Zhang’s silver still only half the loaf

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Terrific comeback for Caroline Zhang in today’s free skate at the World Junior Figure Skating Championships in Sofia, Bulgaria. With a clean performance, the 15-year-old Californian easily won the free skate and jumped from 10th place to second in the final standings behind Alena Leonova, 18, of Russia.

Problem is, you can’t implode in one phase of the event, as Zhang did in Friday’s short program, and hope to be a medal threat on the senior level.

Just ask the second U.S. finisher at junior worlds, Ashley Wagner, who was third overall. Were it not for a 12th place in the short program at January’s U.S. Championships, Wagner’s winning performance in the free skate at nationals could have been good enough to put her on the U.S. team for the upcoming senior worlds in Los Angeles.

Or Elene Gedevanishvili of Georgia, who gave away a 13-point short program lead over Zhang with a sloppy, 11th-place free skate today and fell to sixth from first.

Consistency is what makes great skaters -- and Olympic medalists. Even with the new judging system, a skater can’t expect very bad to be offset by almost brilliant -- except in a field like that at world juniors, which Zhang should have beaten with no problem.

No wonder she reacted with little emotion to the end of her excellent free skate, which must have left her feeling mainly relieved.

Best thing about what Zhang did today was end the season on a high note, including getting full credit for her triple flip-triple toe jump combination, one of the few Zhang triple-triples over the last two seasons that has not been downgraded. That should spur her to work on the ungainly takeoffs on two pick jumps, the under-rotated jumps and the overall lack of speed that have slowed her progress from world junior champion in 2007 to consistent senior -- and, therefore, Olympic medal contender.

She leaves the junior ranks (presumably for good, although Zhang is age eligible for a few more seasons) with the distinction of having won three world championship medals: gold, silver, silver. Several others have won three junior medals, but no woman in the 31-year history of the event has done as well as Zhang.

-- Philip Hersh