Gracie Gold’s progress stalled again after poor short program at U.S. Championships

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Gracie Gold’s progress stalled again after poor short program at U.S. Championships

With her characteristic and often searing honesty, Gracie Gold had minced no words in evaluating her dismayingly poor performances at Skate America in October.

“Terrible today and yesterday,” Gold said after finishing dead last of 12 competitors in both the short program and free skate, with the lowest free skate and overall scores of her eight years in senior competition.

“We have to salvage what we can from the wreckage,” she said. “I’m a little worse off than I thought.”

And the two-time U.S. champion had to reassemble herself in barely a month for what became a virtual qualifying competition to earn a place for this week’s U.S. Championships.

She made it to nationals but wound up feeling the same way after Thursday’s short program as she had at Skate America.

“It was pretty terrible. There’s not much else to say,” Gold said.

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Gracie Gold 's wise decision to forgo U.S. Skating Championships was "Gracie's alone" - and one of few clear answers to questions about her situation

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Gracie Gold 's wise decision to forgo U.S. Skating Championships was "Gracie's alone" - and one of few clear answers to questions about her situation

The definitive thing about the Gracie Gold situation is none of us on the outside still knows much really definitive about the Gracie Gold situation.

Gold has addressed some of the uncertainty in soul-baring posts on social media, where she discussed her withdrawal from a November Grand Prix event after the short program and her withdrawal from the upcoming U.S. Championships.  Two days before she announced the nationals withdrawal, her coach, Vincent Restencourt, posted a vote-of- confidence message to her, with undated video of Gold successfully landing a triple jump in practice.

But U.S. Figure Skating had declined comment two months ago on seven questions I emailed about what factored into her decision to skate at Rostelecom Cup in Moscow, where her painful-to-watch short program was stunningly clear evidence Gold was far from a competitive level.  Her agent at International Management Group also did not respond to messages seeking comment at that time.

That is why I have refrained until now from writing anything more than a few matter-of-fact tweets about Gold since Rostelecom Cup.  There still are more questions than answers.

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