By JAMES ELLINGWORTH
From being handled like “cattle” as a younger woman to sleeping in her automotive off a Polish freeway, Allison Reed has taken an extended, arduous highway to observe her Olympic ice dance dream.
Born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Reed has traveled the world only for an opportunity to compete. After representing Georgia and Israel, Reed is again on the Olympics for the primary time since 2010, skating for Lithuania with a associate who’s taken her to the subsequent degree.
With Saulius Ambrulevičius — Saul for brief — who’ll be at his first Olympics in Milan Cortina in February, Reed brings dramatic aptitude to packages themed round pop and digital hits from the Nineteen Nineties.
That 16-year hole between Olympics is an eternity on the planet of figure skating, and Reed typically competes towards skaters who had been toddlers when she made her Olympic debut aged 15 in Vancouver.
On the best way, she’s skilled private tragedy, the “out-of-body expertise” of a breakthrough medal, and a sport which doesn’t at all times reside as much as its glamorous picture and fame for inclusivity.
Unequal relationships
Ice dancers are supposed to transfer as one, gliding by means of routines in good synchronicity. Off the ice, groups might be removed from equal.
Much more ladies aspire to ice dance careers than boys and male dancers are anticipated to be tall athletes able to lifting their feminine companions with ease. Reed recollects attending tryouts as a younger skater with 4 boys taking their decide of 25 ladies at a rink.
“These 4 boys would simply go about selecting no matter woman that they wished to skate with and they might go and skate with them, they’d say thanks, then they’d decide one other woman,” she advised The Related Press. “I keep in mind standing there feeling like, ‘What is that this? Like, this appears like nearly like cattle.’”
Reed grew up in a skating-mad Japanese-American household with brother Chris and sister Cathy. She awoke at 4 a.m. as her “absolute tremendous mother” ferried all of them to observe earlier than faculty.
Her brother and sister skated collectively for Japan however Reed’s seach for a male associate led her to Otar Japaridze of the ex-Soviet nation of Georgia. The pair positioned twenty second on the 2010 Olympics. She didn’t handle to contend for main medals with him or with Vasili Rogov for Israel.
The ‘nomads’ on ice
After her partnership with Rogov resulted in 2015, Reed recollects “floating for about two years, nearly aimlessly” as she coached and thought of faculty.
Her brother’s restoration from repeated accidents impressed her to return.
“It simply crammed me with this sense of dread, like ‘I’m going to remorse it if I don’t no less than strive yet one more time and see what occurs.’ And it’s one of the best resolution I’ve ever made,” she mentioned.
Ambrulevičius skilled with Reed for some time after an damage to his then-partner. When that partnership later broke up, he requested Reed to affix him over a espresso. She says it’s been a group of equals.
“We lived out of a automotive. We had been nomads for some time,” she mentioned, recalling that on journeys again from a coaching rink within the German Alps to Lithuania, a distance of over 800 miles (1,300 kilometers), “we’d sleep at a relaxation cease in Poland someplace and proceed on our drive again. We road-tripped round Europe and slept in our automotive extra occasions that I’d like to recollect.”
Reed and Ambrulevičius have waited greater than eight years to succeed in the Olympics. In contrast to most skating occasions, the Olympics require each skaters in a group to have citizenship of the nation they characterize,. They may have certified however Reed was twice refused in making use of for a Lithuanian passport and located it “devastating” to be the one holding again her associate’s profession.
The breakthrough
The second all of it got here collectively was final 12 months, with a European championship bronze medal in entrance of Reed’s adopted house crowd. In a packed short-term rink arrange in a basketball enviornment, Reed and Ambrulevičius rode the gang’s power to their first main medal.
“It was nearly like an out of physique expertise,” she mentioned. “After that competitors was over, I used to be like, ‘I’ve peaked.’”
There was nonetheless the small matter of her passport, which had turn into a political sizzling matter within the Baltic nation of practically 3 million.
“Is that this actual life?” Reed thought when she noticed a TV ballot on her citizenship. Lithuania’s president signed the papers in Nov. 2024, opening Reed’s technique to Milan Cortina. She and Ambrulevičius qualified in September. Putting fifth on the Grand Prix Final in December underlined their standing as potential medal contenders.
Regardless of Reed’s earlier Olympic expertise, the opening ceremony in Milan Cortina will probably be a primary. Again in 2010, her Georgian group left early in mourning after luge athlete Nodar Kumaritashvili died in a coaching accident.
Remembering her brother
At each competitors, Reed holds up an image to the digicam. It’s a photograph of her brother Chris, who died of a coronary heart assault in 2020, aged 30. Since then, each time Reed skates in competitors, it’s in his reminiscence.
“My brother means all the things to me. I’m introducing my brother to somebody new each time I maintain that photograph up,” Reed says. “I do know he’s at all times watching and I do know he can be simply so proud that we’re going to the Olympics once more.”
Reed’s already left ice dance with regrets as soon as. No matter occurs in Milan, that gained’t be the case once more.
“This Olympic run was the very last thing that I wished for us, that I wished for Saul and for myself, and so we’ll see what occurs,” Reed mentioned.
“I’m a bit extra excited for the long run than I used to be the final time I give up. And I believe in that there’s a way of ease, a way of confidence, in the truth that I do know that I used to be prepared and that I can concentrate on no matter else I wish to do with my future. However it’ll be my resolution and my alternative.”
AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
