As soon as she reacted at the 63.10 score she got for her short program in last week’s team competition, U.S. figure skater Ashley Wagner was destined to be Sochi’s answer to McKayla Maroney.
It didn’t take long for the Twittersphere and Facebook citizens to turn the two-time U.S. champion into a meme, just like they did two years ago during the London Olympics with Maroney and her “not impressed” expression that she made after claiming silver in the vault.
To her credit, Wagner’s found the meme, in her words, “absolutely hilarious” and “one of the most awesome things that ever happened to me in my life.”
She tweeted this out as well on Valentine’s Day:
https://twitter.com/AshWagner2010/statuses/434273080568217600
“I’m the type of person where what you see is what you get,” Wagner said to the Associated Press. “Maybe I might be a pretty decent figure skater out on the ice, but in the kiss-and-cry, I still haven’t mastered that figure skater attitude where you sit there and smile until the bitter end.”
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But she didn’t come to Sochi to just be a social media darling. She came here to win a medal.
And as the women’s competition draws closer, she says that she’s been working on the issues that caused her team event short program to be scored as low as it was.
After helping the U.S. earn a team bronze, she and teammate Gracie Gold went to Austria for several training days in advance of their big event, which begins Wednesday.
