5 Things to Know About Figure Skating Champ and First-Time Olympian Mariah Bell

Figure skating, especially women's figure skating, has always favoured younger athletes. That's even more the case these days, with teenagers performing enormous jumps and soaring to championships early in their careers, before retiring at a very young age. It makes Mariah's accomplishment that much sweeter: at age 25, she's the oldest national champion in women's singles in nearly a century. At the Olympics, she'll also be the oldest American woman to compete in the singles discipline since 1928.

"I want it to be a known fact that skating doesn't end at a certain age," Bell told the New York Times after winning gold at the national championships in January.

The world of elite sports can be a tense and stressful one, but Bell's family has helped to keep her grounded and focussed on finding the joy in skating, not just pursuing medals. Her parents certainly had practice: Mariah's older sister, Morgan Bell, is also a former competitive figure skater, who recently did a stint with Disney on Ice as Princess Anna in "Frozen."
"My parents . . . gave up a lot so that [my sister and I] could chase our dreams, and never expected anything other than for us to just work really hard," Bell told Skating magazine. "That's why I think I love skating so much and why I don't hold any resentment toward anybody about it. I just have so much love for it, and I love to share great moments in skating with my parents, since they're everything to me and they're the reason that I can skate."

Adam Rippon, who competed at the 2018 Olympics and previously trained with Bell under Arutyunyan, went into coaching after retirement. Now, he's gone from Bell's training mate to one of her coaches (while still remaining a good friend of hers, too). "Adam kind of brings the fun," Bell told People about Rippon's coaching style. "Rafael . . . is very strict and very demanding of his students. And so it was kind of fun to have Adam come in and be kind of the lighter, like more bubbly version of him sometimes."

She also credits this dynamic duo for helping make her into a champion. "I can't say enough about these 2 coaches of mine," Bell wrote on Instagram, alongside a mic'd up video of Rippon watching her free skate at nationals. "Thank you for changing my entire career."

At the Olympics, Bell will perform a beloved free skate to "Hallelujah" by K.D. Lang. The program brought down the house at the 2020 US Figure Skating Championships (seriously, see for yourself), and the music and choreography suits her so well that she decided to bring it back for this competitive season. Can she create an Olympic moment? We'll have to see.