Gracie Gold 2.0

Gracie Gold knows that you're wondering how this is all going to pan out, her long-awaited return to competitive figure skating. But to yearn to skip to the end is to miss the purpose of what she is doing altogether.
 
The journey is Gracie's story.
 
"I didn't want to look back in five years and think, 'What if I had tried to skate again?' I didn't want a fear of failure to cheat me out of something really amazing," Gold, 24, said. "That was what started this whole thing; I just wanted to try. I just wanted to see what I could do, what was possible.
 
"It's been quite the wild ride."
 
Quite the wild ride, indeed.
 
After a three-year absence, the two-time U.S. champion and 2014 Olympic team event bronze medalist will return next month to the 2020 Toyota U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Greensboro, North Carolina.
 
This time, though, it's not with a certain color medal on her mind, but instead with a focus on continuing that ride and showing the skating world she deserves her spot on the ice.
 
"I'm not as much outcome-focused as I have been in other seasons," Gold said. "Part of the success is just trying to come back. Trying to see if it was possible. Even making something kind of happen. I think we've [achieved] that. The next step is trying to produce quality skating at a competitive level.
 
"I just want to show – it sounds weird to say, but – I want to be like, 'I'm back!' I'm an athlete. I know how to skate, and there is some hope [on the ice] for future seasons. I want to be competitive again."
 
The real journey begins
There really is no "it all started when" in the story of Gold's downfall and subsequent comeback, but the 2016 World Championships certainly played a major role. Gold, in first place after the short program in Boston, fell on her opening triple Lutz-triple toe loop combination in a free skate that didn't have room for any mistakes. She finished fourth.
 
"I'm ashamed with how I skated," she told reporters after the free skate.
 
Within a year, Gold stopped working with famed coach Frank Carroll, moving to Michigan and joining coach Marina Zoueva's rink, far from sunny southern California, which had been home for four years. But the spiral had already begun: In her four competitions during the 2016-17 season, Gold failed to make the podium.
 
When she arrived for U.S. Figure Skating's annual Champs Camp in August 2017, she was out of shape, mentally frayed and – for all intents and purposes – depressed. After a candid conversation with a Team USA doctor about her mental and emotional health, it was recommended she check into a treatment facility.
 
Gold voluntarily began in-patient therapy in Arizona on Aug. 31, 2017. She'd spend 45 days there, addressing the issues that had built up for so many years: striving for perfection, unfair expectations, poor communication with those around her and – as she describes it – disordered eating.
 
"I would isolate myself physically and emotionally from the rest of the world," Gold said. "It was just me and skating. There's this quote: 'Isolation isn't safety, it's death.' It's so true. Now, I'm communicating with everyone. Reaching out to my support system. Things like that have kept me going in a healthy way."
 
Earning her way to Greensboro
The journey, as most skating fans have observed from afar, has certainly not been easy.
 
After completing her in-patient program, Gold spent time at an Arizona rink while she participated in out-patient treatment for three months. In the spring of 2018, she moved to Aston, Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia, to train at IceWorks with coaches Alex Zahradnicek, Pasha Filchenkov and Vincent Restencourt.
 
Last fall, Gold attempted a comeback at the high-level Grand Prix in Russia, Rostelecom Cup, only to withdraw after the short program.
 
"It was a difficult decision to make," Gold tweeted at the time, "but ultimately I need to put my mental health first and focus on the big picture. Looking forward, I need to keep improving both my physical and mental condition. I thought checking into treatment last fall was the most difficult thing I've ever done, but skating my short program last night might have topped [that]. I do not want to undo the tremendous progress I've made in these last few months."
 
This season, one of U.S. Figure Skating's most-heralded stars had to start from zero,
qualifying for the U.S. Championships via the Regional Challenges and Sectional Finals pipeline.
 
"Sectionals was all about surviving, so that battle is done," said Gold, who rated her free skate from the Eastern Sectional Singles Final last month with a "meh." She added: "I'm working on making everything cleaner, crisper, sharper. I want higher-level transitions."
 
To do that, one of her closest friends, four-time U.S. champion and two-time Olympian Jeremy Abbott, choreographed both of her programs. Through it all, Abbott has been a thoughtful listener and familiar collaborator.
 
"Jeremy is so good at what he does. It's been nice having a friend-slash-mentor" [to work with], Gold said. "I knew that he would be willing to put in the extra hours that I would need to accomplish even a fraction of what Jeremy could do."
 
Though she is no longer working with Restencourt, Zahradnicek and Filchenkov remain reliable, constant forces for Gold, who said her skating took a positive turn this past July. In the lead-up to Greensboro, her training process has been "copy and paste."
 
"We aren't doing anything wild," she said, "but it's all a process: How many jumps am I doing today? In what order? Run-throughs in each session, and [then] being able to do that day after day after day. Even if it's an off-day, it's seeing what we can come up with."
 
And then always: One more free skate on Friday afternoons to test herself.
 
"She wants greatness in this sport," Zahradnicek said. "She wants to leave her mark in skating. This comeback is incredible because what she's been through and how she's been able to change her life completely. She's happy now. She's hard-working. She's at the rink every day, even her days off. Her determination is incredible. You can tell it's no joke with her."
 
'Support is everything'
The journey has brought her here, but she's not done yet. Most of all, she's still learning – about herself and about the process.
 
"Support is everything," Gold said about those close to her, including mom Denise, twin sister Carly and longtime Chicago-area friend Jason Brown. "I had people in my life when things got really dark, but I felt like I didn't. I felt like we weren't close enough that I would tell them what was going on. In this 'take two' of my skating career, I'm really trying to reach out and connect and work with that support system both inside and outside of the skating world. That's really, really important to me."
 
Life in Aston is pretty simple: It's skating. She coaches a few students, travels to teach occasional weekend seminars and continues to work hard on and off the ice to find her best in this 2.0 version of her career.
 
Gold doesn't go online much, but if she does, it's to connect with people who have reached out – in a positive way.
 
"People DM me on Instagram. A lot of times the message has nothing to do with skating," she said. "It is really easy when someone is skating well to say, 'Oh, my god, I love you! Your triple Lutz is amazing!' But that's not personal. This [type of] support is different. I have a lot of people who will write a novel in my DM. Comparing stories, saying, 'When you said this in this interview it spoke to me on this level.' It feels more personal. A deeper level of support. That's really been wonderful."
 
And while Gold has enjoyed the journey, appreciated the support and grown through it all, she is determined to bring her best when her name is announced inside the Greensboro Coliseum for the ladies' short program.
 
Afterall, she's Gracie Gold, isn't she?
 
"We want her to step onto the ice [at U.S. Championships] and skate like she does at IceWorks," Filchenkov said.
 
Zahradnicek added: "I want for her to feel like she's at home on the ice. This is where she belongs. I know the crowd is going to be behind her; everyone is going to feel happy for her to be back. We just want her to skate with freedom and happiness."
 
A freedom and happiness that Gold hopes translates to the fierceness she is known for.
 
"I want to come out and be athletic. I want to be in the zone," she said. "I want to skate like I do in training and skate like I deserve to be at nationals and I'm not just there because of my name, or because it's a charity event. To come out like, 'Oh, I'm here to play.'
 
"This is a real thing. I know how to skate. From Regionals, meh. Sectionals, mehhh. But nationals? I want to show that we're on the way. On the way not just to being a skater who competes, but a competitive skater. At a high level. I want to challenge myself and push the envelope.
 
"I mean business. I want to be on my A-game. That's what we're looking for."