Starr, this week or two they made you a
star!
No, Starr made her own star shine, and that's a fact. They managed her scores in the sp. Like I said earlier, it's a matter of holding your head up high no matter what. And that's what Starr did. She went after her dreams, her moment in time, and she showed them what she can do (and she sang her own song to boot)!
No more nitpicking now. How many of the other ladies went clean with all positive GOEs, eh! Starr knew she had to finish her performance first and then cry tears of joy.
Good grief! I was so much getting into Mariah's performance, and then that loss of concentration on her last jump, the easiest jump! I was hoping Angela would go clean, because nobody was talking about her, and they didn't show her sp on NBC. It would have been cool had Angela held up, but she faltered slightly and they dumped her down behind Starr, which was fair considering that Starr should have been scored closer to Wang in the sp!
Amber looked like she was distracted by being sick or something with the expressions on her face. She's such a lovely skater. And like JW said, she's got it all, except for lacking nerves of steel and self-belief in the big moments. What's there to say about Courtney!? She's got it all too, but can't put it together.
Mirai deserves the points and the celebration because she went for the 3-axel in both programs, and she pretty much held it together after faltering slightly on that jump in both programs. We've seen her land that 3-axel in practices and warm-ups, and I think at least once in competition this season. She really needs to figure out landing it, and skate a clean program, and she might contend at the Olympics. Mirai had some other minor errors that affected her GOE, but she got the points to pull ahead and challenge Bradie to go clean. And Bradie did, with only one rare under-rotation (which I think was caused by being slightly off in the air on a two-jump combo). But the second jump in the combo was landed perfectly, as were all of Bradie's other jumps. She seemed fairly calm and collected by it all, which is good to see. I like Bradie's response to a query from Andrea Joyce about what she thinks she can do. Bradie:
"I think the sky's the limit for me."
Karen has a lot of good qualities and she attacked and fought for her program, but she had too many under-rotations. Ashley has to blame herself for coming in 2 points behind Karen (even though Ash felt the judges were stingy toward her on the marks). The problem for Ash is that she needed that triple she singled. If she'd at least doubled it and not had a slight problem with another jump, she would probably have edged Karen. I really like Ashley's fp to
La La Land.
Apparently, the thinking is that Ashley will be left home this time. I think between Ashley and Karen it's a wash though, no matter that Karen came in 4th at Worlds last year. This season has not been a good one for Karen until this fairly decent showing at Nationals (and she was strong in her first outing in the pre-season, but it was downhill from there). Ashley backed into a medal on the GP this season and she skated well last year at Nationals. It's just Ashley's poorer showing at 2017 Worlds and the fact USFS seems to prefer going with Karen anyway that will hamper Ashley from making the Olympic team. I do not think they want to select Ashley over someone else this time.
