Meissner confident heading into world championships

Posted on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 9:09 pm

From: USA Today

After taking multiple spills in her two biggest events this season, Kimmie Meissner has a new coach. Now she’s looking for a change in results at this week’s World Figure Skating Championships in Gothenburg, Sweden.
“I feel very confident that I’m a lot better, and I feel a lot better,” says the 18-year-old from Bel Air, Md. “So we’ll just have to wait and see, and hopefully everybody else can see what I feel.”

Meissner won the world championship in 2006. But in January at U.S. nationals, she fell three times in her free skate and placed seventh. Last December, she fell three times in her free skate at the Grand Prix final in Italy and finished sixth (and last).

Following nationals, she left her longtime coach, Pam Gregory, and her training rink at the University of Delaware to work under Richard Callaghan in Fort Lauderdale

“I knew obviously that I wasn’t skating at the level that I know I can. I just felt like I really needed to change,” she says. “It was a hard decision, but I feel like I made the right one.”

Callaghan, who has coached six-time U.S. champion and 1996 world champion Todd Eldredge and 1998 Olympic champion Tara Lipinski, says Meissner is a self-starter.

“I didn’t know Kimmie, so I was really happy to see that she’s very disciplined and trains herself,” says Callaghan.

“As far as skating …we tweaked some jumps. We definitely have worked on the second triple (in a triple-triple combination) to get it higher, which can produce a cleaner jump.

“And we’ve worked a little bit on the timing of one of the other jumps, the flip. …She accepts whatever information that I give her. She works on it, and it changes. So I’m feeling really positive about the event coming up.”

The women’s short program is Wednesday in Sweden. Bebe Liang and Ashley Wagner also will represent the USA.

January’s U.S. champion Mirai Nagasu, 14, is too young to compete at senior worlds. The same is true for the second and fourth place finishers at nationals.

How well Meissner and the other two U.S. women skate this week will determine whether the USA gets three spots in the 2009 women’s world championships in Los Angeles.

Does that put extra pressure on Meissner?

“I think I’ve taken the pressure off myself,” she says. “I feel like we have a very strong team going in there, and we all know that we have to be towards the top in order to secure the three positions. I think that we will.”