S. Figure Skating officials and committee members to help further optimize their skating and programs going into the 2024/25 competitive season. “We’re all benefiting from the support we get at Champs Camp,” said Chock, whose gorgeous 2024 gala program with Bates to Melody Gardot’s ‘Once I Was Loved’ was also a rousing hit with spectators. “It’s a great opportunity for everyone to keep learning and growing.” Bates echoed similar sentiments. “I was certainly pretty excited yesterday when we got here and saw the group of skaters and it’s really inspiring,” said Bates. “I mean, maybe it is a touch of nostalgia, just the fact that we’ve grown up with Champs Camp every August. “There’s something about that, like you know, back to school, feeling the end of the summer and getting new programs vetted among all the other exciting stuff.” These athletes also expressed palpable excitement about the fact that Champs Camp was held in Boston, the site of the 2025 World Championships. “I think it’s pretty cool to kind of feel the environment here and really get to know the people here and see just how [everything] might look in the bigger venues,” said Malinin, who wowed the crowd with his dramatic 2024 season gala program to NF’s ‘Hope.’ Note: Amber Glenn skated to Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘Vampire,’ her 2023/24 gala program, while Isabeau Levito performed her 2024/25 short program to ‘Swan Lake,’ both of which were also memorable as well as terrific hits with the audience. Performing at the 2024 Summer Sizzler were:
Prior to the show several of the performers took questions from the media on various topics. On Champs Camp and the Summer Sizzler Show Brown: “It’s been so fun [Champs Camp]. The whole point of it is to show our programs and get feedback from the judges. It was a lot of different work with so many moving parts. I’m really excited to get to perform my program and have some audience feedback. I mean, we love the sport, we love to perform.” Chock: “We’re all benefiting from the support that we get at Champs Camp. It’s a great opportunity for everyone to keep learning and growing.” Bates: “I was certainly pretty excited yesterday when we got here and saw the group of skaters and it’s really inspiring. I mean, maybe it is a touch of nostalgia, just the fact that I mean, I can say we’ve almost grown up with Champs Camp every August. There’s something about that, like you know, back to school, feeling the end of summer and getting the programs vetted amongst all the other exciting stuff.” Glenn: “Champs Camp is kind of the first time that all of us come together and we only get a few opportunities a year to do that, so it’s been great to see everyone.” Levito: “I love seeing everyone, the athletes and U.S. Figure Skating staff and all of the people. It’s great.” Malinin: “I think it’s pretty cool to kind of feel the environment here and really get to know the people here and see just how [everything] might look in the bigger venues.” On their skating, training and new programs as they head into the 2024/25 season: Malinin: “What’s motivating me this season is wanting to kind of push my limit again and not only with technical ability, but also in artistry and creativity and trying to really go for all aspects of skating this year.” “I think I’m just trying to explore all types of genres and to try to go to somewhere outside to really just see what I can accomplish and whichever ways fit me best and is the most comfortable for me to perform.” Chock: “We’ve just hit the running as soon as we got back from the tour and started making new material, so I think we’re in a very good place for this point in the season and we’re really happy with the programs. I think we started a little earlier knowing that we had something big on the calendar for June.” (Chock and Bates got married in June.) Bates: “We came right back (after the Worlds tour) and tried to make the most of each day and get our choreography done earlier in the spring knowing that we had the wedding.” Chock: “For us, it’s the connection. We want to keep fostering on the ice and optimizing our speed and the efficiency of our movement.” Bates: “I think we like to go to the drawing board and try to pick the music and concept and try to just not retrace our steps a little bit. So picking music this year feels a lot different that what we’ve done at least in the past year or two and was a big priority for us. So we feel like the programs are fresh for us, which is really something that we value a lot.” Bates: “We’re really big on self improvement and just trying to find every little iota of improvement that we can find within ourselves.” Glenn: “My short program (to Janet Jackson’s ‘This Time’) is very fun. It’s very sassy. It’s something I’m absolutely thrilled about. It’s very different from what you might expect when you think of figure skating, especially in women’s singles. And the free skate (to music by Sound Machine) is something I’m really looking forward to. It’s a beautiful, mesmerizing piece that starts off kind of quiet and builds into this huge finish. I feel like it’s very exciting and theatric. Our goal was to just be able to put out a great performance in general, along with some very difficult technical content.” Levito: “[My programs this year] are both music that I love very much and I just enjoy skating to these types of music. I decided to skate to something I just l love very much for this season.” Brown: “I’m skating to ‘The Legend of Tarzan’ (for the short). I competed it at two events last year and didn’t give myself enough time to train it. So we decided to go a different route for the (2024) U.S. Championships (with his memorable ‘The Impossible Dream’ from ‘Man of La Mancha’ free skate), but it’s a piece of music that I still really loved and I wanted to see if I could still use it and see it through in a different way, so we kind of reimagined it as a short program.” Brown: “I’m still doing what I love and still getting to perform in front of crowds and improving and chasing goals and dreams. I keep wanting to explore different styles of music. That’s a very big motivator. I always trying to improve my lines and challenge myself and that’s really the biggest factor now and then using this season almost as a guide in some ways of how to manage next season.” On the 2024 Summer Olympics Malinin: “Watching the Olympics, it was a very cool event. I was very inspired by a lot of the events, watching gymnastics, it was a pretty amazing event and even skateboarding. I like to ride around on my skateboard. I wish I was as good as them, but it’s just very fun to watch them, you know, do a lot of cool tricks. And of course, the new addition of breakdancing. I really enjoyed it. I mean, a lot of the competitors, I really like their own style and they always have something unique they bring, which is kind of why I take inspiration from breakdancing. They find their own style and I try to incorporate that in my skating.” Chock and Bates (who had received their gold medal for the 2022 Winter Olympic Figure Skating Team event at the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics earlier in August.) Bates: “We brought both sets of parents, aunts and uncles on both sides, my brother and his family and my nieces. We had a huge group and it was, I mean it was amazing and it was better than we could have imagined. We were [part] of the whole team, back together for the first time in two years and just the whole atmosphere in Paris was incredible.” Chock: “We were also so inspired by the Summer Olympics, just seeing all the athletes in different venues and being at the Olympics fully in spirit was incredibly infectious.” Glenn: “There was so much [with the] behind the scenes and characteristics to different people and different stories and I felt so much more invested than ever and it made me excited. It made me just all the more motivated and excited to try and make it to Italy.” (The 2026 Winter Olympics are slated to be held in Milano/Cortina, Italy.) |
