CLEVELAND — Alissa Czisny finally lived up to all that potential.
And how.
Czisny won the women’s title at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships on Saturday night, one year after a dismal ninth-place finish had her re-evaluating herself. When the final results were posted, tears filled Czisny’s eyes and a grin spread across her face as longtime coach Julianne Berlin hugged her.
Czisny’s program was far from perfect — she fell on one jump and watered down another. But her elegance and maturity was far superior to the up-and-comers who were supposed to turn nationals into their coming-out party. Czisny finished with 178.06 points, more than four points ahead of reigning world junior champion Rachael Flatt.
Earlier Saturday, Keauna McLaughlin and Rockne Brubaker powered through her bad case of the flu and two errors to win their second straight pairs title, edging newcomers Caydee Denney and Jeremy Bennett. McLaughlin and Brubaker are the first couple to defend their title since Kyoko Ina and John Zimmerman won three straight from 2000-02.
Meryl Davis and Charlie White wrapped up their first ice dance title, overwhelming the rest of the field in the process. No surprise, considering their only competition in the United States is Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto, and the Olympic silver medalists are back home while Agosto recovers from a back injury.
Czisny has long been considered the most beautiful skater in the country. She skates with the beauty of generations gone by, with stunning lines and a smoothness that masks the difficult tricks she’s doing. She almost seems to float across the ice when really her blades are carving it with the precision of a diamond cutter.
And her spins are simply breathtaking, the kind that remind you of that pretty little ballerina in the jewelry box.
But she sabotaged herself time and again, never able to hold it together when the pressure was greatest. At 21, this is her eighth trip to the senior nationals, yet she has just one medal to show for it. Even working with sports psychologists couldn’t help her get out of her own way.
After last year’s debacle, though, Czisny took a long, hard look at what she was doing — and why. She started skating for herself instead of the placements. And a funny thing happened: the results started coming.
Skating dead last in the 23-woman field — a position that surely would have caused a mental meltdown in the past — Czisny took it all in stride. Oh, she wasn’t perfect. She tumbled to the ice on her triple lutz, a jump that had given her trouble in practice all week, and watered down a planned triple toe loop-triple toe combination to a double-double.
But she picked herself back up and finished with the same calm she had earlier, a nice complement to the serenity of her “Dr. Zhivago” music.
What stands out the most watching Czisny, though, is her maturity. The United States has been looking for its next breakout star ever since Michelle Kwan and Sasha Cohen skated away in 2006, and most figured she would be an up-and-comer. Indeed, Flatt, Zhang and Mirai Nagasu, last year’s winner, dominated the junior ranks.
But Czisny put the woman back in women’s figure skating, reminding everyone there’s more to the sport than just jumps.
Czisny’s next test comes in two months, at the world championships in Los Angeles. Results there determine how many spots a country gets at next year’s Vancouver Olympics, and the two U.S. women will have to finish with a combined placement of 13 (fifth and eight, for example) or better to hold onto the three spots the Americans almost always have at the Winter Games.
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