San Jose Olympian Polina Edmunds won’t be skating at the 2016 World Figure Skating Championships in Boston because she bruised her foot.
The 17-year-old Archbishop Mitty High School senior on Thursday wrote on Instagram that the decision she made the day before was “a very difficult decision to make to not participate in Worlds 2016, but I understand that when you step on the ice, there are no excuses.”
Officials would not immediately answer how she bruised her foot.
That means the silver Olympic medalist now has limited her ability to tap with her right foot and perform Lutz and flip jumps. Polina is expected to make a full recovery with an appropriate period of rest.
“While the decision to withdraw is disappointing, I don’t want to compete at the World Championships without performing my hardest technical elements,” Polina said in a statement. “I go to competition with the goal of representing Team USA to the best of my ability and performing my strongest programs. I will take time to recover and am looking forward to preparing for next season. I wish Team USA and all competitors at Worlds the best of luck.”
In an interview last week with NBC Bay Area while she was practicing at Sharks Ice, Polina said how excited she was to skate at what would have been her third Worlds.
She had planned to skate to Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata,” and “Gone With the Wind,” which she described as a “great coming of age story where the character grows from girl to woman. " And she said she had grown up a lot since the Olympics in Sochi two years ago, when she was 15.
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“It’s just another competition,” Polina said in that interview. “You shouldn’t treat it emotionally.”
Alternate Mirai Nagasu, along with Gracie Gold and Ashley Wagner will represent Team USA at the World Championships, set for March 28 through April 3, at TD Garden in Boston.
For anyone who would like to see Polina, she is planning to be ready to skate in San Jose on May 8 at the Stars on Ice Tour.
