After a highly decorated career, Ashley Wagner is proudest of current chapter in her story

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After a highly decorated career, Ashley Wagner is proudest of current chapter in her story

At this time four years ago, Ashley Wagner was beginning the final months of training for what she reasonably could have expected would lead to her second Olympic appearance after having won an Olympic team event bronze medal in 2014.

Sure, her 2016-17 season had been a struggle, with a subpar seventh-place performance at the World Championships. But that was still her sixth straight worlds, and, among U.S. women, only Michelle Kwan has a longer consecutive appearance streak.

Beyond that, Wagner had skated to a silver medal at the 2016 Worlds, to this day the only medal by a U.S. woman at worlds since 2006. And Wagner had been just five points from a medal at the 2015 Worlds, when she was third in the free skate.

In October 2017, no one could have foreseen Bradie Tennell going from relative unknown to 2018 U.S. champion or Mirai Nagasu putting it together for a stunning performance when it counted most, at the 2018 U.S. Championships. Wagner, a three-time U.S. champion, and Karen Chen, the 2017 champion, were, at that point, seemingly the best bets to claim spots on the team going to South Korea, with the third and final spot up for grabs.

Four months later, after a workmanlike, unremarkable performance at nationals, Wagner would be the odd woman out.

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At World Team Trophy, another angle on Chen-Hanyu rivalry

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At World Team Trophy, another angle on Chen-Hanyu rivalry

Thanks to NBC’s Peacock TV for the ability to watch the World Team Trophy from Osaka, Japan, at a reasonable hour in the USA via replay.

It meant I was awake enough to make some (hopefully) coherent observations after Thursday’s day one, which included singles short programs and the rhythm dance.

In no particular order of importance:

I used to think (at least until the 2018 Olympic free skate) that Japan’s Yuzuru Hanyu was so dominant, particularly in component scores, that he could make one semi-serious mistake and still win in any program.

Nathan Chen has shown that thinking no longer prevails, particularly among judges.

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In making history with fifth straight U.S. title, Nathan Chen competes against his own singular past

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In making history with fifth straight U.S. title, Nathan Chen competes against his own singular past

The trouble with being Nathan Chen is, nearly all the time, you are being judged against your past brilliance.

Unless the redoubtable two-time reigning Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan is in the competition, that is.

But the two have met just twice since the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics, with Chen winning both, and pandemic-born uncertainty over the fate of the 2021 World Championships, currently scheduled for late March in Stockholm, and perhaps even next season’s events makes it is impossible to know when the next Chen-Hanyu showdown will take place.

Chen has simply been so extraordinary for so long and has dominated U.S. men’s skating so thoroughly since 2017 that it is getting too easy (and unfair) to take him for granted and forget he commandingly won a historic fifth straight U.S. title Sunday in Las Vegas because he did it with a less-than-jaw-dropping free skate.

A modest (by only his own standards) winning score of 322.28 still left Chen more than 30 points ahead of runner-up Vincent Zhou (291.38), a national medalist for the fourth time, this one after a one-year absence from the podium. Jason Brown, the 2015 U.S. champion was third (276.92), his sixth medal at nationals.

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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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His optimism challenged by ‘life on repeat,’ Jason Brown learns to take each day as it comes

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His optimism challenged by ‘life on repeat,’ Jason Brown learns to take each day as it comes

Jason Brown’s usually boundless optimism finally hit its limits about a month ago.

“I just shut down,” Brown said.

His intrinsic motivation to keep improving and his consummate love for figure skating had already been challenged several times since Brown returned from his parents’ home in the Chicago suburbs to his Toronto training base in late June. Eventually, in December, he found himself thinking about practice like a 26-year-old terrible two, his mind saying louder and louder, “I DON’T WANT TO GO.”

“A lot of weird moments,” he said.

There were days when his training was going so well he felt the sky was the limit but more days when, for the first time in his two decades in the sport, he felt burned out and done.

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