By Maura Sullivan-Hill, Team FSO staff writer
\nHeader photo by Robin Ritoss<\/p>\n
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LAS VEGAS, NEV– Mariah Bell earned her first Grand Prix title at 2020 Skate America in Las Vegas on Saturday, Oct. 24, but she wasn\u2019t entirely satisfied with her performance.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI try not to look too much at outcomes, more how I feel. I\u2019m walking away from this performance a little disappointed, but I look back at [2020] Nationals and that was a program that I was really proud of,\u201d Bell said. \u201cSo at the end of the day, regardless of the result, I want to feel really great about what I did, which I mostly do today. That\u2019s really what I focus more on.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Bell fell on her final jump, a triple lutz, which was also downgraded to a double, but earned Level 4s on two spins and her step sequence in her free skate to a selection of ABBA songs.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt was a little shaky and I felt a little bit stiff, but I was excited to get my long program out in a competition setting. And I still had a really great time,\u201d Bell said.<\/p>\n
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The 3.19-point lead she built up in the short program, where she landed a triple flip-triple toe combination, helped her hang on for the gold.<\/p>\n
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Bradie Tennell won her second consecutive silver medal at Skate America. She won the free skate, despite three jumps receiving the new \u201cq\u201d Grade of Execution deduction, for being landed a quarter turn short, and an underroration call on the second jump of her opening triple lutz-triple toe combination.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI had a couple minor injuries that prevented me from jumping fully right up until about last Wednesday,\u201d Tennell said. So I was doing my programs without any combos for awhile\u2026And I also had some boot issues. I got new skates a couple weeks ago and the sole was warped\u2026so I\u2019m in new skates here as well. Taking all of that into account, I\u2019m really happy with what I put out today. Obviously, there\u2019s room to grow and I\u2019m very excited to go home and really start training.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Home is now Colorado Springs, where she relocated this summer to train with Tom Zakrajsek. Zakrajsek was coaching a number of skaters at this event, including bronze medalist Audrey Shin, Pooja Kalyan, and Paige Rydberg. Rydberg spoke highly of the training environment in the mixed zone after her performance in the free skate.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI would say honestly, since Bradie joined, we\u2019ve really gotten super close. We know each other from Chicago and competing against each other. It\u2019s nice to have somebody like Bradie, a National Champion and Olympian, [there]. We have this really cool teammate friendship. Everybody else that I train with, they all work so hard. Like Audrey, she works so hard every day, so to see her third after the short was awesome as well. It\u2019s great to see everybody\u2019s hard work pay off,\u201d said Rydberg, who finished 7th<\/sup><\/span> here in her Grand Prix debut with two solid performances.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Rydberg and Tennell\u2019s training mate Shin, was the youngest ladies\u2019 competitor at age 16 and earned the bronze medal in her Grand Prix debut. She skated two clean performances, conquering a case of nerves after landing in podium placement after the short.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m so thankful I got to compete here at Skate America,\u201d Shin said. \u201cI felt a little nervous before I stepped onto the ice today, but I\u2019m glad that I landed everything and I put out a good performance today.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mariah Bell earned her first Grand Prix title at 2020 Skate America in Las Vegas on Saturday, Oct. 24, but she wasn\u2019t entirely satisfied with her performance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19637,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19634"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19636,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19634\/revisions\/19636"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}