Mirai Uses Olympic Disappointment for Motivation
- Thread starter samson
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Oh god no. No-one should ever be with Zakrasjek. Ever.
No, it shows to me that she is not as motivated as she claims to be.
Evgeni Plushenko left home at 11 to go to St Petersburg and train.
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- Mar 8, 2006
To reach the top level of the sport you have to sacrifice and move away from home. Every top skater does it, usually before they were 18. Mirai is a grown woman and should go where the coaching is.
Let's see, Gold moved from the Chicago area to train, I think at the Toyota center in LA with Frank Carroll. Wagner moved to LA and trains with Arutynyan at the East West Center in LA. But Mirai, who has always lived in LA, needs to move away from LA to go where there there are coaches, even though there is a plethora of rinks and probably a hundred coaches in the LA area??????
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- Feb 19, 2014
Didn't the entire Gold clan move cross-country for Gracie and Carly to train with Carroll?
I'd imagine Gracie had more support than Mirai does in terms of moving to train.
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- Mar 8, 2006
Gracie and Carly are younger than Mirai. I just can't shake the feeling that she's not as serious as we want her to be.
It's skaters like Mirai that make me wish we still had a thriving pro circuit. Regardless of how she performs in future ISU competitions, she would have been fantastic in Pro competitions and shows where she could have really showed her personality.
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- Nov 19, 2013
I believe that for a time during the last quad, Mirai's mother was ill and that was part of the reason she didn't want to relocate. Maybe somebody else remembers more details about this situation?
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- Dec 21, 2011
No indeed, Gracie was the SAME age when she moved to train with Frank as Mirai was when she did not move. Perhaps Gracie would not have moved/had her parents permission to move either if they were not wealthy enough to go with her and buy a new house there, and instead had a restaurant to run that she had to bus tables at. IMO to compare Gracie's situation to Mirai's is not entirely fair. It is very obvious that they have far greater financial resources than the Nagasus.
:thumbsup:
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And yet the Nagasus can afford for Mirai to fly to Japan to work with coaches there...
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- Sep 17, 2011
I'll just repost this quote from Frank Carroll in an article after 2011 Worlds. Interesting that both of them mentioned it.
They are only two years younger than Mirai.
Are you saying that Frank moved to Palm Springs to get away from Mirai? If not, how did he leave Mirai more than she left him? She was the one who chose not to continue with him.
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- Dec 21, 2011
1. This is two years later and I believe Mirai said publically that Mura was subsidizing her stay there.
2. My main point wasn't really about money (though I maintain it is obvious the Gold's are in a different financial bracket/situation than the Nagasus). My main point was that (a) Mirai and Gracie were the same age when they made decisions about Carroll, even though Miral is older now) and (b) the nature of the choice facing them was not identical or IMO even similar.
Mirai's choice was do I want to leave my family, and leave them in a situation that will be difficult financially and (with her mom's cancer) emotionally to train with Frank, and live with strangers there. Gracie's choice is do I want to move with my mom and sister into a fab new beach house property and train with Frank Carroll. Maybe if Miran had had the option to move with her mom into a beach front property and not had any financial concerns or obligations, her choice would have been different. I think it's hard to dispute that Gracie's choice was on some level an easier one, or at least a different one with different considerations and drawbacks.
Frank moved from Lake Arrowhead to Palm Springs For business or personal reasons I am not aware of, leaving Mirai with a one way commute of 2 hours instead of one hour. She continued to train with Frank in the 2011-2012 season at Palm Springs, and although well prepared for nationals in San Jose (she looked terrific in practice), she skated poorly in both SP and FS leading to a 7th place finish. Frank, who I believe was very surprised at this poor performance, reportedly told Mirai, it was not working out. He would continue to take her as a student, if she would agree to move to Palm Springs. If money was a problem, he would find a family for her to live with at minimal cost. Mirai was just turning 19 at the time, and reportedly Mrs. Nagasu didn't want her daughter moving away from home, whether for financial reasons or bacause she wasn't mature enough or because the parents wanted parental control could all be reasons. So Frank apparently did give her an ultimatum, if he had not done so, Mirai may have continued to commute to Palm Springs and train with Frank. Mirai went with Wendy Olson, who had been recommended by Frank, for a year and Amy Evidente for part of the 2013-14 season, and was largely coachless (with Baranova at the boards for her) in Boston. As soon as Lysacek indicated a possible return for Sochi, Frank relocated to the Toyota Center in LA, which is more in Mirai's backyard. So now we have the irony of Frank training Mirai's competitor at a rink relatively close to Mirai, when in 2012 he would only train Mirai if she moved to Palm Springs. Mirai also trains at the Toyota Center at least part of the time. That is how the story was related in bits here and on FSU. I am sure there are other factors I am not aware of.
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- Sep 10, 2013
Frank lives in Palm Springs, and was coaching in Lake Arrowhead. This is post Lysacek Olympic days. When Evan decided to come back, Frank magically ended up back in LA coaching at Toyota, besides the fact that Lake Arrowhead was closing anyway. So I wouldn't say he "left" Mirai. Mirai couldn't go to Lake Arrowhead. Some things don't work out.
Frank did coach at Lake arrowhead, and then coached at a rink in Palm Springs for at least the 2011-12 season, maybe longer , where as you say, he lived I don't think the ice Castle (Lake Arrowhead) closed until a year ago, but he may have known about the future closing, or just wanted to coach closer to his Palm Springs home. Mirai was a student of Frank at both Lake Arrowhead and Palm Springs. She always complained, when the total commute was 4 hours a day to Palm Springs, she was already tired when she showed up for practice. That may be one of the reasons Frank insisted she relocate. I am saying if Frank didn't insist on her relocating, she would likely have continued the commute to Palm Springs, and would never have made the switch to Wendy Olson for 2012-2013.
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- Apr 8, 2012
Given that Nagasu is ethnically Japanese, it's reasonable to assume that she had relatives to stay with in Japan, not to mention that was meant to be a temporary situation. Different than finding a new place to live permanently and all the costs associated with that.
It isn't apparent at all that Frank gave her an ultimatum. Frank was quoted as saying there was no problem between them and that the two hour drive was too much for her. Frank was basically in the process of retiring when he moved to Palm Springs. The return of Evan and Dennis Ten's sudden rise on the World stage are what caused him to return to full-time coaching in LA--at least according to him, in his interview with TSL. I'll go with what he says instead of speculation.
