Photos By Christina Li
For Isabeau Levito, competing during the lead-in to the Olympics feels pretty much like it does any other season – until, of course, it doesn’t.
“I’ve been asked this a few times already, and I feel like every time it’s exactly the same,” Levito told reporters at the Grand Prix de France in Angers. “I just feel very excited to start the current season. It’s still fun for me.”
A few minutes later, the 18-year-old from Mount Holly, New Jersey offered a more nuanced (and realistic) answer.
“Instead of focusing from competition to competition, all I think about is the Olympics,” she said. “Sometimes, I’ll be messing up in practice and I have to tell myself, ‘Oh, you have to be ready for Grand Prix of France.’ But now, all of these (competitions) are little pit stops for me to just get comfortable with my programs and improve from competition to competition until Olympics, because you don’t get too many chances at the Olympics.”
Angers is already Levito’s third pit stop to the Milano-Cortina Games next February, after a winning effort at Cranberry Cup International in early August and fourth place at Nebelhorn Trophy last month.
Levito’s short program tally in Angers, 73.37 points, is just a shade under her personal best and considerably better than her 71.10 score at Nebelhorn. Her 139.34-point free skate to “Cinema Paradiso” was strong, but under rotating the second jump of her opening triple flip, triple toe loop combination cost her a medal, and she placed fourth overall.
“I got an out-of-this-world score (in the short), so I was mostly happy with how I skated,” Levito said of her routine to a Sophia Loren medley, choreographed by coaches Yulia Kuznetsova and Otar Japaridze to the romantic “Almost in Your Arms” and cheeky “Zoo Be Zoo Be Zoo (Zou Bisou Bisou).”
“The choreography, with the music, it just makes me so happy,” she added.
The program is also calculated to please the Italian crowd in February. Loren, Italy’s most celebrated actress and one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood, is revered in her home country. She opened a Neapolitan-themed restaurant in central Milan in 2022. As a young starlet at the1956 Cortina d’ Ampezzo Games, she famously signed autographs at the ski events. In Torino in 2006, she carried the official Torino Olympics flag during the Opening Ceremony.
“I’m loving this program so much, especially the part in the beginning, before (the step sequences, it’s my favorite,” Levito said. “I’m so excited for after this (season) when, most likely, I’ll end up on (the Stars on Ice) tour, and I’ll choose this program as one of my numbers, and to do it over and over.”
That’s what happened with Levito’s short last season, set to Mancini’s “Moon River” and channeling Audrey Hepburn in “Breakfast in Tiffany’s.” For the Olympic season, Levito and her coaches drew from the Hollywood well again.
The skater is also repeating her Grand Prix strategy, competing at two early events, here in Angers and at Skate Canada (Oct. 31 – Nov. 2).
“Usually after my two Grand Prix, I need to change my boots, because otherwise they get too soft,” Levito explained. “They don’t last the whole year. So I’m really glad that I have very close Grand Prix (events), so I have much more time to just adjust to new boots, because that’s not really my favorite thing.”