Skating 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. Even after botching her jumps, she finished the program with the same calm she had earlier, a nice complement to the serenity of her “Dr. Zhivago” music.

“It’s obviously not the best that I can skate,” Czisny said. “The first part of it started out well. Then I had a couple mistakes, and I just tried to stay in the present and try my best.”

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.

“This is a learning experience for worlds,” Czisny said. “I think I can take what I did at this competition, learn from it and use it to improve at worlds.”

She’ll have to, because Mao Asada, Kim Yu-na and Carolina Kostner are all battle-hardened, too.

Flatt’s program was more technically ambitious. She attempted one of the few triple-triple combinations, but the second triple toe loop jump was downgraded. She also did a triple lutz-double toe-double loop combination late in her program, giving her big bonus points.

But there was no life to her program. She skated so slowly, she looked like a car about to run out of gas, and none of her bubbly personality came through in her skating.

“It wasn’t my best,” Flatt acknowledged.

She’ll have another chance at it at worlds.

“I’m very excited just to go to worlds in general,” Flatt said. “Yes, I will feel a little bit of pressure to make sure we do have three spots at the Olympics, but I’m definitely not going to focus on that. I’m going to focus on doing better programs than I did at nationals.”

More on Alissa Czisny  |  Rachael Flatt

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