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Christina Gao si ritira e ora si dedicherà agli studi ma rimarrà comunque coinvolta nel mondo del pattinaggio
Following retirement announcements from Samantha Cesario, Douglas Razzano, Stephen Carriere and Jeremy Ten, 2012 Skate America silver medalist Christina Gao has also decided to end her competitive career.
Gao, who competed at the U.S. championships at the senior level six times, will enter her junior year at Harvard University this fall. She says she wants to concentrate on her academic career going forward.
Gao said she considered retiring after the 2014 U.S. Championships, where she finished eighth, but after helping out with U.S. Figure Skating's Program Components Camp, she realized she wasn't done. Her coaches, Mark Mitchell and Peter Johansson, were supportive of her decision.
"I was going to Shanghai for the summer for an internship, and I couldn't change those plans, but I found a nice rink in China to train at," Gao said. "I also got two Grand Prix [assignments], in China and Japan, and Japan was the last Grand Prix I needed to have done all six. I knew it was most likely going to be my last season, and Mark picked a beautiful piece of music and choreographed it in August."
Gao said the season was hard for her, and she didn't skate well in China or Japan.
"I really didn't feel like myself," she said. "I was always a strong competitor, so it didn't really make sense to me. But I went to nationals, and I was in 18th place after my short. I was in the first warmup group for the long. You can't find my long program on YouTube -- it's hard to find online -- but it was really special to me. I finally felt like myself again."
The program (which you can watch here) put her eighth in the free skate in Greensboro, and she finished 11th overall.
Gao is doing an internship at Opus Bank in California this summer before returning to Harvard, where she is an economics major. She says she will continue to be involved with skating; she coaches one day a week at the Skating Club of Boston, and she'll help organize the annual An Evening with Champions show.
"I want to thank Mark and Peter, because they were really my pseudo tiger dads in Boston," Gao said. "I love them so much, and they've done a lot for me.
"I want to thank my parents as well as the entire skating community of people and friends who have supported me all these years."
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Ice Skating e Rhythmic Gym Forum | Pattinaggio e Ginnastica Ritmica 
