This might reveal too much about what I do for entertainment, but I watched the final round of the U.S. (Women’s) Figure Skating Championships on Saturday night.
In fact, I’ve watched many of these competitions (which double as skating’s Olympic trials). And never before have I seen so many top women tripping over their skates or falling flat on their asses.
This is why Mirai Nagasu was so exceptional: she not only stayed on her skates while performing salchows, loops, lutzes, and axels, but she did so to the thrilling theme from Goldfinger with the beauty and grace of, well, a Bond girl.
What distinguished this year’s competition, of course, is that the prize was not just a gold, silver, or bronze medal, but one of three berths on the U.S. Olympic team bound for Sochi, Russia next month. And, after the final skater of the night ended her performance, I had no doubt that Nagasu had won one of those medals as well as one of those even more coveted berths.
I thought she skated well enough to win silver, but when the results were posted I was not surprised or disappointed that she won bronze. Not least because I knew (or assumed) this meant a ticket to Sochi.
Therefore, imagine my shock the following day when I read that:
Despite a fourth-place finish at this week’s 2014 U.S. Figure Skating Championships at the TD Garden, two-time national champion Ashley Wagner was named to the U.S. Olympic team today.
U.S. Figure Skating president Pat St. Clair made the controversial announcement at a press conference this afternoon. Wagner’s inclusion bounces U.S. national bronze medalist and the fourth-place finisher at the 2010 Vancouver Games, Mirai Nagasu, from the team.
(Boston Herald, January 12, 2014)
She was robbed! I thought.
But before accusing the U.S. Figure Skating Association (USFSA) of conspiring to select a team that looks as “All-American” as possible, I demurred. For it occurred to me that I was probably clueless about a scoring method that made selecting fourth-place Wagner over third-place Nagasu entirely fair and foreseeable – even in light of Saturday’s competition. Turns out, I was clueless.
Besides these championships, a skater’s results in the last Grand Prix Final, world championships, Grand Prix series, Four Continents Championship, last year’s national championships, world junior championships and junior Grand Prix Final were considered…
Of the top four contenders, Wagner, 22, has been the most consistent American skater, winning back-to-back medals at the Grand Prix final and finishing in the top five at the last two world championships.
(USA Today, January 12, 2014)
This, in part, is the “objective analysis” the USFSA relied on to arrive at its controversial decision to select Nagasu over Wagner. It might be helpful to know that, in previous years, this resulted in equally controversial decisions to bump skaters who did well at the national championships in favor of injured skaters who did not even compete but had better overall records. Such was the case in 2006 when the USFSA bumped Emily Hughes for Michelle Kwan, and more famously in 1994 when it bumped Kwan for Nancy Kerrigan.
But Nagasu knew (or should have known) better than anybody that this well-established selection method would come back to haunt her:
Nagasu has been anything but consistent the last four years… After finishing fourth in the Vancouver Olympics, Nagasu’s career went south. At 20, she entered nationals as an afterthought, years removed from all that promise and that little girl from ages ago who won gold at the 2008 U.S. championships when just 14. After the [2010] Vancouver Olympics, she then missed making the worlds teams the past three years.
(USA Today, January 12, 2014)
In other words, she peaks only once every few years, then things fall apart. Therefore, the USFSA can be forgiven for fearing that, having peaked last weekend, Nagasu would be a complete mess next month in Sochi. Joining Wagner will be Polina Edmunds (15) who won silver, as well as the woman whose name symbolizes not just her sport but Olympic glory, Gracie Gold (18), who won gold on Saturday.
But can you imagine the shouts of racism if Nagasu were Black?! Reverend Al Sharpton and his band of Brothers would’ve been all over the media today accusing the USFSA of selecting a team that looks more like one Apartheid South Africa might’ve selected for the Winter Olympics in the 1960s. Which clearly would’ve made a mockery of Team USA’s intent to march into Sochi on the moral high ground for standing up for gays….
Thank God Japanese-Americans never got into the race-hustling business, eh.