MEDAL COUNT

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — Watching the free skate program was unnecessary to figure out how the women’s individual figure skating competition ended for the United States. Listening to Mirai Nagasu would suffice.

“I’m ready to go home,” she said.

That’s the kind of rhetoric expected of an overfed and overpaid newspaper columnist, not an Olympic champion.

Which is, well, why she isn’t an Olympic cham- pion, except in the field of complaining.

This might be unpleasant to read, but many oth- ers in the field encountered the same obstacles she did.

The 24-year-old Nagasu was the senior member of the three-woman U.S. con- tingent here, and it’s little wonder the Americans had their worst showing in the modern era of the Olympics.

Nagasu piled up excuses the way Russian gold med- alist Alina Zagitova did combination jumps.

Nagasu was emotion- ally drained after win- ning a bronze medal in the team competition. She traveled four hours last week to attend a lu- nar new year party. She couldn’t take hot showers. But, hey, she wasn’t the only one who choked Fri- day at the Gangneung Ice Arena.

“I’d like to point out that Gabrielle Daleman, who is an Olympic gold medalist (for Canada in the team event), also didn’t have a strong outing here in the individual,” Nagasu said. By the way, if ABC is looking for a contestant for the next season of “Dancing With the Stars,” Nagasu is available.

“I would like to be on ’Dancing With the Stars’ because I want to be a star,” she said. Norway Canada Germany Netherlands France OA Russia Austria Switzerland South Korea Sweden Japan Italy China Czech Republic Britain Finland Belarus Slovakia Australia Poland New Zealand Spain Hungary Ukraine Slovenia Kazakhstan Latvia Liechtenstein 13 11 13 8 8 5 1 5 4 4 6 3 3 1 1 1 0 2 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 14 8 7 8 6 4 5 3 6 4 5 5 2 6 2 0 0 1 2 2 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 11 9 6 6 4 6 8 6 4 4 0 3 5 2 3 4 4 0 0 1 1 2 2 0 0 0 1 1 1 38 28 26 22 18 15 14 14 14 12 11 11 10 9 6 5 4 3 3 3 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1