Madison Hubbell, Zachary Donohue win final Skate America of their careers, tie win streak record

By Brandon PennyOct 24, 2021, 6:12 PM EDT

LAS VEGAS — Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue could not ask for a better beginning of the end.

The decorated ice dancers have previously proclaimed that this 2021-2022 Olympic season will be the final one of their lengthy careers, and so far it is a dream.

With Sunday’s Skate America title, Hubbell and Donohue have won the first two competitions of their season — both on home ice.

Their Skate America victory completes a sweep of the four in a row to which they were assigned and ties them with skating legends Nathan Chen, Todd Eldredge, Michelle Kwan and ice dancers Meryl Davis/Charlie White for the event’s longest win streak across all disciplines.

They also ended their time at the Orleans Arena with season’s best free dance (125.96) and total (209.54) scores. Their rhythm dance at last month’s U.S. International Figure Skating Classic earned 84.06 points, while they scored 83.58 on Saturday.

“I couldn’t be happier with the performance today,” Hubbell said. “Some days you take inspiration from different things, whether it be the work you put in at home or that my mom is in the stands. Something clicked this morning and I really wanted to skate for myself and really be there with Zach and present for the performance from beginning to the end.

“I think we both accomplished that goal and, in doing so, accomplished the other goal, which was to come out with the gold.”

Knowing this is their last season has allowed Hubbell and Donohue to soak in every experience and prepare for each competition in a way they would not have prior.

“Certainly our approach this Skate America was to try and be in the best shape we’ve ever been at Skate America and I can say we’re very proud of where we are physically,” Hubbell explained. “This is a great sign in October. … Overall, I would say we just felt very ready and prepared and supported by the work that we did at home and put out what felt more like a December or January performance for us.”

Hubbell and Donohue finished fourth, after he put both hands down on the ice, at their Olympic debut in 2018. After medaling at all three world championships held since – the only team to do so – they are favored to medal at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics come February.

U.S. teammates Madison Chock and Evan Bates, considered longtime rivals of Hubbell and Donohue both domestically and internationally, were a close second in Las Vegas with 208.23 points. Their Daft Punk free dance was just 0.28 behind Hubbell and Donohue’s, which is set to Anne Sila’s “Drowning.”

Canadians Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Nikolaj Sorenson took the bronze with a distant 190.13, followed closely by Spain’s Olivia Smart and Adrian Diaz at 189.69.

The top four teams train at Ice Academy of Montreal, led by coaches Marie-France Dubreuil, Patrice Lauzon and Romain Haguenauer.

While this was Hubbell and Donohue’s fifth Skate America appearance – and medal – in six years, it was the first for Chock and Bates in six years. They won the event in 2014 and 2015, then did not receive it as one of their two Grand Prix assignments until now.

“Six years is a really long time,” Bates reflected. “Obviously when we were here in Chicago in 2015, it was such a different time in our careers and we were really achieving a lot of results and in that six-year span since we really went through it. We had some low moments and went through just a lot together.

“Reflecting on what life was like six years ago and what our partnership was like then, we’ve come a long way.”

The on- and off-ice couple, who have competed at two Olympics together while Bates was also at the Vancouver 2010 Games with then-partner Emily Samuelson, has since switched coaches, moved countries, dealt with Chock’s ankle injury and surgery as well as her concussion – not to mention the ups and downs of competition results and navigating the pandemic.

Chock and Bates’ Olympic season free dance program tells the story of an alien and an astronaut that are able to come together despite their differences.

“Of course if you asked us two years ago, ‘Will you guys be doing a galactic, alien-astronaut program for the Olympic Games?’ We’d probably say, ‘No, what are you talking about,'” Chock laughed. “However, in the last few years while we’ve been at the Ice Academy of Montreal, the coaches have helped us realize more is possible than ever before. We are capable of doing so much more than we could have ever dreamed of four years ago, and they have really allowed us to embrace that creative freedom and embrace who we want to be as athletes and artists on the ice.

“From that came this wonderful, intergalactic, star-crossed program that we are so passionate about because not only is it a unique piece of music and unique story we are telling but we also have a much deeper message between the two of us that we hope to convey to everyone as we perform, and that’s one of love and acceptance. I think that can resonate with everyone of any country across the board, and I think when you have the Olympic Games and such a large platform, it’s such a wonderful opportunity when we step out on the ice to share our message and show our love for what we do.”

OlympicTalk is on Apple News. Favorite us!

Follow @nbcolympictalk

Britton Wilson doubles like nobody else in track and field

By Nick ZaccardiJun 8, 2023, 6:49 AM EDT

Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Sprinter Britton Wilson regularly updates a vision board in her apartment living room. As of last week, there were two numbers on it among a collage of pictures: 48 and 52.

The 48 is for the 400m. Wilson’s short-term goal is to become the third U.S. woman to break 49 seconds in the one-lap event after Olympic gold medalists Sanya Richards-Ross and Valerie Brisco-Hooks.

The 52 is for the 400m hurdles. She wants to become the 10th U.S. woman to break 53 seconds in that event.

They are not far-fetched ambitions. Wilson, a University of Arkansas junior, has already run 49.13 in the flat 400m and 53.08 in the 400m hurdles. She is the only woman to rank among the 25 fastest in history in both events. She is the fourth-fastest American all-time in the flat 400m, passing Allyson Felix last month.

At this week’s NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships in Austin, Texas, Wilson will bid to become the first person to win Division I titles in the same year in both the 400m and the 400m hurdles.

On Thursday night, she will race the 400m semifinals just after 9 p.m. local time. A half-hour later, she will race the 400m hurdles semifinals. If she advances, she will race the two finals Saturday with a scheduled 24 minutes in between.

In most cases, a runner would only race twice in that short of a turnaround for the 100m or 200m. Wilson is not only attempting a rarity, but she is also the clear top seed in both events.

Last year, Wilson won both at the SEC Championships with about an hour in between the finals, then entered only the hurdles at the NCAA Championships. She won all of those races. This year, Wilson again won both at SECs. Afterward, she met with coach Chris Johnson, who asked what she wanted to do at NCAAs. Wilson chose both.

“I wanted to see how much I can challenge myself and how far I can push myself,” she said.

Ask those who know Wilson best, and they will tell you that her plan, while unprecedented, is not audacious for her.

Her high school coach will tell you that Wilson ran a nation-leading 300m hurdles time on a Friday night in Richmond, Virginia. She got home around 11. The next morning, she went to another meet and ran the fastest flat 400m in Virginia high school history.

Her mom, who nicknamed her “baby giraffe” in middle school for her early running form, will tell you about the 2018 state championships. Wilson stopped en route to the meet at a CVS to pick up medication for a stomach virus. Once they arrived, nobody could find her. Wilson was in a portable bathroom. When she got out, she looked so out of sorts that adults told her not to race. She checked herself in anyway, then won the 400m and the 200m.

Wilson herself will tell you about the 2017 state championships race the family has come to call by the first two words of its YouTube title.

“So I run track, and if you’re wondering if I’m good or not, here’s one of my highlights,” she said, setting up the story in a TikTok video.

Wilson, then a sophomore, was desperately trying to catch a senior in the adjacent lane in the home stretch of the 400m final. Feet from the finish line, Wilson fell. She scraped her knee (above her tall, pink Victoria’s Secret socks), shoulder (there’s still a scar) and head. For a moment, her legs flung above her body. Wilson then crawled across the finish line to secure second place.

Mom LeYuani rushed from behind a fence to find her daughter under a tent. Nearly as quickly, the finish was already spreading on social media.

LeYuani watched the video in sight of her daughter, but didn’t tell her about it. Determined, Wilson said she was staying in the meet to race the 200m later that day. She did. She won in a personal-best time.

LeYuani remembers Wilson moaning in the backseat of the car on the two-hour drive home. Tylenol lessened the suffering, but didn’t eliminate it.

Wilson has athletic genes. Her mom, a second-grade teacher who has worked in classrooms for 26 years, was a long jumper in school. She taught her kids that event by sprinting from the dining room, through the kitchen, into the family room and then launching nearly into the fireplace.

Her dad, Vince, started at point guard for Virginia Commonwealth, then was the first American to play in the top Russian professional basketball league, according to a contact with the current iteration of the league. Wilson, while on an international exchange program in Russia, said he was asked to play for Spartak Leningrad in 1990 by its head coach, Vladimir Kondrashin. Kondrashin was also the head coach of the 1972 Soviet Olympic team that beat the U.S. in that infamous final.

Wilson, whom the family calls by her middle name, “Rose,” was all-state in track and all-county in chorus and taught herself how to play the guitar.

She first matriculated at the University of Tennessee in 2019. Her freshman year coincided with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which wiped out the outdoor season. In her down time, she auditioned virtually for “American Idol” and made it as far as seeing Ryan Seacrest on a screen.

As a sophomore, she was running slower than she was in high school. Looking for solutions, Wilson stopped eating.

“A lot of things contributed to my mental health not being the best,” she said on a University of Arkansas athletics podcast. “I had a lot of physical issues. I was in and out of doctors.”

She confided in her parents and decided to transfer. She said that if it wasn’t for Arkansas, the first and only school that she visited, she probably would have quit the sport.

“You have athletes that compete at a very high level, but you also have those athletes that are so mentally strong, they can overcome a lot of things,” Vince said.

Wilson has thrived under coach Chris Johnson, whose older brother, Boogie, coaches 2016 Olympic 400m hurdles champion Dalilah Muhammad.

“[Johnson] is always listening to how we feel, and he hears us instead of just dismissing it,” Wilson said. “He knows he’s a great coach, and he knows his training works, but he’s also going to hear me out if something doesn’t feel right.”

Last year, Wilson’s first in Fayetteville, she chopped two seconds off her 400m personal best and three seconds off her 400m hurdles personal best. She capped a full NCAA indoor and outdoor slate by winning the NCAA 400m hurdles title. She then went eight tenths faster at the USA Track and Field Outdoor Championships, which is normally where collegians run slower after exhausting seasons. Wilson placed second to Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone to make the world championships team.

Then at worlds, Wilson was fifth in the 400m hurdles. Two days later, Wilson was thrilled to be picked for the women’s 4x400m relay the day of the final. She handed the baton to McLaughlin-Levrone — whom she raced once in high school, when Wilson was a sophomore and McLaughlin-Levrone was a senior — and won a gold medal.

“She admired and adored Sydney,” Scott said. “You remember the old commercial, ‘Be Like Mike?’ She wanted to be like Sydney.”

After this week’s NCAAs come the USATF Outdoor Championships in early July. There, the 400m final and 400m hurdles semifinals are 15 minutes apart. Told of that schedule, Wilson said running both is “doable,” but she’d probably race just one event this year. Her coach said they’ll decide after NCAAs.

Wilson is ranked second in the world in 2023 in both events.

At NCAAs, USAs and worlds (if she makes the team), Wilson will get into the blocks and look down. If she peeks inside her right hand, she will see a tattoo on the inside of one finger reading “24K.” Wilson and her mom both got that tattoo — the first for each — to commemorate the world championships relay gold medal.

After worlds, Wilson spent about two months in a boot and on crutches to alleviate stress reactions in both shins, pain that she raced through last summer. She had messed up her kidneys and stomach by taking four ibuprofen a day. She swam, biked and tread carefully on a treadmill while unable to run last fall.

This spring, she got another tattoo — the word “Baby” in memory of her half Pekingese, half poodle that died last summer. She got it on her left hand, “so when my hands are in the blocks, if somebody takes a picture of me, you’ll see it,” she said.

On Saturday, Wilson plans to put her hands on the track twice in a span of 25 minutes. Many will watch.

“She wants to accomplish something that’s never been done before,” Johnson said.

OlympicTalk is on Apple News. Favorite us!

Follow @nzaccardi

2023 French Open men’s singles draw

By OlympicTalkJun 7, 2023, 5:18 PM EDT

Getty

The French Open men’s singles draw is missing injured 14-time champion Rafael Nadal for the first time since 2004, leaving the Coupe des Mousquetaires ripe for the taking.

The tournament airs live on NBC Sports, Peacock and Tennis Channel through championship points in Paris.

Novak Djokovic is not only bidding for a third crown at Roland Garros, but also to lift a 23rd Grand Slam singles trophy to break his tie with Nadal for the most in men’s history.

FRENCH OPEN: Broadcast Schedule | Women’s Draw

But the No. 1 seed is Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz, who won last year’s U.S. Open to become, at 19, the youngest man to win a major since Nadal’s first French Open title in 2005.

Now Alcaraz looks to become the second-youngest man to win at Roland Garros since 1989, after Nadal of course.

Alcaraz missed the Australian Open in January due to a right leg injury, but since went 30-3 with four titles. Notably, he has not faced Djokovic this year. They meet in Friday’s semifinals.

Russian Daniil Medvedev, the No. 2 seed, was upset in the first round by 172nd-ranked Brazilian qualifier Thiago Seyboth Wild. It marked the first time a men’s top-two seed lost in the first round of any major since 2003 Wimbledon (Ivo Karlovic d. Lleyton Hewitt).

All of the American men lost before the fourth round. The last U.S. man to make the French Open quarterfinals was Andre Agassi in 2003.

MORE: All you need to know for 2023 French Open

OlympicTalk is on Apple News. Favorite us!

Follow @nbcolympictalk

More: Figure Skating

More: Olympics

2023 French Open Men’s Singles Draw

More: Olympics