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Post by Admin on Jan 12, 2014 5:38:17 GMT
From left, runnerup Polina Edmunds, winner Gracie Gold, bronze medalist Mirai Nagasu and fourth-place finisher Ashley Wagner at the awards ceremony at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Boston. Ashley Wagner did not skate well Thursday night in the women's short program at the U.S. figure skating Olympic trials, and she was even worse Saturday night, falling twice. Still, U.S. Figure Skating should send her to the Sochi Olympic Games. Not only was Wagner by far the most accomplished skater in the field, she was considered the Americans' best chance for a medal in the sport other than ice dance world champions Meryl Davis and Charlie White. She was fifth at worlds, helping the U.S. earn a third Olympic berth, and won the bronze medal at the Grand Prix Final. But her program fell apart right at the start. She crashed to the ice on the second jump of a triple-triple combination, and after that, her normal liveliness had drained away from her skating. Wagner fell again on a triple loop and failed to cleanly land two other triple jumps. "I felt like lead," Wagner said. "I'm in shock that that's when I put out at nationals. I'm embarrassed that I get so much attention for the skater that I am and that's when I put out."
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Post by Admin on Jan 12, 2014 14:29:01 GMT
An unlikely showing by an emerging star of U.S. figure skating sent officials searching through the rulebooks for clarification Saturday night, with their decision possibly impacting a spot on the Olympic team. Polina Edmunds was not among the favorites to earn a trip to Sochi, but the 15-year-old placed second at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Boston Saturday, behind champ Gracie Gold and ahead of Mirai Nagasu in third and veteran Ashley Wagner in fourth. Edmunds easily met a minimum points qualification standard this year, winning a pair of competitions on the international junior grand prix circuit. But she has no international results as a senior, and late Saturday Mitch Moyer, the Senior Director of High Performance for U.S. Figure Skating, was in a hallway scrolling through International Skating Union rules on his iPhone trying to see if Edmunds' junior scores would be sufficient to allow U.S. officials to consider her for a place on the team. "I'm sending an email and we'll have confirmation by morning," Moyer said. It seemed inconceivable that such a detail would remain uncertain at this stage of an Olympic season, but with ladies, pairs and dance competitions completed in Boston and only the men's long program to go on Sunday, it left perhaps the greatest drama here for a meeting room in the arena. Polina Edmunds performed well at the U.S. championships, but that doesn't guarantee a spot at Sochi.
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Post by Admin on Jan 12, 2014 21:55:15 GMT
The U.S. Figure Skating Association on Sunday rescued its highest-ranked athlete, Ashley Wagner, naming her to the Olympic team for Sochi while dropping Mirai Nagasu. The move set a fresh precedent for the USFSA, because the federation had never before bumped a skater after he or she placed high enough at nationals to qualify for the Winter Games. In the past, qualifying skaters from the U.S. Figure Skating Championships had only been bumped by the federation when injuries prevented top-tier competitors from performing at nationals. Ashley Wagner is rescued by the U.S. Figure Skating Association, placing her on the Olympic team — and bumping Mirai Nagasu in the process — despite a fourth-place showing in Boston. Wagner finished fourth on Saturday, behind Nagasu in third, after tumbling twice in her long program and appearing badly shaken throughout her free skate. "I'm at a loss for words right now," said Wagner, who was ranked No. 2 in the world by Icenetwork.com before her meltdown. "It just wasn't my night last night. I'm happy federation was able to see beyond one bad skate. I'm on cloud nine. Everbody's been so supportive these last few days." Mirai Nagasu places third in the U.S. Figure Skating Championships but loses her spot on the Olympic team to Ashely Wagner, who finishes fourth in Boston.
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Post by Admin on Jan 13, 2014 5:28:51 GMT
Hosted by Olympic gold medalist Sarah Hughes and YouTube Star Michael Buckley, fans will be able to meet, and ask questions to the 2014 U.S. Figure Skating Olympic Team on the same day the team has been named! San Jose's Polina Edmunds was among the three women named to the Olympic team Sunday by U.S. Figure Skating Edmunds, 15, finished second behind Gold in her first senior national competition. The Archbishop Mitty sophomore has the most technically difficult free program among the Americans. Her 4-minute 20-second routine has eight triple jumps, including two separate triple-triple combinations that can pile up points.
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Post by Admin on Jan 14, 2014 7:28:22 GMT
Ashley Wagner places fourth at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships on Sunday. This weekend, the character drama came from Boston, where the top American figure skaters were competing for this year’s national title and, ostensibly, for a berth in Sochi. Usually, the top finishers in each field—women’s, men’s, pairs, and ice dancing—are chosen for the Olympic team. The U.S. women are allotted three spots in this year’s Olympics, based on the performance of American skaters at the 2013 World Championships. Yet, after the U.S. championship on Sunday, when U.S. Figure Skating announced its selections for the women’s team, the third-place finisher, Mirai Nagasu, had been left out. Instead, Ashley Wagner, a two-time national champion who had been knocked down to fourth place by a bad stumble in her final skate, had been picked to join Gracie Gold and Polina Edmunds, who finished first and second, respectively, in Sochi. Many observers cried foul, noting the unprecedented nature of the decision, and its tidy results: the team now had an ideal trio heading into Sochi—a skater actually named Gracie Gold; a fifteen-year-old upstart, Edmunds, who is already earning comparisons to the past American sweetheart Tara Lipinski; and Wagner, who is the national face of the sport and already a centerpiece of NBC’s Olympics coverage. Nagasu, meanwhile, came in fourth place during the 2010 Vancouver Olympics but has skated unevenly in the years since. She competed in Boston without a coach, a choice that figure-skating insiders greeted as if it were some obvious sign of derangement. “Though I may not agree with it, I have to respect the decision the federation made,” Nagasu said. Never mind that she was the only skater among the top four who hadn’t fallen during her final routine. The charge of injustice from fans, though perhaps true in spirit, is, technically, an unfounded one if you consider the letter of the law. U.S. Figure Skating has departed from the national-championship results when selecting past Olympic teams, but usually in the case of an injured athlete, à la Nancy Kerrigan in 1994—not a losing performance. The president of U.S. Figure Skating, Patricia St. Peter, explained the decision to include Wagner over Nagasu: “This competition is not the only event that U.S. Figure Skating considers when selecting a team. It’s results and participation in events over the last year plus. She’s got the top credentials of any of our female athletes.” Indeed, it was Wagner’s fifth-place finish at the 2013 World Championships that helped the United States secure a third spot in the women’s singles event at Sochi. Still, the reasoning is a bit tough to square, since the decision to pick U.S. Olympic skaters after nationals, just weeks shy of the Games, is based on the idea that athletes who are performing well at this moment are more likely to continue doing so. After her rough skate on Saturday, Wagner said that she was “overwhelmed from the big lights and the big show.” The lights and the show will only get bigger next month in Sochi. Federations, sports ministers, delegations, coaches, judges, people in power with names like Patricia St. Peter—this is part of what makes the Olympics so fascinating, and often, for sports fans, so frustrating. It suggests the idea of unseen forces orchestrating events and steering outcomes, which is good for narrative but bad for the supposed purity of competition. Like all menacing stories, the implications surely loom larger than the realities. But this feeling, that what we are seeing can’t quite be trusted, has clung to the Games. Skating is fiercely compelling as sport, requiring speed and power and grace and precision and nerves. To that it adds what, for better or worse, we (and NBC) call drama—breathless analysis, music, sequins, hugs, tears, roses on the ice, and, above all else, the opaque and potentially suspect final say of a row of stern-looking judges, whose scandals over the years have only increased our skepticism of the sport’s basic fairness. Casual viewers are familiar enough with the sport to roughly distinguish a good routine from a bad one—did she fall?—but perplexed enough by its scoring system and rules to be blindsided, and angered, by an unexpected decision. In this way, watching figure skating may be akin to much of the Olympic viewing experience: we are vigilant for mistakes, but not quite sure how to judge them.
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