Nagasu has enough to clinch title

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Mirai Nagasu had a big lead going into the free skate at the U.S. Championships on Saturday night but knew she would have to skate well to win. Nagasu was the last one to take the ice, and she had heard the crowd going wild for the two skaters before her.

“I was really nervous,” Nagasu said.

It showed when Nagasu fell on her opening jump, her simplest jump, a double axel. At that moment, her primary coach, Charlene Wong, knew that what was coming next, a triple-triple combination, would assume far greater importance than one element in a four-minute program.

A shaken athlete, especially one 14 years old competing in her first senior national championships, would have been tempted to play it safe and reduce the combination to triple-double.

“I had no idea what she was going to do, but I knew what she went for would be the defining moment of her career,” Wong said. “Either she was going to be a fighter, or she was going to buckle.”

“What am I doing?” Nagasu said she thought after the fall. “I have to get myself under control. I have to go out and attack.”

Nagasu, a freshman at Arcadia High, did the triple-triple. She went on to complete the program with flair, charm, personality and five clean triple jumps and won the U.S. title despite finishing third to Rachael Flatt and Ashley Wagner in the free skate.

The margin Nagasu built with her brilliant winning performance in Thursday’s short program kept her ahead of Flatt, 15, of Del Mar, who was second overall and Wagner, 16, of Alexandria, Va., who finished third.

Flatt and Wagner completed seven clean triple jumps.

Another 14-year-old, Caroline Zhang of Brea, rallied from seventh in the short program to take fourth.

Kimmie Meissner had another disastrous performance, falling three times as she finished seventh -- the largest drop for a champion in the last 50 years.

Meissner also fell three times in her previous competition, the Grand Prix Final.

“That’s a bummer,” Meissner said. “I was pretty confident, but I just lost it.

“I’m so upset. I need to think about what I did here and why, and I need to fix it.”

Nagasu became the second youngest U.S. champion, 34 days older than Tara Lipinski was when she won in 1997.

Nagasu, Flatt and Zhang do not meet the minimum age limit for the senior world championships in March, which left U.S. Figure Skating officials to pick Meissner and fifth-place finisher Bebe Liang of Granada Hills to join Wagner on the world team.

“I’m not really disappointed about not going,” Nagasu said. “I definitely think I’m not ready for anything that high yet.”

But Nagasu will hit the next level Sunday, when she is scheduled for an interview with People Magazine.

The U.S. team going to junior worlds, with Nagasu, Flatt and Zhang, is the strongest any country has sent to that event.

“I’m going to have to act like a teenager and say that to see myself going to [senior] worlds is crazy,” Wagner said. “This was my first senior nationals, and I was thinking, ‘OK, top 6.’ ”

Zhang made a decided improvement in the free skate, with six clean triple jumps, although she was extremely mechanical until she went into the two spins at the end of the program. The lack of pizazz was reflected in her low component scores.

“I could have gone a little faster,” Zhang said. “I’m happy with how I skated and actually glad it’s over and that I didn’t make as many mistakes as in the short program.”

Tanith Belbin and her partner, Ben Agosto, won a fifth straight ice dance title.