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CHRISTINE BRENNAN
Music

All is not lost for U.S. figure skaters at disappointing worlds

Christine Brennan
USA TODAY Sports

HELSINKI — It took until the very last hour on the final day of competition for the United States to finally win a medal at the 2017 world figure skating championships. From the pairs to the women to the men, the Americans had been shut out.

Maia Shibutani and Alex Shibutani, of the United States, pose with their bronze medals and the national flag during victory ceremony at the World figure skating championships in Helsinki, Finland, on Saturday, April 1.

Finally, in ice dance, an American staple over the past dozen years, there was a breakthrough: a bronze for the brother-sister team of Alex and Maia Shibutani.

But that was it. You have to go all the way back to 1993 to find a worse U.S. performance in the world championships the year before an Olympic Games. That year, there were no American medals. The next year, at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, there was one, Nancy Kerrigan’s silver medal after being attacked on the knee in what we all know as the Tonya-Nancy saga.

In the pre-Olympic world championships that have occurred since — 1997, 2001, 2005, 2009 and 2013 — U.S. figure skaters have won at least a silver medal, and, in four of those years, they’ve won gold.

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And now, one measly bronze?

But all is not lost for the United States in figure skating, always one of the marquee sports at the Winter Olympics. For the first time in 12 years, the United States will field a full team of three women, three men and three ice dancers at the Olympics because of the overall strength of the U.S. performances here.

Only in pairs did the Americans fall short, and that one was a doozy: due to an arcane rule based on the top U.S. team’s 10th-place finish, the Americans will have only one pairs team in Pyeongchang. The last time there was only one U.S. pair at an Olympics? The first Winter Games in 1924.

But figure skating being figure skating, there will be plenty of intrigue as U.S. skaters jockey for position over the next 10 months. One American who went almost unmentioned at these worlds could figure prominently in the run-up to the Olympics. That’s Gracie Gold, the two-time national champion who succumbed to the pressure of expectations at last year’s world championships and has yet to recover. She has switched coaches and says she plans to continue competing. We’ll see.

The rest of the women’s field seems a bit more certain, led by 2017 national champion Karen Chen, who finished fourth this week, and 2016 world silver medalist Ashley Wagner, who was seventh. Wagner’s labored performance here was surprising, but she still is the U.S. woman most likely to make the 2018 Olympic team.

Consider the praise she received here this week from Russia’s Evgenia Medvedeva, the two-time world champion and overwhelming Olympic gold medal favorite. Asked to name a skater she admires from the past, Medvedeva said she’d rather mention someone from the present: Wagner.

“She is able to portray any kind of character in the program on the ice,” Medvedeva said. “She can be lyrical and she can also be totally different.”

To that end, Wagner said she already has chosen her music for her Olympic year programs. For the short program, she’s returning to what helped her win the world silver medal last year — the upbeat Hip Hip Chin Chin — and for her long program, it’s La La Land.

There’s no doubt who leads the U.S. men into the Olympic season: teenage sensation Nathan Chen. If he stays healthy, he’s going to South Korea, where he and his multitude of quads will be in the mix for a medal.

As always, the most likely U.S. medal in skating’s four disciplines will come in ice dance. The last time the United States didn’t win an Olympic medal in dance was 2002.

And then there’s the team event, hardly traditional but meaningful nonetheless. The Americans won the bronze medal in the inaugural team competition in Sochi, and will be solid favorites for another medal in that event in Pyeongchang.

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