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Post by Admin on Sept 27, 2014 21:37:37 GMT
Olympian Gracie Gold finished third at her first competition of the season, falling in the short program and popping a jump in her free skate at Nebelhorn Trophy in Oberstdorf, Germany. Gold, an Olympic team bronze medalist who finished fourth individually, posted 182.31 points, 10.34 behind Russian winner Elizaveta Tuktamysheva. Tuktamysheva won the 2013 European bronze medal but was 10th at last season’s Russian Championships and did not make the Sochi Olympics. Gold is slated to open her Grand Prix season at Skate America in Hoffman Estates, Ill., next month.
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Post by Admin on Oct 16, 2014 21:25:50 GMT
After a long season that included a fourth place finish at the 2014 Olympic Games and a fifth place finish at the 2014 World Championships, Gracie Gold is now gearing up for another competitive season. Some of Gracie’s toughest competitors like Mao Asada and Yuna Kim have retired, yet she is still very well aware of the “young Russians” who are revving up the competition. “It’s more of a jumping game,” Gracie said during the USFS teleconference on October 14. “The technical is out of control this year, [there are] so many hard programs, so it’s a different feel. I think I can be in the top. I’ll definitely have to fight for it, because they are going to bring their A-game, so I've got to bring mine.” Even with a lot of transition last season, which included a move and a coaching change to Frank Carroll, Gracie managed to pull herself to the top and has now become one of the leading U.S. ladies. “It’s definitely exciting though,” Gold expressed, “Being the top at a pretty big country like the U.S., I think it just gives me confidence.” Gracie Gold is one of the main headliners at Skate America which begins on Friday, October 24 which opens the senior Grand Prix circuit. She will be up against some of the best ladies in the field including Russians Elena Radionova and Elizaveta Tuktamysheva as well as American teammates Mirai Nagasu and Samantha Cesario. Many expect to see Gold at the top of the podium at Skate America, but she had a shaky start to the season at Nebelhorn Trophy only a few weeks ago where she made several mistakes. Gracie still managed to capture the bronze, but with Skate America she will need to bring her A-game and show that she is able to stay on top.
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Post by Admin on Oct 17, 2014 21:24:55 GMT
Gracie Gold looks to a fresh start going into next week’s Skate America, with the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics already on her mind. “I have another four years left in me, if not more,” Gold said in a teleconference Tuesday. “It’s a fresh start on my skating career for both [the] Grand Prix [season] and leading into Nationals [the U.S. Championships in Greensboro, N.C., in January]. I feel good about the possibilities.” Gold – who last season earned her first U.S. Championship, an Olympic team event bronze medal, a fourth-place individual finish in Sochi and fifth at the World Championships – took third in her international season debut at Nebelhorn Trophy in Germany two weeks ago. She was the most decorated skater in the Nebelhorn field but said she felt nervous and wasn’t at her best, leading to a fall in the short program and popping a jump in her free skate. At Nebelhorn, Gold debuted a long program that included something new for this season – vocal music with lyrics – even though in April she said she’d let other skaters play around with skating to lyrics before trying her own. “I absolutely did not intend to use lyrics this year,” Gold said. “But [my team] had cut this piece of music for me, and they had fallen in love with it. They played it for me, and I was still unsure, even when I got on the ice to choreograph. We had a couple of backup ideas. But as soon as I started moving to it, I started to fall in love with it.” But the most surprising of all? “It really shocked me that [Coach] Frank [Carroll] loved it, because I thought that he wouldn’t be into lyrics at all,” Gold said of her coach, whom she calls “legendary” and has been part of the sport since the 1950s. Not everyone will share Carroll and Gold’s disposition toward her medley from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera. The 19-year-old knows that. “Competing is definitely rooted in tradition, but I like [lyrics],” Gold said. “I don’t think of it as a crutch. I actually think it can help enhance the program. But I know that traditionalists will never quite accept lyrics the way they like their classical music.” Gold also has added stability this season. She left her Illinois base in August 2013 and moved to the Golden State to work with Carroll one month later. “A California convert,” Gold said she’s looking at potential colleges — Loyola Marymount, UCLA and USC. She’ll go back to her native Illinois next week for the first of her two Grand Prix season assignments at Skate America, where she hopes to be more confident than in Germany two weeks ago. “Not every competition is the Olympic Games,” Gold said. “I just need to relax and have a little more fun with competing.” A lot of the points Gold missed at Nebelhorn were lost from technical scoring. The goal for Skate America is to get some back through her jumps. “Frank and I are really working on the consistency of the triple Lutz-triple toe,” she said. “So even if the triple Lutz is a little off, that cat-like ability to land on your feet and snag a triple toe.” And of course, with Yuna Kim and Mao Asada – leaders the past two Olympic cycles – out of the picture this season, Gold has a clear path to move up. She has her eye on competition from Russia and Japan. Gold is the only woman in the Skate America field who finished in the top eight at the Olympics or the World Championships one month later. But she will not be an overwhelming favorite, given the presence of two-time reigning World Junior champion Elena Radionova, who was too young for Sochi but finished second at last year’s NHK Trophy event in Japan, two spots ahead of Gold. “It’s a different field [overall this season], but I think that I’m ready for it,” Gold said. “I can be in the top. There will be no more than three Russians that I have to face per competition, so not all of them at one time.”
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Post by Admin on Oct 29, 2014 20:50:38 GMT
Gracie Gold is the new face of American figure skating, winning her first national championships in January and placing fourth in her first Olympics. When it came time to come up with her new programs, her coach made one request. Absolutely no “Carmen.” Ever. Selections from Bizet’s opera is to skating what “Mack the Knife” had been to the crooners – practically everyone has a version. Once seen as theatrical, “Carmen” now feels like a standby in a sport that’s run out of ideas. But a new rule for this year’s figure skating season, which started in earnest last weekend, has come up with new idea. Song lyrics are now allowed in singles and pairs competition, opening up figure skating, for the first time, to a broader array of music. That makes the Ying Yang Twins as acceptable as Tchaikovsky, a rule change meant to spice up the sport’s antiquated playlist and attract a bigger, younger audience. This is the year after the Olympics – and the sport is now full on in its effort to retain its quadrennial bubble of popularity. As Gold chases her dream to be a world champion, her sport chases its past glory of the mid-’90s. Back then, more viewers watched the world championships than they did March Madness. “This is what’s best for the sport,” said Lori Nichol, whose choreographed some of skating’s most well-known programs and works with Gold. “There are certain pieces often used in skating, but for the skater, it’s always their first experience with that music. For the fans, it might get a little tiring.” Producers at NBC, which broadcast major competitions, now slice segments about the skaters with hip-hop songs. An older broadcast team was replaced with younger and more outlandish commentary from 1998 Olympic gold medalist Tara Lipinski and three-time national champion and former reality TV star, Johnny Weir. For now, skaters are venturing into this new territory slowly – so as not to offend more conservative judges. Everyone wants to win – which, Nichols said, is a part of the reason skaters so often defaulted to music that worked for others in the past. Because Storyline believes in data – and not just because Storyline wanted an excuse to watch old figure skating videos – this reporter analyzed the top Olympic figure skating performances in the past 20 years, across all four disciplines (the short and long programs for the top six for men’s and women’s; the top four short and long programs for pairs; the original and free dancers for top four ice dance) . Of these 240 performances, 91, or 38 percent, had music that had been used by someone else in that group. They ranged from Aboriginal tribal dance music to an instrumental version of “Like A Prayer. ”
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Post by Admin on Dec 2, 2014 20:51:29 GMT
Gracie Gold leaps high in the air during the ending exhibition during the ISU Grand Prix of Figure ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating 2014/2015 NHK Trophy at the Namihaya Dome on November 30, 2014 in Osaka, Japan. held at the Namihaya Dome on Sunday afternoon (November 30) in Osaka, Japan.
The 19-year-old figure skater won the gold medal at the competition, and qualified for the Grand Prix finals which happen next month in Barcelona, Spain.
“I’m excited to go to the GP Final in Barcelona,” Gracie told the press. “Although it’s a bit of a mixed blessing because it will be an extremely difficult competition with the four Russians and Ashley [Wagner] and I.”
Ashley and Gracie will go up against Russia’s Elena Radionova, Elizaveta Tuktamysheva, Anna Pogorilaya and Julia Lipnitskaia.
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