USA's Ashley Wagner ends drought, takes silver in Figure Skating Worlds
BOSTON -- Ashley Wagner, the three-time U.S. national champion who bombed the last time she skated at TD Garden in 2014, turned in the performance of her life Saturday night on the same ice to win the silver medal and break the United States’ 10-year women’s world championship podium drought.
“My two experiences in here were equally as dramatic, and this is definitely the one I will cherish for the rest of my life,” said Wagner, who was placed on the 2014 U.S. Olympic team by a committee vote after she finished a shocking fourth at the U.S. trials in the Garden.
This time around, only a world-record setting performance by Russian teenager Evgenia Medvedeva stood between the 24-year-old Wagner and the gold medal. Medvedeva, 16, the reigning European champion who has had an exemplary first season in skating’s senior division, skated an expressive and flawless long program for a total of 150.10 points, beating Yuna Kim’s winning score of 150.06 at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.
Medvedeva’s overall score was 223.86. Wagner, exquisitely skating her signature Moulin Rouge program, finished with 215.39 points. Russia’s Anna Pogorilaya finished third with 213.69.
Reigning U.S. champion Gracie Gold made two big mistakes during a shaky performance and disappointingly dropped to fourth with 211.29 points. She looked so nervous as she emerged from backstage before she skated that her coach, Frank Carroll, spent many seconds talking intensely to her as he grabbed both of her arms. It was a most unusual move, and one that, in hindsight, clearly was necessary.
Gold, 20, who was in the lead after Thursday’s short program, succumbed to the pressure, falling on the end of her first combination jump and turning a late triple lutz into a stunning double.
“It was one of those really tragic skates where you feel like you can’t do anything right,” Gold said. “I feel really ashamed of how I skated and I want to apologize to my country and to the crowd here. There’s really no excuse for it.”
Wagner came onto the ice as Gold was coming off of it. She was the evening’s last skater. She would close the show. Wagner knew that there had been some fabulous performances before hers, but she also could tell something was wrong with Gold’s.
“I had a moment of panic on the ice because I knew that something had happened in Gracie’s performance because I heard the audience kind of do as audiences do,” Wagner said. “I knew that something had gone wrong.”
It also was an opening for Wagner, who consistently bills herself as the underdog even when, truth be told, she isn’t. But it works, so what the heck.
Then Rafael Arutunian, the coach who has helped Wagner become better than she has ever been at an age when most women in skating have long since retired, looked her in the eye before sending her out for the most important four minutes of her career.
“It’s there,” Arutunian told her. “You just need to go do it.”
And she did: her performance, her soaring music and a roaring capacity crowd all reaching a crescendo as she came to a triumphant finish.
“To be able to skate like this in front of an audience that is so supportive, I can’t even find the words,” she said.
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But Wagner being Wagner, the most quotable skater of this, or perhaps any, generation, she really could.
“I have had so many people doubt why I’m still here,” she said. “I earned this silver medal. I went out there. I did my job. I took it for myself. The fact that I have a world silver medal because of something I did and not because of something everybody else didn’t do, that is so sweet.”
It had been since 2006 that an American woman had won a medal at the world championships or the Olympic Games. Now, with less than two years to go to the 2018 Olympics, Wagner has rejuvenated her career, with Gold right behind her.