Tennell lone bright spot for U.S. women singles skaters so far in Olympic season

/
Tennell lone bright spot for U.S. women singles skaters so far in Olympic season

There was a lot of relief and excitement early last April in Helsinki when World Championships rookie Karen Chen stood up to extra pressure in the free skate created after veteran Ashley Wagner choked (Wagner’s word, not mine).  Chen’s performance gave her fourth place and assured Team USA would have three women’s singles spots at the 2018 Olympics.

The way things look now, U.S. Figure Skating should politely offer that third spot to Japan, which lacked the talent to get three in Helsinki but is flush with top women now.

With the Grand Prix regular season having ended Sunday at Skate America in Lake Placid, N.Y., not one of the U.S. women who had been considered top contenders for the three spots – Chen, Wagner, Mariah Bell and Mirai Nagasu – has done much this fall to suggest she deserves it.

Read More

For Gracie Gold, hope that a step sideways will help her move forward

/
For Gracie Gold, hope that a step sideways will help her move forward

The first time I met Gracie Gold, in late fall of 2011 at a suburban Chicago rink, she allowed me a glimpse into her psyche after a previous season filled with disappointment.

“I had zero confidence in myself,” she said, refusing to use physical growth as an excuse for the inconsistent jumps that had kept her from qualifying for the 2011 U.S. Junior Championships.

By the time of our first conversation, after her eye-catching performances that season at both a Junior Grand Prix event in Estonia and Midwestern Sectionals, the skating world already was anointing Gold, then 16, as the sport’s next star.

The expectations would be enormous, especially for someone whose psyche always remained fragile.

She bore up to them remarkably well, winning two U.S. senior titles (with two second places), finishing a solid fourth at the 2014 Olympics (with a bronze medal in the team event) and fourth twice at senior worlds.  She built a résumé that would be the envy of nearly every little girl who puts on figure skates and dreams of such achievements.

Of her winning free skate at the 2016 U.S. Championships, I wrote:   "Her jumps were huge and secure, her poise complete, her skating to music from Stravinsky’s `Firebird' a performance that showed the polish of a mature, experienced athlete."  

Little did we know that such performances sometimes masked the truth, that she was a Pagliacci laughing for the crowd while crying inside.

Read More

For Abbott, a figure skating career of brilliance and tarnish

/
For Abbott, a figure skating career of brilliance and tarnish

What to make of Jeremy Abbott’s competitive figure skating career, now that he used a Thursday interview on the icenetwork podcast, “Ice Talk,” to bring it to an official end?

He was a blend of unquestionable brilliance and baffling mediocrity, the latter covering many of his scintillating moments in a dull finish.

With four senior titles, Abbott is among most decorated men’s skaters at the U.S. Championships.  In the past 65 years, only Todd Eldredge has won more national titles (six).  Abbott won all his in the International Judging System era; no other U.S. man has won more than two in that 12-season period, none more than one in the nine seasons since Abbott won his first.

Abbott skated like a world-beater at several of those U.S. Championships, none more so than 2010, when his performances were better than those of the medalists at the Vancouver Olympics a month later.

And he skated at various levels of back-in-the-pack inconsequence in all his global championships, none more so than those 2010 Olympics, when he was 15th (!) in the short program and ninth overall.

Read More

For Evgenia Medvedeva, the numbers add up to amazing

/
For Evgenia Medvedeva, the numbers add up to amazing

Like it or not, contemporary figure skating is a numbers game.

And Russia’s Evgenia Medvedeva has played it better the past two seasons than anyone else in the 14 seasons since the sport’s judging system was changed into something only an accountant with a computer can really love.

Now that the curtain has come down on the final act of the sport’s 2016-17 season, the recent World Team Trophy in Japan, it is worth taking a look at just how remarkable Medvedeva’s numbers have been as she became the first woman to win back-to-back world titles since Michelle Kwan in 2001 -- and, next season, the overwhelming Olympic women's singles favorite.

No matter what one thinks of the choreographic content or themes of her competition programs, (I really liked both in 2015-16 but found what she did this season a bit repetitive in gestures and emotions and generally less appealing), the overall quality of her performances in her first two seasons at the international senior level has simply been stunning.

Read More

Asada's legacy of grace and grit will last forever.

/
Asada's legacy of grace and grit will last forever.

Whenever I saw Mao Asada skate well, which she did often, I was reminded of the second line in one of the most famous arias in the operatic canon, "La Donna è Mobile," from Verdi's Rigoletto.

When you get past the trope of the aria's title and opening verse, which scoffs at women for being flighty, you come to the nature of the flight: "qual piuma al vento" -- like a feather in the wind.

That is the best description for the way Asada moved on the ice, even in the later years of her career, when she added the mature elegance of a woman in her mid-20s to the jump that had separated her from nearly every other woman in the sport over the length of that career.

She became lighter than air.

That is how I will remember Asada, who announced her retirement Monday at the age of 26. The timing was a surprise, even if her struggling performances and knee problems over the past two seasons made it clear the time had come.

Read More