The depressing state of American women’s figure skating

With the women’s figure skaters from the U.S. scoring their worst finish in an Olympic Games, it’s time to call out the U.S. Figure Skating Association for the terrible state of its program.

The three U.S. women’s figure skaters at the PyeonChang Winter Games finished ninth, 10th and 11th, the worst showing in the history of the modern Olympics for the Americans.

Bradie Tennell — a somewhat bland skater — known for her consistent ability to always stick her landings, a skater who supposedly never falls, fell. Not once, but in both the short and the long program.

Mirai Nagasu, who was left off the U.S. team at the last Olympics to make way for world silver medalist Ashley Wagner, generated a lot of excitement for her attempt at the triple axel, which she landed in the team competition, helping the U.S. group earn the team bronze. Her free skate hinged on the groundbreaking jump, but once she began the program, the jitters kicked in and she pulled out of it, with her free skate never recovering the confidence it would have had if she had nailed it.

The youngest of the bunch, Karen Chen, should have produced the kind of fearlessness and freshness that Alina Zagitova exuded in both her programs, and even though Chen started out with a beautifully stylistic program in the short, she too wilted under the pressure, succumbing to several mistakes throughout both programs.

So what has happened to American women’s figure skating, a sport where American women have dominated for so long, beginning with Peggy Fleming and producing several gold, silver and bronze medalists including Dorothy Hammill, Kristy Yamaguchi, Michelle Kwan, Tara Lipinski, Sarah Hughes, Sasha Cohen and Nancy Kerrigan? Since Kwan, American ladies have progressively worsened at each Games. In the last Olympics, the 2014 Sochi Games, American Gracie Gold just missed the podium with a fourth place, Wagner was seventh and Polina Edmunds placed ninth.

The three ladies sent this time looked like deer caught in the headlights. Tennell, Nagasu and Chen all skated tentatively, looked petrified to be on the ice and seemed more worried about skating a clean program than anything else. In contrast, powerhouses Evgenia Medvedeva and Zagitova thrilled the audience with their bold fearlessness, effortlessly daring jumps, technical prowess and superior artistry. Right behind them, Canadian Kaetlyn Osmond gave a breathtaking performance set to “Black Swan” that showed off jumps of great height and compelling artistry that was a far cry in confidence to the Americans. Same with the Japanese and South Korean ladies.

None of them were flukes or surprise contenders. They’ve been performing this way consistently for the last couple of years. Afterwards, Kristy Yamaguchi said as much in the Olympic Ice panel, where she’s an analyst for NBC. She chalked up the problems with the American skaters to lack of consistency.

Tara Lipinski wrote an op-ed piece for The New York Times to address the questions about the Americans’ dismal performance during the short program. The gold medalist and analyst for NBC says that America needs to adopt a more Russian approach to turning out Olympic hopefuls in figure skating, saying that Russian skaters “come up under a system designed to encourage them to up the technical ante at a very young age.” Furthermore, she explained that the current U.S. system rewards their skaters “not for innovating and taking risks — attempting new combos, for instance, or trying more difficult jumps — but for skating cleanly,” a big problem if other countries are advancing the sport.

Medvedeva and Zagitova are close friends, but they are also fierce competitors who train in the same rink, unlike Tennell, Nagasu, and Chen, who all train in completely separate locations.

“In our group there are really so, so, so many young skaters, some of them doing such difficult elements, such difficult jumps,” Medvedeva told ESPN. “It just forces you to be stronger. When you see the younger skater who is doing [something] more difficult, you feel so strange inside because you are older and you want to be stronger than them.”

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Whatever the reason is, the American women’s figure skating program has fallen far behind the rest of the world. If we’re going to develop any medalists in the future, it will need to revamp its philosophy completely to nurture talent who can compete on the world stage again.

At the moment it’s in a very sorry state.