Well, Mirai said in the interview, according to the icenetwork article, that she was happy just to land the triples in her practices this week, which she wasn't doing before! So, she must have been having some major jump problems for a while. Aside from her opening 3Z, all her triples and one of her doubles (the 2R in the 3R-2R) looked obviously under-rotated even without slow-motion. Actually, the 2R in her 3R-2R has always looked under-rotated to me, including at last National's, and she has never been penalized until now. I was wondering how long she was going to get away with it. Her grow spurt really has set her jumps back, and exacerbated problems she already had before.
I don't think too much can be blamed on the ankle injury specifically (though lost training time and momentary distraction can be a general problem), because while it might cause her to lose balance or get scratchy on landings (which she didn't do), it shouldn't really make her under-rotate in the air (which she did a lot). If it's a matter of not being able to use that right foot as usual on take-off to get sufficient height, then it shouldn't affect her jumps that doesn't depend on that ankle, like the 3S, and maybe also not the 3R. I really feel like it's more a matter of growth spurt combined with technique issues. I voiced my wish last season that she would go to another coach to fix her jumps, and my worry that it would be hard to switch away from Charlene Wong with all the apparent success. But she had falls or downgrades in almost every competition last season despite her success, and it was something that would come back to haunt her more when she started growing more, not to mention encountering stricter senior level international tech panels/judges.
I think Charlene Wong was great for her in terms of getting some confidence and mental toughness, which helped to transform Mirai from someone who fell or popped jumps frequently to suddenly a national champion. But I don't think Charlene is the right person to really help Mirai with the jump techniques. It's true that Mirai doesn't jump quite as high or rotate quite as fast as she used to with her thinner smaller body, but she still has good height and I'm sure she can get her rotations tighter/faster, too.
The worst that can happen is if Mirai started to lose confidence and heart like Kimmie, if the jump problems were to continue. It may seem unimaginable for Mirai now, but I remember not so long ago when I used to think, Wow, Kimmie is such a tough cookie mentally -- she is so "on" and never falters with one jump after the next, and always pulls through despite whatever problems she's having. It's hard to believe now that this was the mental image I had of Kimmie.
And I LOVED MK's spirals. Didn't she start the whole inside edge to outside edge (or something like that lol) trend in spirals? But yeah, hers were the best.
