PORTLAND, Ore. — Rachael Flatt has a new haircut, noticeably short to better illustrate the altered choreography and changed story lines in her routines. She has a new red dress, simple but eye-catching via Italian fashion magazines, featuring straps and a crystal belt.
Perhaps most important, she boasts a new combination — it’s so difficult, not more than a handful of female skaters attempt it — that she claims can propel her over the top.
The Cheyenne Mountain High School graduate, still carrying momentum from a seventh-place showing at the Vancouver Games in February, will unveil the triple lutz-triple loop combination she has practiced all summer at Skate America, the fourth of six Grand Prix Series stops that begins today at the Rose Garden with 58 competitors from 15 countries.
“I feel that I’m challenging myself even more,” Flatt said. “I feel like I can do more.”
— Read the full story at .
<!–
Flatt, 18, passed on the technically demanding maneuver last month at the NHK Trophy in Nagoya, Japan, where she won her third Grand Prix silver medal in five career events, placing third in the short program, despite a shaky landing on her opening sequence, and first in the free skate, even though she under-rotated a triple lutz and a triple flip.
The triple lutz-triple loop — planned for a “more mature” short program to “Summertime” and “Oh, But On the Third Day/Happy Feet Blues,” as well as a “very character-driven” long program to “Slaughter on 10th Avenue,” both choreographed by Lori Nichol — could separate Flatt from Italian Carolina Kostner, the NHK winner and European champion.
A 12-person women’s field doesn’t include many household names, save for Kostner and NHK bronze medalist Kanako Murakami of Japan, along with Caroline Zhang and Alexe Gilles, a Broadmoor Skating Club member like Flatt. And Flatt probably will score big in her long if she’s clean on a double axel-triple toe that precedes the triple lutz-triple loop.
Flatt is maybe better prepared for the triple lutz-triple loop, able to spend countless hours practicing it now that she has deferred admission to Stanford until next fall. She also has benefited from different positioning on her spins, increased speed, improved flexibility in her back and tweaked techniques that make her jumps “much stronger and more solid.”
“It’s coming along,” Flatt said of the triple lutz-triple loop. “It’s very different to complete a triple loop rather than a triple toe because you have to land basically dead-on for a triple loop. It’s really tough, which is why so few people in the world do it.”
Broadmoor coach Tom Zakrajsek maintains a victory is possible for Flatt, noting that she was runner-up last year at Skate America, a table-setter for her first senior national title, and has performed well in Portland, the site of her 2005 novice national title.
“For Rachael,” Zakrajsek said, “it’s all about her bringing out what she has trained.”
–>
