BOSTON – Here we are, just past the halfway point of the four-year Winter Olympic cycle, actually closer now to the 2018 Pyeongchang Games than to Sochi, and wouldn’t you know, not one but two American women are poised to rise to the top of the heap in international figure skating?
Gracie Gold and Ashley Wagner are women among girls, and if they skate as cleanly Saturday night as they did in Thursday’s short program, and the Russian sympathizers on the judging panel don’t get carried away, we will see something that hasn’t happened in 10 years:
An American woman (or two) will win a medal at a world championships or an Olympic Games in the winter sport we still care more about than any other: women’s figure skating.