Mirai Nagasu - from the skating rink to the dance floor

ABC
Figure skater Mirai Nagasu with her dance partner, Alan Bersten.

WELL, she got her wish. Mirai Nagasu is trading in her blades for high heels as she competes in Dancing With the Stars.

Remember when U.S. Olympic figure skater Mirai Naagasu made a joke about being on Dancing With the Stars? 

She got ripped for joking around when she failed to perform up to her best. She flubbed her triple axel in the individual free skate to help the U.S. team get a bronze medal. Her historic performance raised hope for a medal in the individual performances.

Back in February, in the heat of the Olympic competition, she failed to medal in the individual competition. She wasn't alone. All three of the U.S. women's figure skater performed below expectations. Mirai was unable to repeat the triple axel. She ended up in 10th place.

The 25-year old Southern Californian was disappointed and tired and in one interview, she quipped that the Olympics was just an audition for Dancing With the Stars “because I want to be a star.”

It looks like Mirai gets the last laugh.

“I think I’ve literally cried my way through these Olympic Games,” she tells PEOPLE in an interview one day after her final performance in Gangneung, South Korea. “It’s been an experience that I will never forget.”

This season of the popular dance competition will feature all athletes. Mirai will be competing agains the likes of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Tonya Harding, Johnny Damon and fellow Winter Olympians: snow boarder Jamie Anderson, luger Chris Mazdzer, figure skater and close fiend Adam Rippon and more

"Since it's so competitive, we're trying to hit the ground running," said Alan Bersten, Mirai's partner and dance coach. "We're not even doing a Week 1 dance, we're doing a Week 7 dance," which will be the salsa.

While Mirai admits she's a little uncomfortable on the dance floor but she is ready to be a dance champion.

"I fall all the time, but I get back up and keep going," she said.

Dancing with the Stars: Athletes premieres Monday, April 30 on ABC, 8 p.m. ET.______________________________________________________________________________

2018 Winter Olympics: Final thoughts on the Asian American athletes

INSTAGRAM / TINA CHEN

Figure skater Karen Chen, center, poses with Alex and Maia Shibutani.

THE SIGHT of so many Asian/American athletes representing the United States at the Olympics should have an impact for years to come.

Hopefully, Americans and mainstream media learned some lessons along the way to PyongChang, South Korea where the Olympics were held this last two weeks.

The view of what an "American" looks like took a hit but not without creating a few "opps" moments by those reporting on the Olympics. 

The winter sports athletes are still overwhelmingly white but this year, there are signs that  Team USA is inching towards diversity. Nonwhite athletes (11 black Olympians and 12 Asian/American Olympians) account for just under 9 percent of the American team, There are also 108 women, about 45 percent of the team and two openly gay malle athletes, according to team data. That might not sound like much but it's a great improvement from four years ago.

That might not wound like much, but it is still an improvement over past teams and should be noted as a step forward, no matter how small.

Winter sports have been dominated by European countries where most of the sports originated. That tradition and the fact that the cost and isolated locations of the venues have further separated the sports from much of America. 

“I think it sends out a strong message when there is a team that has a good cross-section of ethnicities,” Elana Meyers Taylor, a 2014 Olympic silver medalist in bobsled, told USA TODAY. “If there is a child watching and they don’t see anyone that looks like them, it creates a little mental barrier.”

Seeing the Asian/American skaters and snowboarders during the Winter Olympics will inspire some young people to compete in those sports.

Mirai Nagasu right after she did her history-making triple axel.

When figure skater Mirai Nagasu did her historic triple axel, something no other American female skater has ever done, New York Times writer Bari Weiss couldn't help but celebrate on Twitter. Retweeting a video of Nagasu’s jump, Weiss wrote in a now-deleted tweet: “Immigrants: They get the job done.”

People were quick to point out that the 18-year old was born and raised in California, a child of immigrants. Critics said that Weiss  was falling into the trap of most Americans by "othering" Nagasu because Asian/Americans are seen as perpetual foreigners, no matter how many generations they are removed from their immigrant ancestors.

Nagasu was also central to mini-controversy when she finished her long program in figure skating, an even where she finished a disappointing 10th. She gave a press conference in which she said some comments that were interpreted as belittling her teammates when competing in skating's team competition.

“I would like to be on Dancing With the Stars because I want to be a star,” Nagasu, who stuck her triple axel in the team event, said. “I made history here by landing the first triple axel for a U.S. lady at the Olympics so I think that is a big deal. I hope I get more opportunities to let my personality just shine.

“It’s been a long three weeks, and we got here and got to walk in the opening ceremonies and then I saved the team event, with Adam (Rippon) and the Shibutanis,” Nagasu said. “We were about to lose our medals so today I put my medal in my pocket and said ‘Mirai you have done your job already and this is all just icing.’

Later, she apologized profusely in a People magazine interview.

“I feel really, really awful about the things I said,” she said though tears, according to People. “I feel bad that people think that I was throwing my teammates under the bus because I never wanted to come off that way.

Apparent free spirits Filipino/American snowboarder Hailey Langland and Korean/American gold medal winner Chloe Kim, both 17, reminded everyone what it is like to be an American teenager enjoyed good press for their back stories and accomplishments.

Although Langland failed to qualify for a medal, the experience prepared her for the upcoming World Championships and she's young enough to get ready for the 2012 Olympics in Beijing, China as she noted in her Twitter account"

haileylanglandMy 2018 #Olympics journey is officially over. So happy to have come out to Pyeongchang and competed with the best girls in the biz. Another huge thanks to all my friends, family, and sponsors who supported me. Maybe I will be lucky enough to return in 4 years for some redemption. 

Hailey's pal Chloe Kim has exploded onto the American consciousness with her gold medal run in the halfpipe snowboarding competition. She's on the cover of Sports Illustrated and was interviewed on the Jimmy KImmel show.

RELATED:

• Shib Sibs skate to a bronze 
• Chloe Kim emerges as a star; breaks down stereotypes
• Speed skaters hopes melt on ice
• 12 Asian American athletes represent the United States 

Except for speedskater JR Celski and ice dancer Madison Chock, both of whom are in their mid-20s, all the other Asian/American athletes are all so young including, ice dance bronze medalists Alex and Maia Shibutani, figure skater Karen Chen, 18, 17 men's figure skaters Nathan Chen, 18, and Vincent Zhou, 17 should be contending for a medal, speedskaters Aaron Tran, 17 and Thomas Hong, 20. They all could possibly return along with Kim, Langland and Nagasu four years from now in Beijing.

Tran posted on Instagram:

• aarontran96My first Winter Olympic Games, Pyeongchang 2018, has been a life-changing experience for me in such an enormous number of ways. It has opened many doors for me and I will use this opportunity to propel myself forward and to best set myself up to become the best I can be, mentally and physically, in the next Games to come! #pyeongchang2018#TeamUSA #beijing2022

Team USA's efforts to get the best athletes to compete in the winter sports means the sports federations will have to reach out to the rest of America. America in turn, may have to change their definition of what an "American" looks like.

Representation does matter. Many of the Asian/American skaters on today's team say they were inspired by seeing Tai Babilonia, Kristi Yamaguchi, Michelle Kwan and Apolo Ono compete on the ice.

"Seeing someone like you who's accomplishing things that you aspire to, means a lot," says Yaamaguchi, whose own role model was Tiffany Chin, who skated in the 1984 Olympics.

Somewhere in the U.S., there may be a young girl or boy who watched the 12 Asian/American Olympians, who said to himself, "Hey, that could be me."

CORRECTION: Earlier versions of this post confused a lutz with an axel.
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2018 Winter Olympics: Mirai Nagasu jumps into history

After her performance, American skater Mirai Nagasu let out a scream of joy.

HISTORY was made when Mirai Nagasu did what no other American woman has done before.

Nagasu, 24, became the first U.S. female figure skater — and third woman ever — to nail a triple axel during an Olympic competition.

Only two other female skaters have been able to do that jump in Olympic competition - Midori Ito of Japan landed the jump in 1992 and another Japanese skater, Mao Asada, repeated the feat in Vancouver in 2010.

The Californian was competing in the women’s free skate in the team event when she landed the difficult jump. Nagasu received a score of 137.53 for the routine — a personal best.  

"I don't know if you could tell -- it was more something I could feel -- but to nail it the way I did, even out of the corner of my eye I could see my teammates standing out of excitement," Nagasu said to the Associated Press. "And at that moment I wanted to stop the music and get off, but I still had my whole program ahead of me, and to complete the performance to the best of my ability is really exciting."

Her performance helped the U.S. figure skating team to a bronze medal behind Canada and the Olympians from Russia.

In 2014, she was third in the national championships but was left off the team when the U.S. Figure Skating Federation chose fourth-place finisher Ashley Wagner, based on her overall season's performance.

Watch her historic performance below: 

With the team competition out of the way, the skaters will be concentrating on their individual events. Nagasu will join the U.S.'s Karen Chen and Bradie Tennel to compete in the women's individual event.

Despite her historic jump, Nagasu finished behind Alana Zageteva of Russia, who had -- by far -- the highest score among the women's figure skaters in the team competition.

CORRECTION: Early versions of this post misspelled Marai Nagasu's name.

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TGIF Feature:: 2018 Winter Olympics - 12 Asian Americans on Team USA

Hailey Langland will compete in Snowboard Big-Air at the Winter Olympics.

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT!

AT MY AGE, I think it's OK for me to descibel the young Asian/American olympians as kids.

That's not meant to be an insult or to denigrate the hours upon hours of training they put into their sport, that's just a reminder, no matter the outcome of their efforts, they are among the best the United States has to offer, they're just teenagers or young adults who grew up listening to the same music, watching the same TV shows, reading the same news stories, getting basically the same classroom education as all of America's children.

But ... they are special! They'll be competing at the Winter Games being held in PyeongCheng, South Koreah which starts Fridiay, Feb. 9.

In order to reach the level of athleticism that they will be competing at, they've had to be disciplined, dedicated and willing to sacrifice their time that they might have used to do what us ordinary mortals do: make friends, go on dates, party all night, overindulge in junk food.

For the next couple of weeks, they will put everkything on the line as they compete against the best-of-the-best athletes from other countries - other kids. They will soar, twirl, race to represent their country - our country.

NBC broadcast these commercials featuring Nathan Chen and Chloe Kim - both of whom are expected to medal - to promote their coverage of the Games:

Since most people of color come from warmer climes, it is not surprising that the winter sports are dominated by people who grew up in snow country. Scandinavian countries, Germany, France, Italy, Canada traditionally do well in the Winter Games. Throw in the U.S.A,, too, because we pour in a lot of money into those developing athletes.

And let's face it: You won't find whole lot of bobsled runs, ice rinks or ski jumps in most big city neighborhoods. Accessibility to those venues is limited and the cost to go skiing is beyond a lot of people. Therefore, the winter sports don't have a whole lot of diversity.

RELATED: Filipino/American skier represents the Philippines

Team USA numbers 243 athletes, which is the largest team any nation has sent to a Winter Olympics. Of that group,  only 10 are African/American — 4 percent —  12 are Asian/American.

“We’re not quite where we want to be,” said Jason Thompson, the USOC’s director of diversity and inclusion. “. . . I think full-on inclusion has always been a priority of Team USA. I think everybody’s always felt it should represent every American.”

That's an understatement. The Summer Olympic team the USA sent to Brazil two years ago, of the 550 athletes, 23 percent (or 125) of the athletes were African/American. 

Asian/Americans on Team USA

Men's Figure Skating:

• Nathan Chen
• Vincent Zhou

Women's Figure Skating

• Karen Chen
• Mirai Nagasu

Ice Dance Pairs

• Maia Shibutani/Alex Shibutani
• Madison Chock with partner Evan Bates

Speed Skaters

• JR Celski
• Thomas Hong
• Aaron Tran

Snowboarding Half-pipe

• Chloe Kim

Snowboarding Big Air

• Hailey Langland

The opening ceremony for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, takes place 6-8 a.m. EST on Friday. (Feb. 9)  Don't worry, the channels will undoubtedly replay the ceremonies later in the day.
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