Gracie Gold has an Olympic team event bronze medal, a U.S. title, a Sports Illustrated cover, personal props from Taylor Swift and a sense of still being new on the skating scene, no surprise given no one had heard of her three years ago.
At 19, Gold also believes it is time to show a veteran’s artistry on the ice as she builds toward the 2018 Winter Olympics.
“This is a fresh start on my skating career,” Gold said before her first Grand Prix performance of the season, the Skate America women’s short program Saturday at the Sears Centre in Hoffman Estates.
“This is my last season as a teenager. I have to bring a new level of maturity to my skating each year of this quad.”
In her 19 years, Gold has been a Bostonian, a Missourian, an Illinoisan and now a Californian. Her father has an anesthesiology practice in Springfield, and she trained eight years in the Chicago suburbs until switching coaches before last season and moving to Los Angeles, with her mother and twin sister, to work with Frank Carroll.
The change of scenery clearly agreed with Gold, who looks like she walked out of a Beach Boys song.
“I’m a beach girl,” she said.
But she sensed working with Carroll would not be a day at the beach.
“In my mind, he was just kind of this serious, stoic figure, the legendary Frank Carroll,” she said. “I was definitely intimidated. I didn’t want to disappoint him.
“I found out Frank is so charming and quirky that he can put anyone at ease.”
She didn’t disappoint. Gold won the 2014 U.S. title in a runaway, was fourth at the Olympics and fifth at worlds, unseating Ashley Wagner as the queen of U.S. skating.
“I can’t go into each competition (with the pressure) that maybe I’m the top in the U.S.,” Gold said. “It is definitely exciting, though, being the top in a pretty big country like the U.S. It gives me confidence.”
It has been eight years — a record drought — since a U.S. woman won a medal at the worlds or Olympics.
More Top Picks Are You Feeling Cold Then We Have The Solution For You With The Best 12 Infrared Heater
Three of the skaters who finished ahead of Gold in the Olympics and worlds last year have retired. That should put her in prime position to make the podium at the 2015 worlds, were it not a battalion of talented Russian women.
In the last 11 months, five Russians have finished ahead of Gold in five competitions. Two, Elena Radionova and Elizaveta Tukhtamysheva, also are in the Skate America field.
“I can be in the top (internationally),” Gold said. “There are no more than three Russians per competition so I’m not getting them all at the same time. The technical (level) of these girls is crazy. It’s more of a jumping game.”
Ironically, Gold once was seen as a robotic jumper. At last month’s Nebelhorn Trophy event, where she was second to Tukhtamysheva, Gold used component scores in the free skate to rally from a fall in the short program and pass yet another Russian, Alena Leonova.
“I know I’m a good skater,” Gold said.
Twitter @olyphil