LOS ANGELES — Rachael Flatt of Colorado Springs is working on an English paper about “The Great Gatsby” and studying for three Avanced Placement tests and her SATs next month. All that is causing more stress down here than the World Figure Skating Championships. She’s a straight-A student at Cheyenne Mountain High, but today’s test on the Staples Center ice will be harder than any she faces off it.
Flatt, 16, must merely win a gold medal for the U.S. to get three spots in next year’s Olympic Games. And even that may not be enough.
She blew her first combination Friday afternoon and while she made up for it with a clean short program the rest of the way, her season best of 59.30 placed her seventh. Alissa Czisny, the U.S. champion from Bloomfield Hills, Mich., fell twice and stood 14th with a 53.28.
If the two Americans’ placements don’t total 13 or less, the U.S. will have only two Olympic spots instead of three for the first time since 1994 and the second time since 1924.
“Everyone has been reminding me about it since nationals,” Czisny said. “Obviously, there’s a lot of pressure.”
Kim Yu-Na of South Korea leads big with 76.12 with Canada’s Joannie Rochette second at 67.90 and defending champion Mao Asada from Japan third at 66.06.
Flatt, last year’s Junior Worlds champion in her first Senior Worlds, overstepped on her triple flip, blowing her combination. However, she made up for it later in the program and received nearly all top component scores on her spins.
“I wasn’t (nervous) at all,” Flatt said. “I was so excited. It was my first Worlds. I was hopping around backstage, like, ‘Oh, my gosh! This is so cool!’ ”
Czisny, 21, got the U.S. off to a dreadful start by falling twice on a triple flip and a relatively easy double axel.
“It was a little unexpected for me to fall on that jump,” she said. “I just tried to recover from it, and the axel was a real strange jump for some reason. How often do I fall on a double axel?”
Earlier in the day, Liu Chaochih of Colorado Springs missed her chance at making Chinese Taipei’s Olympic team. She fell badly on her triple lutz and scored only 38.06, leaving her in 28th place.
She needed to make the cut to 24 of 54 ladies for today’s long program in order to make her Olympic team. She still has another chance. She must finish in the top six at the Nebelhorn Trophy in Oberstdorf, Germany, in September but that’s a long time to mull the golden opportunity she lost here.
With a personal best of 46.82 at the World Juniors last month, she was shooting for at least a 47. Mexico’s Ana Cecilia Cantu, who placed 24th, scored 41.58.
“It was a lot different than any other competition I’ve been in,” said Chaochih, a sophomore at Cheyenne Mountain. “The people. The crowd. The setting.”
The rest of her program was clean, but her face plant in the lutz automatically downgraded her score three points.
“I just kind of blacked out on the takeoff,” Liu said. “It’s been pretty consistent.”
True. Her coach, Eddie Shipstad, said she nailed it four times in a row on a recent practice. However, he knew it wouldn’t go well when she failed the lutz three times in warm-ups.
Shipstad was asked if her first senior Worlds got to her.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Everything played into that from your first world championships to knowing that there’s additional pressure.”
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John Henderson: 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com
