Mariah Bell: 2022 U.S. National Champion

Bell entered her seventh season on the senior level of figure skating last year with a reputation for inconsistency in the biggest moments. As she closed in on her 24th birthday, the Colorado native for all her sparkle and fight was a Betamax in a Blu-ray world: technically overmatched by the encroaching generation of youngsters whose programs are packed with point-gobbling quadruple jumps and triple axels.



Skaters like Bell will always be the sentimental favorites of aesthetes who believe the sport has become a numbers game in the years since the judging was overhauled after the 2002 score-fixing scandal. While the changes have made the system more objective and less susceptible to corruption, critics say it’s become a jumping contest that strikes a blow at the artistry that sets figure skating apart from all other sports.

Which is what made Bell’s free skate at the US national championships in January such an indelible moment. Set to kd lang’s elegiac cover of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, Bell engaged with the music with the sophistication of a mature veteran while landing one clean triple after another, seven of them in all, including a triple flip and a triple toe loop. The tension-and-release redoubled with each element as the buzz in the Greensboro Coliseum – that supersensory communion between performer and audience so dearly missed in the coronavirus era – built towards the climax. And after she landed a triple lutz on the final jump of the four-minute program and the biggest roar of the night swelled throughout the 23,500-seat arena, Bell spiraled and spun to the finish with tears streaming down her face amid a standing ovation.



Mariah Bell came through with the skate of her life at US nationals in January.
She finished second behind Alysa Liu, the 14-year-old phenom armed to the hilt with triples and quads no American can match. But anyone in the room or watching on television will tell you the night belonged to Bell. It was the skate of her life, offering up the sort of spine-tingling catharsis only figure skating with its inimitable marriage of artistry and athleticism can elicit. I still can’t stop watching it.

That it all came together for Bell so far along in her journey – an improbable career season that also included two bronze medals on the Grand Prix circuit and her first ISU Challenger gold at Nebelhorn – was no accident. Last year she recommitted herself to her craft under the watch of Adam Rippon, whose legendary work ethic in the southern California rink where they trained under mutual coach Rafael Arutunian caught her attention.