It’s time for the World Figure Skating Championships again, folks. It’s time to crown the top figure skaters in the . . . oops!
Weren’t the Olympics last month? Weren’t Evan Lysacek of the U.S. and Yu-Na Kim of South Korea gold medalists? Well, yes, but while the International Skating Union has its Worlds a month after the Olympics, this week’s competition in Turin, Italy, won’t be an afterthought for three Colorado skaters.
Jeremy Abbott, the two-time U.S. champion from Aspen, wants to show he can indeed compete when other nations’ flags are waving. Rachael Flatt, the national champ from Colorado Springs, wants a score representative of her performance, unlike in the Olympics. And Ryan Bradley, who skates with Flatt at the World Arena and just missed the Olympic team, wants to compete on a world stage.
Abbott, who skates his short program Wednesday, has the most to prove. He entered Vancouver as a medal contender and finished a disastrous ninth.
It has been a month, and Abbott has sat down with his coaches and sports psychologists to sort out the rubble. Turns out it was myriad factors.
“My training between Nationals and Olympics wasn’t very strong,” he said Thursday from his training base in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. “I was stuck on an outcome mind-set. It carried over into competition.
“It was my first Olympics, and I was a bit overwhelmed. I hurt my back before I left. A lot of little things that weighed on me kind of derailed my Olympic dreams.”
The biggest factor that seems to weigh on him is his passport. His ninth at the Olympics followed 11th-place finishes in the last two Worlds. He should move up in this one merely with the withdrawal of Lysacek and American Johnny Weir, who took sixth in Vancouver. The withdrawals created an opening for Bradley.
It doesn’t matter that Olympic medal winners treat the Worlds that follow like an exhibition in Des Moines.
“This one’s not about a title. It’s not about a placement,” Abbott said. “This one’s for me. I’m going to do my best and show myself that I know what it takes to skate well and that I belong on the world stage.”
For Flatt, the only people she has to prove herself to are judges. The senior at Cheyenne Mountain High School skated superbly in Vancouver, but two mysteriously downgraded triple-flip jumps in her long program dropped her from fifth to a disappointing seventh.
The scores aren’t transparent, and she still has no idea what she did wrong. And she no longer cares.
“I wasn’t really focusing on that,” said Flatt, recently accepted by UCLA and Denver. “I focused on how well I performed and knowing I skated the best I could at the moment.”
Her coach, Tom Zakrajsek, said the judging system could get tweaked at the ISU Congress in June in Barcelona. What ticks off Zakrajsek more is Flatt’s growing reputation as more of a jumper than a skater.
Medaling in Turin will be difficult for Flatt, who took fifth last year. Only Olympic bronze medalist Joannie Rochette, whose mother died of a heart attack two days before her Olympic skate, is skipping Turin. The last three world champions — Kim and Japan’s Mao Asada and Miki Ando — will be in the field.
The combined placements of Flatt and fellow American Mirai Nagasu must total no more than 13 to ensure the U.S. three spots in next year’s World Championships in Tokyo.
John Henderson: 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com
