Tarah Kayne and Danny O'Shea do not want to talk about what happened at the 2019 U.S. Championships.
After sitting in first place following their short program, poised to win their second U.S. title and first since 2016, they failed to complete a lift in their free skate, dropping them to fourth place overall.
"Yeah, it's pretty much a terrible thing I never want to talk about again," Kayne joked.
In tears following their long program, Kayne was able to smile as she and O'Shea received their pewter medals, and the duo would go on to finish sixth at the ISU Four Continents Championships in Anaheim, California, earning a personal best score for their short program.
But their performance at the U.S. Championships stung for a long time.
"There are silver linings for a lot of things in life, but it was hard after this one," said O'Shea. "It was one of those things that got us down for a pretty long time. We had to kind of search through and find different joys through skating for a little while."
On the flip side, however, was their short program, which Kayne says went about as well as it could've gone.
"It felt like we went and we did our job," Kayne said. "And that's all any skater wants to do. You want to go out and skate how you know you can. And the short program last year, that was exactly what we came to do that night. There were no surprises. So we obviously felt good about ourselves. Our score reflected how we felt that night, and I think we both felt really comfortable, and that's something that I hope we can bring this year to U.S. Championships as well."
Then came the free skate, which came with one of the worst surprises they could've imagined.
Kayne and O'Shea still can't tell you what happened. They didn't feel any additional pressure having to skate with a lead, and rarely – if ever – miss that element in practice.
"It was an element that we could do 10 times for you right now, and do it 10 out of 10 times," O'Shea said. "But it didn't happen that time. So I think that, if I could go back, I would try and find a way to do it differently, but you can't live in the past. You've got to live in the present and just work on doing what we do today the best we can.
"Skating in general is a very difficult thing to do most days. We push our bodies to the limit, and we have the task of trying to perform an art. When you do that, day in and day out, and you're so close to doing it at your best, and then you fail at something that you do very well, consistently, all the time, you start to question, like, 'What did I do wrong? What could I have done better? Where could I have changed?' And you can't do that. Life is about dealing with failures, getting back up and moving forward. And that's not just sports, that's not just figure skating. It's everything. Everybody deals with failures in their life, and success is about how you're able to reframe the things you deal with and move forward anyways, right? So we chose to find joy in little things in skating, skating with each other, improving our choreography, improving our skating skills and finding small successes in each day."
As Kayne and O'Shea forged ahead into 2020, it was those small joys that they focused on. They aimed to grow and improve from each skate, gain confidence in their programs and improve their triple twist – an element that has historically given them problems.
They finished sixth at their two Grand Prix assignments at Cup of China and NHK Trophy, and won silver at the Golden Spin of Zagreb.
"The last competition in Zagreb was definitely another nice step up for us," O'Shea said. "We skated two very good programs, and we took some big steps forward for ourselves. The triple twist has been something that we haven't been great at over the course of our career. We were able to do it in both the short and the long in Zagreb, and that was a personal goal, and a personal achievement, one of those small successes I was talking about."
But following Zagreb, despite skating a clean short program, the pair, along with coach Dalilah Sappenfield, decided they weren't getting the scores they thought they could achieve with their ability.
So they scrapped their short program, and created a new one to "Clair de Lune" by Claude Debussy. Their free skate is set to a medley from
Les Miserables.
The short program will debut at the 2020 Toyota U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Greensboro, North Carolina. The pairs competition will be held on Jan. 23 and 25.
For Kayne and O'Shea, it's their second time competing at a U.S. Championships in Greensboro.
"It was the first time we ever medaled at a U.S. Championships, so we have good memories there," O'Shea said. "We got third at that U.S. Championships, and that was right after Tarah had had hip surgery, so I'm excited to be going back to Greensboro. And I'm feeling like our season is peaking at the right time, and it's exciting to be able to show it off at U.S. Championships."
In fact, rather than stressing out about debuting a completely new program on the national stage, Kayne says they're actually more relaxed about their choice.
"Our old short program, we enjoyed it, we liked skating to it, but we didn't think that it highlighted our specific set of skills as much as our new short program," she said. "So having a new short program going into (U.S. Championships) actually gives us more confidence. We think it's a strong suit for us."
Now, more positive and confident, they're ready to return to the U.S. Championships and put everything that happened last year behind them – for good.
"I think some of the best skaters in history have had those moments where you sit there and go, 'Whoa, what happened?'" Kayne said. "And that's the sport, and life. Sometimes things just happen. And you wish you could go back because, like Danny said, it never happened to us before, but I just like to remind myself that some of my favorite skaters in history have had those moments, and they move on from it and they learn from it. We're trying to do the same."
The 2020 Toyota U.S. Figure Skating Championships will be live and on demand on the
Figure Skating Pass on NBC Sports Gold. Tickets are available at
ncskate2020.com.
