Skating

KEARNS — While Katherine Reutter’s dreams of a fifth consecutive U.S. Short Track Championship are likely over, Lana Gehring is showing just how strong the women’s team is this season

A trio of Wasatch Figure Skating Club members will begin competing today at the Junior National Championships in East Lansing, Mich., after having placed in the Top 4 at their regional championships.

Mitchell Freiss, an intermediate men's skater who placed third overall at the Central Pacific Regional Championships held Oct. 21-25 in Santa Rosa, Calif. Freiss was in first place after the short program, took third in the long program and came away with the bronze medal.

CHICAGO -- For figure skater Alissa Czisny, every past season had ended in a winter of her discontent.

And that inevitably turned into a summer of equal unease.

After her first two podium finishes at senior nationals came dismal performances at worlds that lingered like a bad hangover the next season.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- Soap operas have nothing on the U.S. pairs teams.

Two weeks after Caitlin Yankowskas and John Coughlin, who won this year's U.S. title and finished sixth at the world championships, announced their split, Coughlin said Tuesday he is now skating with Caydee Denney. Denney won the 2010 U.S. title with Jeremy Barrett, but that partnership ended in February.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- Ryan Bradley is going out on top.

The 27-year-old announced his retirement Tuesday, five months after winning his first U.S. figure skating title. He has been competing internationally for more than a decade, and finished 13th at the world championships last month in Moscow.

"This has been a long road and a great ride," Bradley said in a statement. "Becoming U.S. champion was a dream come true, and I'm now at a point in my life where I can look back on my career and feel completely content."

Joannie Rochette happily pulls out her bronze medal from the Vancouver Olympics when she makes appearances, showing it off to school children and adults alike.

The person Rochette would like most to share it with will never see it, however, a realization that doesn't get any easier no matter how much time passes. It's been a year since Rochette's mother, Therese, died of a heart attack just hours after arriving in Vancouver, and the Canadian skater is still trying to balance the joys and sorrows of how her life has changed.

China is facing new questions about the ages of some of its athletes after discrepancies were found in the birthdates of nine figure skaters.

According to a list of birthdates published on the Chinese Skating Association's website and found by The Associated Press, the skaters violated the sport's age limits by competing when they were either too young or too old. The birthdates on the federation's websites differ from those listed on the athletes' International Skating Union bios.

Among the skaters whose eligibility is in question are Zhang Dan and Zhang Hao, the 2006 Olympic pairs silver medalists, and Sui Wenjing and Han Cong, the reigning junior world champions and China's top up-and-coming pairs team.