#MiraiEarnedIt: 5 Reasons for U.S. Figure Skating to Reverse Itself and Send #MiraiToWorlds

The Sochi Olympics may be over, but The Snub lives on.

Actually, make that The Snubs, plural. Many casual fans still don’t realize it, but U.S. Figure Skating snubbed Mirai Nagasu not just once, but twice last month. Not only did federation officials leave her off the Olympic team, but they simultaneously also left her off the team they’ll send to the World Figure Skating Championships. That annual event, which this year takes place from March 24-30 in Saitama, Japan, ranks second in importance to only the Olympics in the figure skating cosmos. For both competitions, the powerful nine-member International Committee Management Subcommittee (ICMS) chose the same three skaters: Gracie Gold, Polina Edmunds, and Ashley Wagner.

Without further ado, here are five reasons why U.S. Figure Skating should change course and send Mirai to the 2014 World Figure Skating Championships.

1. Mirai earned it!
Selection of the U.S. World Team is based on somewhat different criteria than the U.S. Olympic Team, per U.S. Figure Skating’s rulebook:

The U.S. World Team shall be selected from those athletes who are ISU senior age eligible and shall include the current U.S. champion in each discipline. The remaining selections shall be based upon the results of the two most recent U.S. Figure Skating Championships, the most recent World Championship, the most recent Four Continents Championship and all other international events; however, the International Committee may consider extenuating circumstances.

This means that the ICMS was required to name Gracie, the newly crowned national women’s champion, to the World team. But subcommittee members had all the freedom in the world when it came to filling the remaining two spots. The criteria is strikingly broad, including “the most recent … [of] all other international events” with no specific weight for any of them. Subcommittee members, therefore, could basically name anyone they wished.

Now historically, if a skater finished in the top three at Nationals, she made the U.S. World Team (in years the U.S. was eligible to send three skaters to Worlds). In fact, except for cases of skater injury, ineligibility, or withdrawal, U.S. Figure Skating deviated from this practice only once between 1992 and 2014. That was in 2008, the year Mirai won the national women’s title. With three of the top four skaters (including Mirai) ineligible for Worlds due to age, federation officials chose 2006 World and 2007 National Champion Kimmie Meissner to leapfrog Katrina Hacker onto the Worlds squad. Katrina had finished sixth at Nationals, and Kimmie seventh. But rather than send Katrina to Worlds with no previous senior international experience, they sent Kimmie, who was not in top form but quite familiar with the global stage.

Did you catch that? Apart from “extenuating circumstances” like another athlete’s injury, only once in over 20 years – in women’s, men’s, pairs, and ice dancing combined – did ICMS members set aside their standard operating procedure of sending the top skaters to Worlds, going in the order they placed at Nationals. For all those years, it didn’t matter what a skater’s pedigree or experience was. If a skater placed high enough at Nationals, she went to Worlds. If a skater placed too low, she could only hope for status as an alternate. The only exception came in 2008.

That ceased to be true last month, however. For only the second time in more than two decades, ICMS members bypassed their longstanding practice and left Mirai, the third-place finisher at Nationals, off the three-woman squad for Worlds.

The devastating news came all at once for her. Federation officials revealed her exclusion from the U.S. World Team at the same time they revealed her historically unprecedented exclusion from the Olympic squad, which I discussed in my previous column. But according to the subcommittee’s own long-standing criteria for picking Olympic and Worlds teams, Mirai earned it! She deserved to go to the Olympics; she still deserves to represent the U.S. at Worlds in Japan. There’s no more simple reason than that for U.S. Figure Skating to change course and send Mirai to Saitama.

2. U.S. Figure Skating should treat Mirai consistently with how it treats other skaters.
Federation officials left Max Aaron and pairs couple Caydee Denney and John Coughlin off the 2014 Olympic team, naming them as first alternates for Sochi. This didn’t raise any eyebrows; Max, Caydee, and John placed too low at Nationals to make the Olympic team. But to give these skaters a consolation prize for not going to Sochi, officials broke their own longstanding practice and generously named them to the U.S. World Team. That means three skaters who did go to the Olympics won’t also go to Worlds: pony-tailed wonder Joseph Gordon-Levitt – oops, I mean Jason Brown – and pairs couple Felicia Zhang and Nathan Bartholomay.

Why did ICMS members not extend Mirai the same kindness they gave Max, Caydee, and John? Paired with the fact that the federation had only once in the previous two decades given such a “consolation prize” (in 2008 to Kimmie), this inconsistency screams out for attention. U.S. Figure Skating’s ICMS members have, this year, treated Mirai more harshly than they’ve treated others, without any explanation why. If they wish to treat their skaters with consistency, they’ll name her to the World team.

3. Mirai will have home-ice advantage at Worlds.
Remember the accusations of “Russiaflation” in Sochi? That many fans, believing Olympic officials had waaaaaaaaay over-scored Russian figure skaters, accused judges of grading the Russians much more generously than everyone else? At least 1.5 million fans of Kim Yu-na thought so, crashing Change.org within a few hours with a petition on her behalf. (Don’t look so innocent! You know who you are.)

In my view, the judging was probably not any more biased than it normally is. That Russian skaters got unusually high scores can be chalked up to a lot of factors, one of which is home ice advantage. In any sport, judges, referees, and umpires – because they’re human – feel the influence of the home crowd and tend to give favorable treatment to the home team. That it happens in figure skating should not be seen as an anomaly.

Also in my view, this is the year for U.S. Figure Skating to take advantage of home ice. What’s that, you say? The World Championships are in Japan, not the good ol’ U. S. of A.?

What if I told you that Mirai is well-known to Japanese audiences through her skating commentary and interviews in Japanese, on Japanese TV? What if I added that she’s highly popular among Japan’s many intense skating fans? Then what if I threw in the fact that Takashi Mura, the coach who helped her to third-place showings at both Cup of Russia in November and Nationals last month, lives in Japan and could train Mirai right before Worlds? And that her parents, who moved to the U.S. many years ago, are not actually American citizens, but Japanese citizens? And that Mirai herself holds Japanese citizenship?

Yes, you read that correctly. Mirai holds dual citizenship – American and Japanese. She’s as much a Japanese citizen as Mao Asada.

Now, of course I’m not saying that Mirai’s as popular in Japan as Mao. Mao is the most beloved of all Japan’s women skaters. But there’s no question that Mirai would have a special, “home ice” advantage over all non-Japanese skaters at Worlds. The judges will feel the enthusiastic vibes from the mostly Japanese crowd for Mirai and other skaters with Japanese citizenship. Their scores should get a “bump” as a result.

Hello, U.S. Figure Skating? Are you listening?

At this point, some may say that Mirai’s personal-worst tenth-place showing at the Four Continents Championships in Taiwan, just two weeks after Nationals, shows that Mirai is just too inconsistent, regardless of who her coach is. But this criticism is weak, given that Mirai herself felt much weakened after coming down with the flu post-Nationals, and then contracting norovirus after arriving in Taiwan. (Google the symptoms of norovirus, and it’ll make all the sense in the world why Mirai struggled at Worlds.)

Why send Mirai to Saitama? Two words: HOME ICE! Mirai would have that to her advantage.

4. Sadly, Ashley has become, for the moment, a liability for the U.S. World Team.
I truly say this with sadness. She’s been a wonderful skater and a deserving U.S. champion twice over. But if I’m being honest, I believe she has become a liability. That hopefully will change over time, but currently, international skating judges can hardly be in the mood to give Ashley generous marks. (They sure didn’t for her Olympic long program!) Unless they’re Americans, they will feel irritated and even insulted by how she “showed up” the Olympic judges. It’s not her fault that her flabbergasted expression went viral, but she should have known that judges would see her televised shock, as well as her “that’s bulls**t” comment in response to her scores. Judges at the World Championships will also have noted her scathing criticism of the Olympic judges, whom she essentially accused of cheating her out of a placement higher than Yulia Lipnitskaia and Mao. If Ashley skates at Worlds, she can expect the judges there, especially the ones who also judged in Sochi, to remember these things. It may not be fair nor objective, but judges are human, and Ashley can expect her scores to reflect the judges’ likely bias against her.

What makes Ashley a liability for U.S. Figure Skating, and not just for herself, is that Ashley’s placement at the World Championships, like Gracie’s and Polina’s, will impact how many women skaters the U.S. can send to Worlds in 2015. American officials desperately want to keep that number at three. But a likely bias against Ashley among the judges will make that already difficult task even harder.

As if all this wasn’t enough pressure on her, I believe Ashley can expect a bit of home ice disadvantage. Many Japanese skating fans in attendance in Saitama will likely feel that she’s responsible for keeping Mirai from her rightful place on both the Olympic and World teams. (“Outrage” was the word used in the Japan Times headline after Mirai’s double snub.) This is certainly not fair to Ashley. She didn’t do anything wrong; the ICMS made the selections. Yet it is reality. And Ashley’s palpable sense of entitlement at the Olympics can only harden this feeling that she’s to blame for Mirai’s exclusions. So no one should be surprised to see the Japanese spectators at Worlds give her a polite, yet lukewarm reception. And of course, the judges will notice, too, and be influenced accordingly.

In my opinion, then, here’s an entirely plausible doomsday scenario for the American women at Worlds: With Kim Yu-na retired, a wide-open battle for first place will commence among Sochi gold medalist Adelina Sotnikova, her fellow Russian wunderkind Yulia, Olympic bronze medalist Carolina Kostner of Italy, and home country favorite Mao, who is postponing retirement to end her career on a positive note at home. If they all skate well, a clean-skating Gracie could still wind up settling for fifth place. If we assume Polina repeats her respectable ninth-place showing from Sochi, then the pressure really falls on Ashley. Under international skating rules, Ashley would then need to finish eighth or higher for the U.S. to send three women to skate at the 2015 World Championships. With judges likely to be biased against her, she cannot afford even a single fall, because such an error could very much drop her from the seventh-place position she earned in Sochi down to tenth or lower in Japan. The American women have almost no margin for error, and Ashley has to skate a near-perfect program.

And what if the backlash from international judges goes even further? Ashley’s public pushback could understandably motivate Worlds judges to grade other American skaters more strictly as well. This would be the judges’ way of sending a message to U.S. Figure Skating officials that they need to rein in their skaters’ comments and meme-worthy facial expressions. This would be highly unfair to Gracie, Polina, and company, but in the world of figure skating, agenda-driven scoring has long been a part of the sport.

To keep this from happening, federation officials should replace Ashley with Mirai on the Worlds squad to demonstrate to international judges that they disagree with the way Ashley handled herself, and that implicitly, they’re sorry for her behavior. Giving a healthy Mirai her deserved, earned place on the World team will reduce the risk U.S. Figure Skating is currently taking by keeping Ashley on the squad. That’s another reason to send Mirai to Worlds.

5. U.S. Figure Skating can begin to restore its credibility and fan base. The Snubs have enabled casual fans to peek behind the curtain that hides the federation’s major weaknesses from their view. Many thousands of them have joined hardcore fans and the figure skating community in intense discussions on Facebook, Twitter, and other online forums over the last several weeks. They’ve voiced their dissatisfaction with the team selection process and vented their anger over how the organization has treated Mirai. They’ve vigorously expressed their dismay over the federation’s lack of both transparency and ethnic sensitivity; they’ve decried the conflicts of interest involving corporate sponsors.

But by sending Mirai to the World Championships in Japan, U.S. Figure Skating could begin to show that it’s listening to their voices, and not just responding to their concerns with a wall of … (crickets) … silence. The many fans who found Olympic figure skating this year a rather “blah” experience because of The Snubs will begin to hope that the sport will be cleaner off the ice, not just on it. And federation leaders could begin to restore some of their lost credibility as they give tacit admission to what so many of us have believed since Nationals in Boston – that Mirai earned it.

Come on, U.S. Figure Skating! What are you waiting for?

Please help us show U.S. Figure Skating how important it is to send Mirai to Worlds! If you’re on Twitter, you can retweet this:

**PLEASE RT** Hi @USFigureSkating, please send Mirai to Worlds! Here's why: http://t.co/P8lRwzHy6C on @asiance #MiraiEarnedIt #MiraiToWorlds

— Eugene Hung (@iaurmelloneug) February 26, 2014

Or you can send a brief, respectful email to U.S. Figure Skating President Patricia St. Peter, asking her to do everything she can to send Mirai to Worlds. Her email address is PStPeter@zelle.com.

In addition to writing for Asiance, including the Raising Asian American Daughters blog, Eugene Hung is now serving as the West Coast organizer for the Man Up Campaign, which works globally to mobilize young men as advocates against the violent treatment of women and girls. Chat with him on Twitter via @iaurmelloneug.