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SAN JOSE — Ashley Wagner did not hold back.
Not in her crucial free skate at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, and not in her interview session with reporters afterwards.
Four years after controversially being named to the U.S. Olympic Team despite finishing only fourth in the women’s competition at the national championships, the 26-year-old finished fourth once again at SAP Center on Friday night — then blasted the judging that is likely to keep her out of the 2018 Pyeongchang Games in South Korea.
“I am absolutely furious,” she said.
Wagner is doubtful to make the three-woman figure skating team for Pyeongchang, based on the criteria that U.S. Figure Skating said its selection committee was using to determine the team late Friday night. The names will be announced early Saturday, and Wagner used a fusillade of criticism to lobby for a spot on the Olympic team.
“At the end of the day, this is how I feel,” she said. “I feel like I need to stick up for myself, and I think I delivered when I needed to. But I want to be on that Olympic team, and I’m really mad that I’m in this position again.”
Rather than automatically send the top three nationals finishers to the Olympics, U.S. Figure Skating is using its selection committee to evaluate each skater’s body of work over the past year in deciding who should go.
And that’s a problem for Wagner, whose recent pedigree doesn’t measure up to third-place Karen Chen of Fremont — the only realistic candidate to be bumped.
Chen was the defending national champion, finished fourth at the world championships last year and beat Wagner again on Friday. Results at the most recent worlds and nationals are two of the three most important criteria for the selection committee, along with results at the ISU Grand Prix final, for which neither skater qualified. Topping Chen would have given Wagner a much stronger argument.
Specifically, Wagner was critical of the “program component scores” that judges use to assess the more artistic elements of a program, such as “performance” and “composition.” In the short program and free skate combined — Wagner was fifth in the short program — Wagner’s scores were lower than Chen’s by almost exactly the amount by which Chen beat her overall.
“I know when I go and I lay it down — and I absolutely left one jump on the table — but for me to put out two programs that I did at this competition as solid as I skated, to get those scores, I am furious,” Wagner said. “And I think deservedly so. I am a performer, and that second mark [for program components] is just not there.
“I am absolutely OK with them being strict on my rotations,” she added. “That’s what I think U.S. Figure Skating should demand from their judges. But you know, it has to be across the board, and I don’t necessarily feel like it’s been that way at this event. So we’ll see how things pan out.”
Wagner was skating to her long-awaited “La La Land” program, which she initially scrapped at the beginning of the season. But she returned to it last month, and expressed confidence that she made the right choice, despite her marks and under-rotating on her triple lutz that cost her valuable points.
Nevertheless, Wagner had to head to bed angry.
“Whatever happens from this event, I delivered this program, and I’m proud of what I did,” she said. “And I have no doubts … I don’t feel like I left anything out there that I really could have actively changed today. Whatever happens, happens.
“At this point it’s up to the selection committee to see what I have done,” she said. “I don’t like this position that I’m in. You can always say that I put myself in this spot, but I think I had some help getting here, too.”
Then, Wagner was asked directly if she deserves to be on the Olympic team.
“Yes,” she said.
