MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The final figure skating medals of this year's Olympics will be awarded tonight. Women on Team USA were expected to dominate, but after the first half of the individual women's figure skating competition this week, only two of them are in the top 10. NPR's Rachel Treisman has been watching all of this from Milan. Hi, Rachel.
RACHEL TREISMAN, BYLINE: Hi, Michel.
MARTIN: So let me start with Amber Glenn. Three-time U.S. champion, clearly one of the stars people have been keeping an eye on, but she's in 13th place after competition on Tuesday. What happened?
TREISMAN: Right. Glenn came in as a medal favorite. She started off really strong with a triple axel - a jump that's pretty rare in the women's field - but she made a heartbreaking mistake. She lost all of the points for her final jump after landing it as a double instead of the required triple. She later said she had lost focus. She also subtly implied on social media that her period may have been a factor. So now she's only a little over 11 points behind the current leader, Ami Nakai of Japan, who was the only other woman to land a triple axel that day.
MARTIN: Wow, that's tough. So who is the U.S.' best shot at gold now?
TREISMAN: That would be reigning world champion Alysa Liu. She earned a season-best score on Tuesday and finished the night in third place. She's the first U.S. woman to do that since 2006, which was actually the last year any U.S. woman won an Olympic figure skating medal in this individual event. The irony is that Liu says she doesn't care if she wins a medal. She retired as a teenager after the Beijing Olympics and came back with this totally different mindset. She now wants to enjoy herself. She wants to showcase her creativity, and she wants to be in control of her own story. This is what she said after making the Olympic team back in January.
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ALYSA LIU: What is there to lose? You're - every second you're there, you're gaining something. There's nothing to be lost. You know what I'm saying? Like, I can't think of anything that I would find stressful or anything that would - could bring me down.
TREISMAN: Well, it has been a pretty dramatic, disappointing few weeks of competition for U.S. figure skaters. But no matter what happens today, Liu and Glenn will both leave these Olympics with gold medals from the team event.
MARTIN: So who are some of these other medal contenders to watch tonight?
TREISMAN: So keep an eye on Team USA's Isabeau Levito. She's currently in eighth place. And then at the top of the podium for now are Japanese skaters, who have just been dominant in all of the figure skating events. So three of them finished in the top five of the women's short program on Tuesday. That's Ami Nakai, Mone Chiba and Kaori Sakamoto. Sakamoto is the reigning bronze medalist in this event, and she plans to retire right after these Olympics. So there's a lot on the line for her.
And then there's sort of a wild card here - Adeliia Petrosian of Russia. She's competing as a neutral athlete, and she actually spent much of Tuesday night sitting in first place. But again, if these Olympics have shown us anything, it's that truly anything can happen on the ice. So we're just going to have to wait and see for ourselves in a few hours.
MARTIN: Rachel, we have a couple of seconds left here, so what has been the most exciting thing for you so far?
TREISMAN: Hard to pick just one thing. But watching the skating and watching everyone else watching the skating, I've now seen Snoop Dogg. I've seen Martha Stewart. I've watched other skaters watch their teammates. And it's been fun to see how everyone cheers for everyone else.
MARTIN: That is NPR's Rachel Treisman. Rachel, thank you.
TREISMAN: Thank you.
MARTIN: I want to mention Rachel's writing a daily newsletter about covering the Olympics. It's called Rachel Goes To The Games. You can subscribe at npr.org/wintergames. Check out Up First Winter Games, too, a new video podcast from the team that brings you Up First. That's us. Find it every afternoon at youtube.com/npr.
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LAUFEY: (Singing) It's worse to be nothing... Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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