VANCOUVER — When the music stopped and Rachael Flatt’s Olympic Games ended Thursday night, she grabbed her beaming face in disbelief. She had done it. She had skated a clean long program, the best of her life, in front of a packed Pacific Coliseum and 450 million television viewers.
Moments later when her scores came, her face had another look: disbelief.
Flatt, a senior at Cheyenne Mountain High School in Colorado Springs, scored only 117.85 points. It was a personal best but only barely, not nearly enough to reach the podium from fifth place. In fact, Finland’s 10th-place Laura Lepisto had already blown that away with a 126. The Finn’s 187.97 total was ahead of Flatt’s 182.49.
Flatt scored 200.11 in winning Nationals last month.
With the top skaters coming up, Flatt’s standing started to sink. By the time she went back to her room in the Olympic Village, she flattened out in seventh place. South Korea’s heavily favored Kim Yu-Na blew away the competition with 228.56, way ahead of the 205.50 from silver medalist Mao Asada of Japan.
Trying to remain stoic in front of reporters later, Flatt said, “I was a little surprised.”
Her coach, Tom Zakrajsek, huddled with her afterward.
“She’s not mad,” he said. “She’s upset, obviously.”
Flatt’s downfall were two triple flip jumps. A flip is a toe-pick assisted jump that is far from the most difficult in figure skating. However, she received only 6.3 points on a triple flip-triple toeloop combination early in the program and a measly 4.89 on a triple flip-double toeloop-double loop near the end.
“I better make sure I fix my flips,” she said.
Downgrading a mystery
Zakrajsek said Flatt lost 11-12 points on the two downgrades. Why they were downgraded, neither has a clue. Figure skating isn’t like baseball. Zakraj sek can’t charge the technical specialist who ordered them.
“I don’t think she’s ever been downgraded in the triple flip in her career, not at the (international) level,” Zakrajsek said. “Maybe in juniors.”
For what it’s worth, Canada’s Joannie Rochette wowed the uproarious home crowd with a clean program, four days after her 55-year-old mother died of a massive heart attack. She kept third with 202.64 points so Flatt wouldn’t have medaled anyway.
But Flatt will leave Vancouver with mixed feelings. Two personal bests, two clean programs but a disappointing final placing that will affect her world ranking. Of all the things she worried about coming here — the flip, the Asian invasion, her first Olympics — the flip was near the bottom of the list.
“They felt normal,” she said. “I’ll just have to take a closer look when I get home. It’s never been downgraded before.”
The evening set up for Flatt to put pressure on everyone ahead of her. She skated first in the last group of six. Skating to “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,” she nailed her opening double axel and seemed to seamlessly roll through her jumps: a triple flip-triple toeloop followed by a triple lutz.
When she finished with nary a wobble, the in-house radio commentators called it “an epic performance” and said “she can’t skate better than that.”
Flatt threw out her fists, laughed and grabbed her head.
“It was incredibly exciting,” she said. “I felt I had given it all that I had and it was just a great feeling at the end to know that I’d given two incredibly solid performances.”
“Showed great poise”
Flatt will put away the disappointment and stay through Sunday’s closing ceremonies. She’s hoping to win the lottery of 50-odd U.S. athletes trying to get tickets for today’s U.S.-Finland semifinal hockey game.
Then she’ll return to Colorado Springs and train for next month’s World Championships in Turin, Italy. And she’ll work on the flip.
“I’m very proud of her,” Zakrajsek said. “She showed great poise in her first Olympic Games. She gave two personal bests and that’s what it was about for her.”
John Henderson: 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com
