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Blaine figure skater finishes eighth overall in U.S. Championships

Despite strong Saturday performance, Liam Kapeikis downgraded for consecutive falls on second day of competition

By Elliott Almond CDN Contributor

Western Washington University’s Liam Kapeikis entered the U.S. Figure Skating championships, Jan. 25-26 in Wichita, Kansas, hoping for his best-ever senior finish.

But it fell apart quickly on Sunday on his most difficult jumps to start the men’s free skate.

Kapeikis, 20, suffered consecutive falls on a quadruple toeloop and triple axel (3 ½ rotations) for major deductions that spelled disaster.

A day after having one of the best programs of his career, Kapeikis finished 14th in the free skate to end the competition in eighth place overall.

Judges downgraded him on three other jumps for a score of 128.69 points. Kapeikis scored 213.70 points — well below his personal best — over the two-day competition to fall almost 40 points from making the podium.

Meanwhile, world champion Ilia Malinin cemented his favorite status a year before the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy. He landed a record-tying six quadruple jumps to win his third consecutive U.S. title.

Malinin, 20, landed a quadruple axel that no other competitor has completed. He totaled 333.31 points — 46.82 points better than runner-up Andrew Torgashev.

They were selected to the three-man team for the World Championships in March in Boston. Two-time Olympian Jason Brown, who missed the U.S. championships because of equipment issues, was provisionally given the third slot. The U.S. men hope to earn three Olympic berths at the World Championships.

Kapeikis, who relocated from Wenatchee to Blaine in 2019 to train at an ice rink in Richmond, British Columbia, had a clean short program on Saturday to open the competition in fifth place.


“I want to say that the short wasn’t much different than what I’ve been doing in training,” Kapeikis told reporters after Saturday’s performance. “I’ve been training really well. I’ve had a lot of clean shorts going into this event.”

The strong short program buoyed Kapeikis, whose parents met while on the Disney On Ice tour.

“The last year and a half was bad skate after bad skate after bad skate, and I haven’t felt like myself on the ice in a long time — until finally,” he said. “That was me. I was authentic. I was myself, and I was able to do what I actually know how to do.”

Kapeikis said he felt comfortable and happy on the ice again.

But he couldn’t duplicate the feeling in the all-important free skate on Sunday, where competitors needed an arsenal of quadruple jumps to be considered serious contenders.

Among those lost in the crash were 14 people who were returning home from a national figure skating development camp in Wichita, according to Doug Zeghibe, the CEO and executive director for the Skating Club of Boston.

Fourteen people returning home from a national figure skating development camp in Wichita died Wednesday night, Jan. 29 on an American Airlines flight that crashed into an Army Black Hawk helicopter and plummeted into the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., ABC News reported. The development camp was held in conjunction with the skating championships. Six of the victims were affiliated with the Skating Club of Boston, according to ABC.

All 64 passengers, plus the three Army soldiers piloting the helicopter, are presumed dead.

This story was updated at 11:48 a.m. Jan. 30, 2025, to include information about a deadly plane crash that resulted in the deaths of several U.S. Figure Skating members.

Elliott Almond's outdoor column appears monthly. Email: elliottalmond4@gmail.com.

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