By JAMES ELLINGWORTH, AP Sports Writer

As a long jumper, Stef Reid never thought she’d need to learn how to land on ice. Now she’s part of a movement hoping to get figure skating into the Paralympics.

Skating sports are a big gap on the program when the Winter Paralympics start on Friday. Figure skaters with disabilities challenge the norm in a sport with often-fixed ideas about how a skater should look.

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Reid’s path to figure skating is unique. An amputee athlete who won three Paralympic medals in track and field, she was a familiar face on British TV. Being invited to appear on the 2022 series of a celebrity skating show, “Dancing On Ice,” still came as a shock.

“It had just never crossed my mind because it is probably one of the last sports you think about for somebody with a physical disability,” Reid tells the AP.

“Even if you are quote-unquote ‘able bodied,’ it’s still dangerous, and so it just never really occurred to me. But when they asked, I was like, ‘This is amazing.’”

R&D on the ice

Learning to skate meant Reid, who uses a prosthetic right leg after a boating accident at 15, had to find ways to train her hip muscles to do the jobs other skaters’ knees and ankles do. Her prosthetist developed a leg that would let her glide across the ice.

“Every day, every week it would be a new prototype which meant all the pressure points were different, and I basically was having to start over again,” she says.

“There was a very large period where we just thought, ‘Maybe this just isn’t going to work. Maybe this is a bit of a step too far,’ and then this amazing thing happened. After 10 weeks of being really bad, my brain just kind of kicked into gear.”

Reid built momentum and reached the quarterfinals of “Dancing On Ice” after weeks of live competition for a national audience.

Stef Reid, a former Paralympic athlete who now does figure skating, wears a specialized, custom-engineered prosthetic blade after competing in the British Adult Figure Skating Championships in Sheffield, England, Friday, Feb. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Jon Super)

Skating and diversity

Since then, she’s become a leading competitor in Inclusive Skating, the main body trying to get figure skating Paralympic recognition, and competes at the British adult nationals alongside skaters who don’t have disabilities.

Olympic figure skating has gone through years of difficult conversations about diversity on the ice, or the lack of it, but Reid says she’s always felt welcome.

“No coach has ever been like, ‘No, I don’t want to coach somebody with a disability.’ It’s more like, ‘Oh gosh, I don’t know if I have the skillset,’” Reid says.

“As (coaches are) getting their confidence in terms of how to adapt and adjust, then it doesn’t matter what your disability is, they can teach anybody.”

Stef Reid, a former Paralympic athlete who now does figure skating, warms up before competing in the British Adult Figure Skating Championships in Sheffield, England, Friday, Feb. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Jon Super)

Discrimination against skaters

Would-be skaters haven’t always been accepted, though.

“There’s been quite a lot of discrimination against skaters, both directly to me and also reported to the skaters,” says Margarita Sweeney-Baird, founder of Inclusive Skating.

“For example, ‘Skating is beautiful,’ therefore disability skating is not to be allowed because it’s not beautiful in this person’s eyes,” Sweeney-Baird recalls, along with simply: “’We don’t think that you should be on the ice with us.’”

A former champion skater and coach, Sweeney-Baird funded a trust to promote skating for people with disabilities in the 1990s. She was frustrated at the lack of progress and in the early 2010s decided to set up her own competitions. Among those who’ve benefited is Sweeney-Baird’s daughter Juliana, a keen skater who is visually impaired.

Stef Reid, a former Paralympic athlete who now does figure skating, competes in the British Adult Figure Skating Championships in Sheffield, England, Friday, Feb. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Jon Super)

A new way to compete

The Paralympics doesn’t yet have any “performance sports” based around artistry. Sweeney-Baird created her own judging system to reward skaters for what they can do, not deduct points for what they can’t.

Programs are shorter with limits on the number of jumps, because repeated landing on a prosthetic can be painful. Other events without jumps suit skaters with spinal conditions. Most skaters are women, and Inclusive Skating allows same-gender pairs to offer more chances to compete.

A collaboration with the Special Olympics offers skating events for athletes with intellectual disabilities, who haven’t always been accepted at the Paralympics.

Stef Reid, a former Paralympic athlete who now does figure skating, competes in the British Adult Figure Skating Championships in Sheffield, England, Friday, Feb. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Jon Super)

Why the Paralympics matter

Getting onto the Paralympic program would mean funding and recognition for skaters, Sweeney-Baird says.

New sports must show there’s a deep enough field of athletes from around the world. Sweeney-Baird says skating meets those targets.

Inclusive Skating is a relatively new organization but the Paralympics tend to expand gradually. The last time a new winter sport joined was snowboarding in 2014.

Figure skating would need the International Paralympic Committee to approve a range of conditions affecting how the sport is run, venues, costs and how to classify athletes’ disabilities.

“The IPC is always looking at ways for a diverse group of athletes to achieve excellence at the Paralympic Games, and our current strategic plan outlines an objective to explore ways to develop the Paralympic Winter Games,” the IPC told the AP in an emailed statement.

For now, the main way for skaters to spread the word is on social media.

Reid shares videos of her skating journey to more than 46,000 Instagram followers, and Inclusive Skating swaps coaching tips and competition dates. Innovations spread, too.

When she spoke to the AP in January, Reid was excited about a video she’d seen of an amputee skater who seemed to have controlled ankle movement in her prosthetic leg, opening up exciting new possibilities on the ice.

“I was like, ‘Whoa,’” Reed says. “I need to call her up and be like, ‘How did you guys achieve this?’”

AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports

Midway neighborhood advocates who have longed for the demolition of the derelict CVS Pharmacy building at Snelling and University avenues will finally get to see the structure fall before the proverbial wrecking ball next Monday morning.

St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her plans to host a demolition watch party from the Spruce Tree Centre office building across the street, where she’ll be joined by representatives from the Midway Chamber of Commerce and others who have called for the CVS building to be taken down.

CVS closed at the location in 2020, after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis triggered widespread riots, and then reopened briefly before permanently shuttering in April 2022. The site attracted vandals and groups of as many as 40 loiterers at a time before its parking lot was fenced off.

It’s since been pointed to as a symbol of neglect and poor oversight, even entering as a topic of debate in last November’s mayor’s race, which saw Her unseat two-term incumbent Melvin Carter.

The seven-member city council ordered the demolition of the building on Nov. 5, the day after the election.

The demolition is scheduled to take place between 10 a.m. and noon.

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By JILL LAWLESS

LONDON (AP) — Keir Starmer has never had a bad word to say in public about Donald Trump.

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That is not being reciprocated now as the American president lambasts the British prime minister over his reluctance to join the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran.

The dispute is roiling a relationship that Starmer worked hard to forge, and further straining trans-Atlantic ties frayed by Trump’s “America first” foreign policy and transactional approach to international relations.

“This was the most solid relationship of all. And now we have very strong relationships with other countries in Europe,” Trump told British tabloid The Sun in an interview published Tuesday.

“I mean, France has been great. They’ve all been great,” Trump said. “The U.K. has been much different from others.”

“It’s very sad to see that the relationship is obviously not what it was,” he said.

Starmer initially blocked American planes from using British bases for the attacks on Iran that started on Saturday. He later agreed to let the United States use bases in England and on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to strike Iran’s ballistic missiles and their storage sites, but not to hit other targets.

Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer issues a statement at 10 Downing Street, London, on the latest developments in the Middle East, Saturday Feb. 28, 2026. (Jonathan Brady/Pool via AP)

Even after the British base at Akrotiri in Cyprus was hit by an Iran-made drone over the weekend, Starmer said that the United Kingdom “will not join offensive action.” He said Tuesday that a Royal Navy destroyer, HMS Dragon, and helicopters with counter-drone capabilities were being sent to the region as part of “defensive operations.”

The British leader has offered a rare, though implicit, rebuke of the U.S. president, saying Monday that the U.K. government doesn’t believe in “regime change from the skies.”

“Any U.K. actions must always have a lawful basis and a viable, thought-through plan,” Starmer told lawmakers in the House of Commons on Monday.

“President Trump has expressed his disagreement with our decision not to get involved in the initial strikes, but it is my duty to judge what is in Britain’s national interest,” Starmer added.

President Donald Trump speaks about Iran before a Medal of Honor ceremony in the East Room of the White House, Monday, March 2, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

The Financial Times called it Starmer’s “Love Actually moment” — a reference to the 2003 movie scene in which a British prime minister played by Hugh Grant stands up to a bullying U.S. president played by Billy Bob Thornton.

Friction between the two leaders has been building for months. Trump’s threat to take over Greenland was denounced by Starmer and other European leaders earlier this year. Recently, Trump has condemned Britain’s agreement to hand over the Chagos Islands, home to the Diego Garcia base, to Mauritius, despite his administration earlier backing the deal.

Peter Ricketts, a former head of the U.K. Foreign Office, told The Observer newspaper that under Trump, “the Americans have effectively given up on any effort to be consistent with international law.”

That is a red line for the law-abiding Starmer, a barrister and former chief prosecutor for England and Wales.

The spat is a setback for Starmer’s efforts to woo Trump since the president’s return to office in 2025. The British government rolled out the red carpet to the president for a state visit as the guest of King Charles III, and Starmer consistently has praised Trump’s efforts — so far unsuccessful — to broker an end to the Russia-Ukraine war.

The Iran war has also divided European leaders, who fall along a spectrum from condemnation to support.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said that he unreservedly approves of Trump’s decision to attack Iran and kill its supreme leader, and called the war crucial for Europe’s security.

The U.K., France and Germany jointly said that they weren’t involved in the strikes, but were prepared to enable “necessary and proportionate defensive action to destroy Iran’s capability to fire missiles and drones at their source.”

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez condemned the strikes as “unjustifiable” and “dangerous.”

Polling suggests many Britons are skeptical of the U.S. justification for war. But politicians to the right of Starmer’s Labour Party slammed the prime minister for not joining the offensive. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said that her party “stands behind America taking this necessary action against state-sponsored terror.”

Foreign Office Minister Stephen Doughty denied the U.S.-U.K. “special relationship” was on the ropes.

“Our relationship with the United States is strong,” he said Tuesday in the House of Commons. “It has endured, it continues to endure, and it will endure into the future on both the economic and the security fronts.”

By MAYA SWEEDLER and ROBERT YOON

WASHINGTON (AP) — So, who won?

That’s a question The Associated Press has answered many thousands of times in U.S. elections held since shortly after the news organization was founded nearly 180 years ago.

Declaring a winner involves a careful and thorough analysis of the latest available vote tallies and a variety of other election data. The ultimate goal is to determine whether there is any circumstance in which the trailing candidate can catch up to the candidate who is leading the race. If not, then the leading candidate has won.

Here’s a look at the AP’s role and its process for determining the outcome of elections, also known as calling a race:

Why AP calls races

The United States does not have a nationwide body that collects and releases election results. Elections are administered locally, by thousands of offices, following standards set by the states. In many cases, the states themselves do not even offer up-to-date tracking of election results.

The AP fills this gap by compiling vote results and declaring winners in elections, providing critical information in the period between Election Day and the official certification of results, which typically takes weeks.

Collecting the vote

The AP’s vote count brings together information that otherwise might not be available online for days or weeks after an election or is scattered across hundreds of local websites. Without national standards or consistent expectations across states, it also ensures the data is in a standard format, uses standard terms and undergoes rigorous quality control.

The AP hires vote count reporters who work with local election officials to collect results directly from counties or precincts where votes are first counted. These reporters submit them, by phone or electronically, as soon as the results are available. If any of the results are available from state or county websites, the AP will gather the results from there, too.

In many cases, counties will update vote totals as they count ballots throughout the night. The AP is continually updating its count as these results are released. In a general election, the AP will make as many as 21,000 vote updates per hour.

Analyzing the vote

As votes are coming in, the AP will analyze races to determine the winners.

One key piece that the AP considers is how many ballots are uncounted and from what areas. In cases in which official or exact tallies of the outstanding vote are unavailable, the AP estimates the turnout in every race based on several factors and uses that estimate to track how much of the vote has been counted and how much remains.

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The AP also tries to determine how ballots counted so far were cast and the types of vote, such as mail ballots or ballots cast in person on Election Day, that remain.

That is because the method that voters choose can be correlated to the party they voted for. Since voting by mail became highly politicized in the 2020 election, Democrats have been more likely to vote by mail, while Republicans have been more likely to vote in person on Election Day.

In many states, it is possible to know which votes will be counted first, based on past elections or plans announced by election officials. In others, votes are clearly marked by type when released.

This helps to determine if an early lead is expected to shrink or grow. For example, if a state first counts votes cast in person on Election Day, followed by mail-in votes, that suggests that an early Republican lead may narrow as more mail ballots are tabulated. But if mail ballots are counted first, an early Republican lead could be the first sign of a comfortable victory.

Calling races

In almost all cases, races can be called well before all votes have been counted. The AP’s team of election journalists and analysts will call a race as soon as a clear winner can be determined.

In competitive races, AP analysts may need to wait until additional votes are tallied or to confirm specific information about how many ballots are left to count.

Competitive races in which votes are actively being tabulated — for example, in states that count a large number of votes after election night — might be considered “too early to call.” A race may be “too close to call” if a race is so close that there is no clear winner even once all ballots except for provisional and late-arriving absentee ballots have been counted.

The AP’s race calls are not predictions and are not based on speculation. They are declarations based on an analysis of vote results and other election data that one candidate has emerged as the winner and that no other candidate in the race will be able to overtake the winner once all the votes have been counted.

Follow along as the AP tabulates votes and calls races. Check out results pages and notes from the AP Decision Team.