Nagasu captures US title
Meissner falters badly while defending crown
ST. PAUL - Not since proper ladies began skating for titles in 1914 has there been a night like this. Three of the top four finishers here, including champion Mirai Nagasu, aren't old enough to go to the world championships in Sweden. And the woman who ruled the planet just two years ago had the worst performance by a reigning queen in history.
"I won? I won!" declared the 14-year-old Nagasu, after she'd held off 15-year-old Rachael Flatt by fewer than two points (190.41-188.73) to become the youngest US champion since Tara Lipinski in 1997.
After Nagasu won Thursday's short program, nobody was shocked that she could hang on last night. What was shocking was the collapse of Kimmie Meissner, who fell three times and ended up seventh.
"That's a bummer, that's all I can say," shrugged the 18-year-old Meissner, who went down on her first two jumps (a triple flip and a triple lutz) and never recovered. "Such a shame. I was really skating well. I just lost it."
Meissner was the first women's champion to lose the title since Michelle Kwan reclaimed her crown from Lipinski in 1998. Yet, because Nagasu, Flatt, and 14-year-old Caroline Zhang, the fourth-place finisher, are ineligible for the senior worlds, Meissner still was named to the three-woman team, along with 16-year-old Ashley Wagner, who was third, and 19-year-old Bebe Liang, who finished fifth despite singling two triple jumps.
Had US Figure Skating's international committee gone strictly by order of finish here, 17-year-old Katrina Hacker of the Skating Club of Boston, who finished sixth, would have made the squad. But the rules allow for the committee to take major competitions into account, and Meissner's résumé is decidedly better than that of Hacker, who was making her senior debut. A trip to worlds would have been an unexpected prize for Hacker, a New Yorker who performed creditably, if a bit nervously, here. Still, she'll go to next month's Four Continents Championships in Seoul as a consolation.
"I wish I could have been perfect, but I guess I'm pleased," said Hacker, who singled the back-end toe jump on her triple lutz combination. "After I was in fifth place when the [short program] ended, I couldn't believe it."
It's the first time in history that the United States is sending a stronger team to the junior worlds than the seniors, but what happened last night scrambled everything.
Only Flatt, who won the long program, had a terrific night. "Wow, I got everything," she said, looking at the scoring total that included a triple lutz-triple toe combination. Everything but a trip to Sweden.
Flatt will have plenty of underage company. Zhang, who was sitting in seventh after the short, had a strong performance which included a triple-triple and triple-double-double combos. "I was like, I have nothing to lose, I'm already in seventh," she said.
Meissner, though, had everything to lose. She was an Olympian who'd won the world crown, then taken the domestic title last year after Sasha Cohen opted not to defend.
But after struggling through a rocky fall season on a cranky right ankle, Meissner finished last at last month's Grand Prix final, falling three times. "I changed the whole program after the final so it wouldn't happen again," she said. "But it did."
After Meissner's implosion, the only question was whether an eligible skater would win the crown. For a moment, it seemed Wagner might, after she opened with a triple lutz-triple loop combo. "Just go for it," she told herself. "There's nothing to lose. It's my first senior nationals."
But Nagasu, after falling on her opening double axel, pulled it together well enough to hang on. "The fall was like a kick in the butt," she said. "After that, I just attacked the rest."
Her cushion from the short program was enough to give her the title and a trip to Bulgaria for the junior worlds, where Nagasu can make history. No US senior champion has ever won the global kiddie crown in the same year, too. 