Gracie Gold faces her traumatic past in stunningly candid memoir

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Gracie Gold faces her traumatic past in stunningly candid memoir

It is tempting to see Gracie Gold’s story mainly as a compelling cautionary tale about the mental health risks of a sport in which the pursuit of excellence must start when athletes still are children.

It is also tempting to see Gold’s story as sui generis, the result of a childhood, adolescence and young adulthood spent in a family whose dysfunction she describes with raw detail in the memoir, OUTOFSHAPEWORTHLESSLOSER, published Tuesday.

Seeing it as one or the other would be a simplistic reaction to a story so complex it recalls a landmark 1957 movie, “The Three Faces of Eve.”

Rather than Eve’s multiple personalities, Gold had three different personas.

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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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