Stunning at nationals: both the Shibutanis' free dance and judges' decision are electrifying

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Stunning at nationals: both the Shibutanis' free dance and judges' decision are electrifying

ST. PAUL, Minn.  – It was hard to know which was the more stunning part of Saturday afternoon’s the ice dance final at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships.

The electric brilliance with which Maia and Alex Shibutani, the @ShibSibs, performed their free skate to Coldplay’s “Fix You?”

Or the judges doing the right thing, rare in ice dance, with scores that made the Shibutanis champions ahead of designated darlings Madison Chock and Evan Bates, the defending champions and reigning world silver medalists?

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For U.S. champion Ashley Wagner, it's back to the future at skate nationals

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For U.S. champion Ashley Wagner, it's back to the future at skate nationals

Earlier this week, Ashley Wagner dredged through a virtual scrapbook to tweet a picture of the last time she had skated in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

It was at the 2008 U.S. Figure Skating Championships, her first as a senior, when she was four months shy of her 17th birthday.  She finished third, as she had a year before in the junior event at both nationals and worlds.  This was an athlete on the way up.

That the sometimes jagged arc of her ensuing career has brought Wagner back to St. Paul this week to seek a fourth U.S. title at age 24 – a victory would make her, by a few months, the oldest women’s champion since Beatrix Loughran in 1926 – is a testament to her resoluteness.

Or, as she would put it, to her being stubborn and hard-headed.

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