Welcome to the forums! It would have been great to see Mao win Sochi, but I think having no pressure in the LP helped her skate freer. I would have liked to see Michelle win in Nagano, too, but I'm not sure if the Nationals program would have done it. She did win the US judge's ordinal in Nagano, so I'm not sure which two of Tara's judges she could have flipped given the difficulty of Lipinski's programs. 5.8's across the board for technical merit would have done it for Kwan, but I'm not sure that the judges wouldn't have left room for the others even had she skated like she did at Nationals. We'll never know for sure.
Thanks!
In my heart, those were the best outcomes. I still think the Nagano outcome was debatable.
I wouldn't say Mao had no pressure before the LP. In her recent conference, she admitted feeling a lot of pressure after the SP because she felt she couldn't end her career and go back to Japan like that. It's also not common or easy to give your best performance after a meltdown. Kostner wasn't able to do salvage her first two Olympics in her freeskates.
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