After Dream Season, Levito Eyes Further Success in 2023

Isabeau Levito is comfortable on a podium.
 
Just take a glance at her competitive results. Dating back to 2016, when she was competing at the juvenile level, she's finished off the podium just one time – the 2017 Eastern Sectional, where she finished 11th. Since then, it's been nothing but medals of every color, even as she climbed from juvenile to intermediate to novice to junior, and now, finally, to senior.
 
Despite having won no shortage of hardware, the 15-year-old cherishes one above all others.
 
The silver medal she won at the 2022 ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating Final.
 
"I have a little cabinet where I keep some of my trophies or my recent achievements, but I have dedicated an entire shelf just for that medal and little souvenirs from the event," Levito said with a laugh. "So I feel like that speaks for itself, you know? That's how proud I am of this."
 
It's been a truly meteoric rise for Levito. This time last year, she was the reigning U.S. junior champion about to take the plunge at the senior level for the first time.
 
At the 2022 Toyota U.S. Figure Skating Championships, she finished third behind Mariah Bell and Karen Chen, missing out on a selection to the 2022 Olympic team due to age ineligibility. Undeterred, Levito went on to win the World Junior Championship a few months later.
 
Since the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022, Bell and Alysa Liu, the third member of the women's contingent, have both retired and Chen has stepped away from competition indefinitely. That left the path clear for Levito to assume leading lady status, which she has done wholeheartedly.
 
She made the jump to senior, and says it has relieved her of any pressure.
 
"When I realized I was going to compete as a senior internationally, I wasn't thinking about, 'Oh, how am I going to compare?' or anything like that," Levito said. "I was kind of more open-minded. For me, it was actually stress taken away when thinking about how I'm going to do at a competition, because I think there's no expectations."
 
At every competition Levito attends, it's her first time, and she shows up excited to see how things go on a new stage, in a new venue. That was her mindset when she arrived in Boston for her senior Grand Prix debut at Skate America in October – she wanted to skate her best and essentially threw up her hands and left her fate in the judges' hands.
 
Levito walked away with the silver medal.
 
"When I was going into the Grand Prix events, my goal was to qualify for the Final," she said. "I feel like it was kind of a checkmark in the direction to where my goal was intended. It was like, okay, I'm on the right path, I'm on the right track to completing my goal.
 
"There was two and a half or three weeks until the next event I had, so I really had to keep myself focused. I didn't really have enough time to really celebrate, because if I celebrated and then didn't prepare well enough for the next event, I wouldn't have reached my overall goal, and then in the end I would've just disappointed myself. So definitely was just more like, 'Part one done. Let's finish the second half of what my goal is.'"
 
Levito's next stop was the MK John Wilson Trophy in Sheffield, England, where she again won silver. That didn't quite guarantee her a place at the Grand Prix Final, so she went home and trained as if she had qualified, just in case.
 
Then the word finally came through that it was official: Levito qualified for the Grand Prix Final, becoming the youngest U.S. skater to do so since 14-year-old Caroline Zhang in 2007. She was the youngest of the six women's qualifiers by three years.
 
Still, she showed up in Torino, Italy, with the same mindset: no pressure, no expectations, just excitement.
 
She placed fifth in the short program, and given the strength of her competitors, she began to make peace with the fact that the podium was probably out of reach.
 
"I was putting my makeup on, preparing to go to the rink for the long program, and I was so nervous, and I was like, 'I need to skate clean,'" Levito said. "Before an event, I'm always thinking everyone else is going to skate clean. It's like my brain goes by default that everyone else will be perfect and I'm the only one that could potentially mess up. So in that moment, I was kind of accepting the fact that, most likely, especially if I don't skate clean, that I may not podium."
 
But then she did, completing a stunning comeback to vault from fifth to second overall, behind only Mai Mihara of Japan.
 
"When I did podium, I was just like, 'Nah. Nah. This can't be real,'" Levito said. "So when I was actually on the podium, when I think back to it now, I had the exact same feeling as my Grand Prix stages. I think, in the moment, my brain must've just thought, 'Yeah, it's just another Grand Prix stage. It's not the Grand Prix Final.' But now, looking back on it, I'm like, damn, that was the Grand Prix Final."
 
A far cry from last year, she heads into the 2023 Toyota U.S. Figure Skating Championships in San Jose, California, on Jan. 23-29 as the odds-on favorite to win her first U.S. title.
 
Despite achieving a level of success in her first senior international season that some skaters never reach – her Grand Prix Final medal is the first for a U.S. woman since Ashley Wagner won bronze in 2014 – she remains fully focused on what's still to come.
 
"I feel like it's a really great foundation for the rest of my season," Levito said. "I think it definitely is a great boost of confidence, and I'm just very proud. It was just the beginning of the season – there's still the rest of the season to come, and it just has me very excited to see how the rest of the season will go."
 
But will there be expectations and pressure now that she's shown what she can do at the senior level?
 
"I feel like I will probably start feeling those kind of nerves next season, but this season, it still feels like I'm new," Levito said with a laugh.

Isabeau Levito looks to keep her medal streak alive and win her first U.S. title in San Jose. To purchase tickets, visit the 2023 Toyota U.S. Figure Skating Championships Competition Central.