PORTLAND, Ore. — Rachael Flatt’s right leg was throbbing, and as the pain grew worse and worse, her jumps got higher and higher, while her smile turned bigger and bigger.
The Cheyenne Mountain High School graduate, hampered by an undiagnosed injury that causes soreness from the bottom of her foot to her knee, stormed back from fourth place after a frustrating short program with an improbable victory Sunday in a gutsy, energetic long program at Skate America to claim another Grand Prix Series silver medal.
Flatt, 18, triumphed in the free skate by 1.66 points over Kanako Murakami of Japan, the short program runner-up who rebounded from a fall on a triple flip to win her first Grand Prix title. Murakami was 2.07 points better than Flatt, who topped short program winner Carolina Kostner of Italy by 7.99 points after Kostner botched two straight combinations. Caroline Zhang placed ninth, and Cheyenne Mountain graduate Alexe Gilles took 12th.
Olympic silver medalist ice dancers Meryl Davis and Charlie White were far from perfect in a tango free dance, yet collected $18,000 after beating Canadians Vanessa Crone and Paul Poirier by 7.6 points. Junior national champions Maia and Alex Shibutani rose from fourth for a bronze, and Lynn Kriengkrairut and Logan Giulietti-Schmitt remained sixth.
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Looking elegant in a bright red dress accentuated by a crystal belt, Flatt brought a sparse crowd at the Rose Garden to its feet as she stretched her arms, twisted her shoulders and shook her hips to “Slaughter on 10th Avenue,” fighting off pain from a strained calf that redeveloped Tuesday in her foot when she traveled from Colorado Springs to Portland.
Flatt underrotated a triple toe on an opening double axel- triple toe, then she did the same with a triple lutz on a triple lutz-double toe that followed. But she generated lots of height and nailed landings on her next five jumps — a triple flip, a triple lutz, a triple flip-double toe-double loop for which she received 9.35 points, a triple loop and a triple salchow.
“I’m really happy with how things went under the circumstances,” said Flatt, who earned $13,000 for her fourth Grand Prix silver, including her second in a row at Skate America, and neared securing one of six berths in the Grand Prix Final next month in Beijing.
As she competed Saturday in the short program with her foot heavily taped, Flatt said she was “focused more on the pain rather than anything else.” Despite her foot swelling more before the free skate, Flatt said she “needed to shut that part of my mind down.”
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