Gabriela Juarez-Rivas Reflects on Her First World Championship Medal and the Season That Brought Her There

Gabriela Juarez-Rivas walked into the post-free skate press conference at the O2 Arena in Prague on Thursday evening with a bronze medal around her neck and the expression of someone who had not quite caught up to what had just happened. Just two weeks ago she had received the call confirming she would be competing here at all, stepping in as a replacement for Olympic champion Alysa Liu after spending the season as first alternate for both the Olympic team and the World Championship delegation. She left Prague as a World Championship medalist, having skated the two best programs of her season on the biggest stage of her career. We sat down with her shortly after.

Gabriela, bronze medal at the World Championships. How are you doing right now?

Really good. Really really good. I think I am still processing it a little honestly. Like I know what just happened but the full weight of it has not landed yet. I just feel light.

Those four minutes of Carmen. Take us through what that felt like.

It felt clean. From the very first jump it just felt right and I let it keep feeling right without doing anything to mess with it. There is a version of me from earlier this season who would have gotten to the second half of that program and started calculating, started thinking about what was left to land and what it would mean. Tonight I did not do that, I just skated. And everything followed.

Were you nervous going into tonight?

Yes. Genuinely, yeah. I want to be honest about that because I think sometimes skaters come out of a good free skate and make it sound like they were completely at peace the whole time and I was not. I was nervous in warm-up. I had that same feeling I remembered from Boston creeping in a little, that awareness of where I was and what was at stake. The difference was that this time I knew what it was. I could name it. And I just tried to keep bringing myself back to the program instead of everything around it. It was not perfect mentally going in, I am not going to pretend it was. But it was enough.

Last year in Boston the free skate came apart after a strong short program. You finished sixth. Walk us through what went wrong because it feels relevant to tonight.

Boston was my first Worlds and I was in second after the short and I went into the free skate trying to hold onto that rather than build on it. The program suffered for it. What I know now that I did not know then is that there is no holding onto anything in skating. You are either skating or you are not. In Boston I was not really skating, I was managing. And the thing is, my whole season up to that point had been nearly perfect. I had won almost everything, I barely had a mistake in competition all year, so I had never really had to deal with something going wrong in a backloaded program under that kind of pressure. When things started slipping I had no tools for it. Everything was already loaded into the second half of the program and I did not know how to reset and keep going. I just went under. I had to learn that the hard way.

You have a program this season that carries a lot of history in this sport. How do you approach Carmen as a piece that so many legendary skaters have skated before you?

I just do not think about it. Shae-Lynn and I spent the whole summer building this program around who I am right now, what I connect to, what I want to say. I interpret my Carmen as young and a little reckless, similar to myself. She goes after what she wants without apology. She is not the experienced, knowing Carmen, she is just starting to understand her own power. That felt honest too. So when I am on the ice I am not thinking about anyone else's version. I am thinking about mine.

You watched Kaori skate tonight. She won gold in her final competitive program. What was that like to witness?

I had just left the leaders chair when she finished and I just started crying. Which I was not expecting at all. But watching her skate that program, knowing it was the last time, it was just one of those moments that reminds you why you fell in love with this sport in the first place. She is everything figure skating can be when it is at its best. She is such an incredible woman and a role model for me. The way she has carried herself through her entire career, the way she handles every moment with so much grace and seriousness and warmth, that is something I have watched and tried to learn from for years. Sharing a Worlds podium with her is something I will carry with me for a long time.

This season on paper looked fine. Medals, wins, Grand Prix Final. But you have hinted it was harder than the results showed.

Yeah. The results were okay a lot of the time. But I knew after almost every competition this season that I had not skated the way I know I can skate. That is hard to live with when you care as much as I do. You go back to the hotel with a medal and you are still sitting there knowing you left something on the ice. After a while that accumulates. Getting to Prague and finally having both programs feel like what I know they can be, that was the thing I needed. More than the placement.

Fun one. What did you do between the short program and the free skate to keep your mind off things?

I watched a cooking video. I am completely serious. I follow this one account that does really fast pasta recipes and I watched it three times. My brain needed something completely unrelated to figure skating and carbonara apparently did the job.

That might be the most grounded thing a skater has said at a Worlds press conference.

I will take that as a compliment.

What are you most looking forward to next season?

So so much. I feel like this season I was sometimes skating under the weight of everything going on and next year I just want to go out and compete and enjoy it. I am also really excited about university. I think having a more flexible schedule is going to make such a difference for my skating. Right now balancing school and training has been a lot and next season I am going to have so much more control over my time. Being able to actually plan my schedule around competitions and training blocks instead of having to work around school is something I have been looking forward to for a while.

Last one. What does the rest of the spring look like for you?

Graduation first, which feels a little surreal to think about right now standing here with this medal. And then Stars on Ice in May and into early June which I am so excited for. I love shows, it is just such a different energy from competing and I always leave feeling really full. And somewhere in there I will sit down with choreographers and start thinking about next season, costumes, programs, all of it. And sleep. A lot of sleep somewhere in there

Gabriela Juarez-Rivas stands at center ice with her gloved hands pressed to her face, letting the moment land after a season that had asked so much of her. She leaves Prague with a bronze medal and the knowledge that when it mattered most, she finally skated like herself.