SAN JOSE, Calif.:Skating never, ever disappoints. Just when you think you’ve figured it out, or seen it all, everything changes.
Take the women’s short program Wednesday night at the 2018 U.S. figure skating national championships. Veteran Ashley Wagner, the heavily promoted face of the fall Olympic preview season, is in trouble.
Another veteran, Mirai Nagasu, flubbed her big jump, but still was rewarded for her efforts. Last year’s national champion, Karen Chen, rebounded from a difficult season with an elegant skate at just the right moment.
And a star is born — or close to it, anyway. Bradie Tennell, the 19-year-old with the highest international score of any U.S. woman this season, continued her rise with a technically impeccable short program.
When it was over, Tennell stood in first place with 73.79 points, followed closely by Nagasu with 73.09. Next came Chen with 69.48, upstart Angela Wang with 67.00 and then Wagner with a disappointing but hardly distant 65.94.
Three American women will be selected by a U.S. Figure Skating international committee for the Olympic team next month in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
Tennell, the junior national champion three years ago, skated as she has practiced here: like clockwork. If she does that for four minutes over the long program Friday night, an Olympic berth is hers, and likely a national title, too.
Nagasu, 24, who won her one and only national title 10 years ago, added the toughest triple jump, the triple axel, to her repertoire this year, and landed it time and again in practice here. Then came the six-minute warmup Wednesday night, and here came trouble. Her legendary nerves kicked in and the jump went haywire.
But she stuck with it, and when it came time to land it in her program, she went for it, stumbling badly, but still received credit for it. Instead of crumbling as she might have in the past, Nagasu plowed ahead, rising to the occasion with a clean skate the rest of the way.
“I was so nervous but I fought against my nerves,” she said. “This is what I’ve been trying for. This has been my dream. I’ve worked so long for this.”
Nagasu has always had an interesting way of looking at the rigors of her sport, so she had this to say as well: “Sometimes I wish I was a pairs skater so I could squeeze my partner’s hand and say we’re in this together.”
Meanwhile, Chen also had a moment of redemption. “This season so far has been crazy. It’s literally a stock market. It’s ups and downs and really unpredictable.”
Talking about unpredictable, let’s look at the performance of the three-time national champion and 2016 world silver medalist. That would be Wagner.
“This program has been a nightmare for me this entire international season,” she said after she had trouble with her triple-triple combination. She also received no favors from the judges, who barely put her ahead of the less mature Tennell in the component (artistic) scores.
Now that that’s over, Wagner, 26, was immediately looking ahead to the debut of her “La La Land” long program, a performance that absolutely must go well for her.
“I’m the kind of skater where my main focus going into the short program is to not get too far behind,” she said. “I know my strengths and I know my weaknesses. It’s a familiar position for me for sure. For me I’m a long program skater and that’s where I make my money.”
The last time she skated a full competition, Wagner found herself in seventh place after the short program at Skate Canada before pulling up to third. Were she to do that here, she would be on the Olympic team. To do anything less, however, would be to tempt fate a second time, having been placed on the Olympic team in 2014 in a similar situation.
"Whatever happens in this event, obviously I’m going to fight tooth and nail because I want to be on that Olympic team," she said, "but whatever happens here, I have a career I’ve been so blessed to experience."
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