By Gina Capellazzi, Team FSO website administrator
Photos by Daphne Backman (Ice-Dance.com), Robin Ritoss and Gina Capellazzi
Ela and Amy Cui are U.S. figure skating siblings. They currently compete in different disciplines and train at separate locations thirteen hundred miles apart. It didn’t begin that way.
It’s not uncommon for younger sisters to imitate their older ones. And that was exactly the case for Ela Cui, and her big sister, Amy. After watching the movie Frozen as 6 and 8-year-olds, the girls went ice skating at a rink close to their home in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, but it was older sister, Amy, who was the first to take Learn to Skate lessons with Ela joining shortly after.
“Being the older sister, and having a younger sister, she wanted to follow everything I did,” Amy said.
While the two were enjoying their time on the ice learning the basics, a job change forced the Cui family to move from eastern Pennsylvania to Boston, Massachusetts. The move, however, did not stop Ela and Amy from skating.
“It just happened to work out that Boston was a great place for skating as well,” Amy said, noting, that the two started private lessons when they moved to Boston.
As young skaters, the Cui sisters found themselves at the same events, even having similar goals.
“We were very competitive growing up,” the older Cui recalled. “It was nice to have someone have the same routine and the same goals, or being able to align in that sense.”
But as the girls got older, their goals pulled them in different directions.
Meet Amy
As a juvenile level skater Amy trained with Mark Mitchell and Peter Johansson in Revere, Massachusetts. She won the 2019 New England Regional and qualified for the Eastern Sectional where Amy’s fourth-place finish allowed her to compete at her first U.S. Championships in Detroit. She finished tenth. It was the last time juvenile and intermediate skaters competed at the National event.
The following season, Amy moved up to intermediate and finished 12th at the 2020 Eastern Sectional. She did not compete during the 2020-2021 season, which was greatly impacted by COVID. For the 2021-2022 season she skated at the novice level.
During her junior year of high school, Amy tried ice dance with coach Igor Shpilband in Novi, Michigan. She had discovered the discipline when the 2022 Ice Dance Final was competed at her home club in Norwood.
“I had no experience whatsoever, nothing,” Amy said. “I didn’t know anything and went there and loved it. I liked the environment, and I was really inspired by all the skaters there as well.”
After her initial visit to Novi, Shpilband invited her back for a partner tryout. Amy returned and ended up with her first ice dance partner.
“I always liked the skating part of skating, like the musicality and the performance, so it was kind of a no brainer decision for me to continue with dance,” Amy said. “I also felt that I wasn’t able to offer everything I could at singles, and dance has given me the opportunity to kind of show this other part of myself and other part of my skating.”
Amy moved to Novi and began skating on the junior level with Kenny Eckert in March 2023. The duo placed second at the 2023 Lake Placid Ice Dance Championships and were assigned to the Junior Grand Prix Solidarity Cup, where they finished in seventh place. Amy and Kenny were sixth at the 2024 Ice Dance Final and qualified for the 2024 U.S. Championships in Columbus, where they placed seventh.
Shortly after Nationals, Amy ended her partnership with Kenny, but that wasn’t the end of her ice dance journey. In May of the same year, Amy announced she had teamed up with Jonathan Rogers, who had moved to Novi around the same time she had. Jonathan had previously skated on the junior level with Vanessa Pham and was looking for a new partner.
The new team had to compete at the senior level as Jonathan had aged out of junior. The two made their debut at the Dallas Classic, competing only their rhythm dance. Two weeks later at the Lake Placid Ice Dance Championships, Amy and Jonathan debuted their Swan Lake free skate and took home the silver medal. They earned another silver medal at the Ice Challenge in Graz, Austria, their first international competition together. After only six months of training together, the duo qualified for the 2025 U.S. Championships with a third-place finish at the Ice Dance Final.
“It’s been quite the journey,” Amy said of her skating career thus far.
Meet Ela
When Amy finished fourth at the 2019 Eastern Sectionals, little sister, Ela, finished 9th at same level and at the same event. The following season, 10-year-old Ela won the Eastern Sectional to qualify for the inaugural High Performance Development Camp, which had replaced competing at the U.S Championships for juvenile, intermediate and novice skaters.
“The first time I made Nationals, they had created the first National Development Camp, so I was like, ‘No, I really wanted to do Nationals, but I guess the camp will be fun,’ Ela admitted. “It was so fun. I loved going to camp.”
Like Amy, Ela did not compete during the 2020-2021 season, but came back in the 2021-2022 season as an intermediate skater, competing at the Championships Series events and Skate Milwaukee.
The 2022-2023 season marked a change in coaches for Ela, switching from Mitchell and Johansson in Revere to Olga Ganicheva at the Skating Club of Boston in Norwood. She also moved up to the novice level and finished seventh in the Novice/Junior Challenge Skate in Lake Placid and also won the Cranberry Open event at her new skating club.
The highlight of the season for Ela was winning the Eastern Sectional Singles Final as a novice to qualify for the junior women’s event at the 2023 U.S. Championships in San Jose. Ela ended up finishing in 11th place.
“It was fun,” Ela recalled of her first Nationals. “It was scary to be in such a big arena, but it was really exciting.”
The 2023-2024 season was Ela’s first season as a junior skater. She competed in U.S. Figure Skating’s National Qualifying Series and qualified for the 2024 Eastern Sectionals, where she finished fourth and punched a ticket to her second U.S. Championships. Ela finished in eighth place. The 2024 U.S. Championships in Columbus marked the first time that both Cui sisters competed at Nationals — Ela in the junior women’s event and Amy in the junior dance event.
“It was a weird balance of being able to root 100% for your sibling, and then resettling to focus in on your own practice or at your performance later,” Amy remarked. “But I go to Nationals with the expectation that I’m going to be cheering on my sibling in the women’s event and then doing dance myself.”
While Amy was concluding her first ice dance partnership following those U.S. Championships, Ela was making a move out west. Ela left Boston to train with Tammy Gambill and Damon Allen in Colorado Springs.
“It’s definitely a really professional environment, like everyone is super focused, and everyone wants to do their best,” Ela said of her training situation in Colorado Springs.
In 2024, her first season in her new training facility, Ela competed as a junior at the Broadmoor Open and at Glacier Falls. She made her international debut at the Cranberry Cup, finishing fourth in the advanced novice category.
In November 2025 the Midwestern Sectionals and Ice Dance Final were both held the same week at the Children’s Health Star Center Arena in Plano, TX. Ela finished fourth at the Sectional on Thursday. Amy and Jonathan were third at the Dance Final the next day. The Cui sisters both qualified for the 2025 U.S Championships at the same venue.
Family Affair
Though competing in different events at January’s U.S. Championships in Wichita, the Cui sisters found their schedules overlapping. As the junior women took the ice for their short program, Amy and Jonathan were preparing for their first practice. A similar schedule happened for the junior women’s free skate.
“It was kind of close,” Amy, who turned 19 in April, said of the schedule. “I would have Peacock pulled up as I was doing my makeup for practice ice.”
Despite their overlapping schedules, Amy was able to see Ela finish 16th in the junior women’s event before heading to her practice with Jonathan. Then once her events were over, Ela watched Amy and Jonathan finish 13th in their Nationals debut.
It was also a busy week for Amy and Ela’s parents, Ting and Ben, who were in Wichita watching both their daughters skate. Both sisters tried to spot their parents in the arena.
“They were in the stands somewhere. I was trying to find them, but I couldn’t (find them),” Amy said.
“I couldn’t find them (either),” Ela, 16, told her sister.
“I couldn’t find you either,” Amy replied back. “It was nice. I could hear you guys though.”
While talking with Figure Skaters Online during the last day of the 2025 U.S. Championships, both Ela and Amy took some time to discuss their performances.
“It definitely wasn’t my best,” Ela said of her skates in Wichita. “I’m glad I made it, and I’m glad to be able to reflect on it and do better next year. Nationals is such a special competition. There’s not another competition that feels like this.”
“Rhythm [Dance] felt really fun. We had a really good time,” Amy said of her skates with Jonathan. “I think that’s the kind of the energy that we wanted to put out, and then going into free, having missed that lift, it just felt a little disconnected. And I know that we fought through the entire program, and I think it’s good to have this experience, just so that we have, like that motivation to work even harder for the upcoming season.”
With their two daughters on the ice, living in different parts of the country, the Cui family has made a lot of sacrifices for their skaters. Ben lives in Colorado Springs with Ela, while Ting is in Boston with Amy and Ela’s younger brother, Thomas. Ben visits Boston once a month. During the week of Nationals, Thomas had a badminton tournament, so an older cousin went with him to his tournament.
Sisterly love and support
Now with Amy back in Novi, and Ela back in Colorado Springs, the girls are separated as they start preparations for the 2025-2026 season. However, this spring, Ela will spend some time in Novi to work with Pasquale Camerlengo, who will choreograph one of her programs.
Amy admits it is hard to be away from her sister.
“We used to see each other every single day,” she said fighting tears.”Even if we weren’t on the same sessions, or I wasn’t doing singles or competing singles, we’d still see each other.”
Despite the distance though, the girls call often and stay on top of each other’s skating.
“I think we understand each other’s skating the best, more than our parents do,” Ela said. “She always calls me, and I always call her when we have to talk about our skating or to check up on our skating.”
“I don’t know what I would do if I couldn’t call (Ela), to be honest,” Amy added. “Being someone who transitioned from singles to dance, I’m not able to find that same experience or connections with the dancers (I train with). It’s not to say that my friends aren’t awesome. But my sister, having seen me, gone through everything, and having lived through that part of my life too, she’s able to kind of help break things down for me and just help me feel better.”
Ela said she finds it odd that other skaters do not have someone else to share the experience together.
“I found it so weird when people don’t have siblings, and they skate by themselves,” she explained. “I always felt bad for them because they were so lonely. They have to tie up their skates by themselves, get on the ice by themselves, but I always had a sister to do all that together.”
Though they may not be at the same rink, tying each other’s skates, Amy and Ela have each other’s backs and are hoping for nothing but the best for one another.
“I hope Amy accomplishes everything because I know how much skating means to her,” Ela said.
“Ela is a feisty, sassy girl and I just want her to show everyone that energy on the ice. I just want everyone to know her the same way I do. I feel like amazing is too underwhelming to describe her,” Amy added.
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Editor’s Note: This is Gina’s third article focused on skating siblings. To read her others, click on the links below.
Tia, Maile and Keira Hilbelink are a trio of elite skating sisters (May 2024)
A family affair (Olivia Flores and Isabella Flores) (February 2023)
