See Ami Nakai’s Triple Axel in the Olympics Figure Skating Short Program

Only two skaters landed triple axels, the most difficult jump attempted in the short program of the women’s Olympic figure skating competition on Tuesday.

Ami Nakai, 17, of Japan took advantage of a roughly five-point edge that a triple axel gave her over her competitors’ double axels, to finish in first place with 78.71 points, her career best. Her triple axel — which requires a forward takeoff and 3½ revolutions in the air — brought her 9.71 points, a deciding factor in her routine.

Amber Glenn, 26, the three-time and reigning United States champion, also landed a triple axel and was skating confidently until she made a startling mistake on her required solo triple jump, completing only a double loop. She received zero points for the error and dropped to 13th place, out of contention for a gold medal and likely for any medal, leaving her in tears.

But in this deep field, Nakai and the other remaining medal favorites — Japan’s Kaori Sakamoto, the United States’s Alysa Liu, Japan’s Mone Chiba and Russia’s Adeliia Petrosian are separated by fewer than six points heading into the free skate on Thursday.

Japan is having the kind of Olympics the United States hoped to have in figure skating: winning its first-ever gold medal in the pairs competition, taking silver and bronze in the men’s singles competition and now leading the women’s competition with three of the first four spots in the short program. Japan also took the silver behind the United States in the team event.

Nakai did not expect to make the Olympic field in her first season at the senior level. But she skated with ebullience and the fearlessness of youth on Tuesday. Along with her triple axel, she received 11.36 points for an ambitious triple lutz, triple toe loop combination jump. She also received personal-best marks for her artistic scores.

Sakamoto, 25, the 2022 Olympic bronze medalist and a three-time world champion, has announced that she will retire after this season and is seeking a gold medal in her valedictory performance. She is perhaps the most complete skater among the contenders and performed with her usual speed and flow on Tuesday, receiving her personal best for her artistic scores.

But she appeared to launch her triple lutz on the back inside edge of her skate instead of the required outside edge, losing potential bonus points for degree of execution that could have put her in the lead. She also made a small mistake landing a triple toe loop in her combination jump.

Liu, 20, of Oakland, Calif., is the only American woman here with Olympic experience. She finished sixth at the 2022 Beijing Games and then quit the sport at age 16, saying she liked nothing about skating and felt like a marionette whose strings were being pulled by others.

Lui made a comeback two years ago and unexpectedly became the 2025 world champion. She appeared to have arrived at these Games feeling renewed and unburdened by the pressure of expectation. On Tuesday, she skated with familiar consistency, floating like a leaf on water. Her short-program total of 76.59 points was her personal best, though she under-rotated her triple loop at the end of a triple-triple combination jump.

She pumped her fist at the finish as she sought to become the first American woman to win a singles medal in the Olympics since Sasha Cohen took silver at the 2006 Winter Games in Turin, Italy.

“I’m really confident in myself,” Liu said on NBC. “I’m fine with any outcome as long as I’m out there. And I am, so there’s nothing to lose.”

Sitting in fifth place is the intriguing and mysterious Petrosian, 18, a Russian competing as a neutral athlete while her country remains banned from the Olympics over its invasion of Ukraine.

She is the most technically gifted skater in the women’s field. She played it safe with a double axel in the short program, which could be costly, but has performed a triple axel and the quad toe loop, quad flip and quad loop during free-skate performances in Russia. None of her Olympic competitors have quads.

But this is only Petrosian’s second competition outside Russia since 2021 and her first Olympics. Questions remain. Can she handle the pressure? Is she completely recovered from an offseason groin injury? If she skates her best on Thursday, with a high-scoring base value of her jumps in the free skate, she could leapfrog her way onto the medal podium and, potentially, to the top step.