GREENSBORO, N.C. — Ryan Bradley was all he could be.
Yes, Friday night at the Greensboro Coliseum, the Army would’ve been proud of a figure skater. The Colorado Springs skater, who came back from near retirement and ankle surgery and without a warm-up competition this season, stood atop the nation after the short program of the U.S. Figure Skating Championships.
Wearing an authentic-looking brown Army uniform and skating to “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” the country’s most crowd-pleasing skater wowed them.
He landed every jump, including a tough opening quad toe loop (four revolutions)-triple toe loop followed by a triple axel (3 1/2 revolutions). In his 11th nationals, he scored a personal-record 80.39 to lead a Colorado sweep.
Jeremy Abbott, the two-time defending champion from Aspen, is second at 78.39 and Brandon Mroz, also of Colorado Springs, is third at 71.61. The winner after Sunday’s long program is guaranteed a spot at the worlds in Tokyo in March.
“Would I expect it? Yeah,” said Bradley, seeking his first national title. “I usually come and say, ‘Gosh! I really want to medal. I want to be in the top three. I want to be on the world team, the Olympic team.’ I never think about winning. I’ve never been in a competition where I thought about winning since I was 15.”
His career all but ended last year after just missing the Olympic team. The 27-year-old nearly retired, then came closer after breaking his ankle in dance class last spring.
But 2,500 Twitter followers begged him to return and entertain at nationals as he did in last year’s uproarious long program that nearly made him an Olympian. Friday’s patriotic spin was accented with his open gasps, mugging up close for cameras and a victorious ending salute to a wild standing ovation.
“At one point when I was injured, I saw an intermediate lady do it and she looked so cute,” Bradley said of the song. “I said, ‘This would be hilarious if I did it.’ When I came back, I thought, ‘Why not? Who’s going to stop me?’ “
Abbott got thrown off when the skater preceding him, Jonathan Cassar, lost his necklace. Officials searched all over the ice for it. For Abbott, whose mind drills into more layers of psychosis than most, a few minutes’ delay seemed like a few days.
“It was a little weird having to wait that extra time and have all the announcements and extra noise going on,” Abbott said. “But I really did my best to block it all out and stay focused on the job.”
Mroz, 20, seeks his second worlds appearance with one of the field’s toughest short programs. He started with a quad toe loop-triple toe loop (four revolutions is the most) followed by a triple axel.
It should be, ahem, a real battle Sunday. As Abbott tweeted late Friday, “Congratulations to Ryan. Never fun to be beaten but should it happen it should happen the way Ryan just threw it down!”
John Henderson: 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com
