US Women's Olympic Figure Skating 2022: Free Skate Scores, Highlights, Reaction

Alysa Liu finished as the top Team USA skater in the women's individual figure skating competition at the 2022 Winter Olympics, ranking seventh in the final standings after Thursday's free skate.

Mariah Bell (10th overall) and Karen Chen (16th) were the other Americans to reach the second segment of the competition after Tuesday's short program.

Here's a look at how the U.S. skaters performed in the free skate:

• Liu: 139.45 (seventh)
• Bell: 136.92 (eighth)
• Chen: 115.82 (17th)

Anna Shcherbakova captured the gold medal for the Russian Olympic Committee. The ROC's Alexandra Trusova earned silver and Japan's Kaori Sakamoto took home bronze. Kamila Valieva, the 15-year-old Russian who is the focus of a highly publicized doping case following a positive test in December, failed to medal despite entering the free skate in the lead.

Liu was the top performer for Team USA in both halves of the women's individual competition. She finished eighth in the short program.

She delivered another efficient skate Thursday, but the difference in element score was simply too much to make a serious push for a medal. Her elements (71.95 points) were worth nearly 30 points fewer than those of the gold medalist, Shcherbakova (100.49).

Bell, who won the U.S. Championships in January, couldn't match her performance from that event, with her 202.30 Olympic score a little lower than the 216.25 she recorded in the nationals. Even that score wouldn't have been enough to earn a medal in Beijing, though.

Chen, 22, looked like an emerging Olympic contender when she finished fourth at the World Championships last year, but that didn't quite materialize.

She put together a nice triple lutz-double toeloop-double loop combination in the middle of her free skate, but the other elements weren't enough for her to rise up the standings.

All told, the Team USA skaters put together clean, artistic routines, but the level of difficulty fell a little shy of their fellow competitors' efforts in Beijing.