by iceymoon » Fri Feb 21, 2014 9:53 am
Lol. Asada Mao had an amazing free skate performance, even though she knew she didn't have a chance to medal coming from 16th place unless a lot of people messed up majorly after her. She most likely went in wanting to redeem herself after her short program, and show what she is capable of at what might be her last Olympic performance.
~SPOILERS ahead if you're waiting for the prime time coverage~
Mao remained in the #1 spot after the first, second, and third group's went up, but the final group was made up of the girls that scored the highest during the short program (and were likely to score high again for the free skate). It was basically a given that she wasn't going to retain the top spot or even medal because her short program put her too many points behind. The skaters in the last group were: Yulia Lipnitskaya (Russia), Gracie Gold (USA), Ashley Wagner (USA), Carolina Kostner (Italy), Adolina Sotnikova (Russia) and Kim Yuna (S. Korea), the last three having had the top three short program performances. Yulia was just the first one in this group to skate, and so was the first one to score higher than Mao due to having been ahead of her in the short program (her free skate score was lower than Mao's). The one viewed most likely to win was Kim Yuna, and if the scores seemed biased at all it was to Adolina, though even if she hadn't scored so high she probably still would have won gold because she had more triples in her program than Yuna (and both of them landed all their jumps).
However, Mao rose up to the pressure and delivered for her fans, for Japan, and for herself, and people will not forget her performance anytime soon. She earned her way from 16th to 6th place (quite a feat) and who knows, maybe the difficulties she faced here will give her the motivation to return for the next winter Olympics.