Yes, I've read a few articles where Mirai is now being discussed as a potential contender for bronze, including a few articles from Christine Brennan. All do acknowledge that in "joining the conversation", she is among a large group (Daleman, Kostner, Osmond, Sotskova, Miyahara, Sakamoto, etc...am I forgetting anyone?
) who are in the conversation as well.
From reading Jackie Wong's reports, it sounds like Mirai is practicing very well...but I have yet to read about her doing a "clean" sp runthrough, and I think that she's fallen on the axel in the sp runthroughs that I've read about. Outside of the sp runthroughs, her standalone 3A attempts and long program 3A attempts have been good. But seeing how they scored her in the long, I think she would need a clean SP to have a chance, so I'm not getting too excited...yet. In thinking about the program that Mirai did in the team event, yes, she came in 2nd, and we have discussed at length what is lacking components wise in the program. But she also did a clean 8 triple long, including a triple axel. Spin level and step sequence level downgrades be damned, I've seen worse programs than that reach 140 in the last few years. So while I'll be cautiously optimistic, I'm still mostly expecting Mirai to place lower than someone who could potentially have a clean SP, and then do only a 4-6 triple LP and be placed over her due to components. Maybe by keeping my expectations low, she'll exceed them, like in the team event. Conversely, I could also see her getting a scoring bump after the team event.
On another note though...I think that the press that Mirai has gotten from the triple axel and team event bronze make her post-olympics
seem more promising than they were before. She said to Nick McCarvel yesterday that "hopefully her and Adam would be competing against each other soon in a different competition", but I think that the Dancing with the Stars schedule would conflict with her Stars on Ice tour.
