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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Blanchette: Ashley Wagner basks in glow of world silver

Star power is a stubborn thing, attaching itself easily to the precocious and self-aggrandizing, and often fleeing at high speed from mere dues payers.

So it will be interesting to see how it treats Ashley Wagner.

Now, she was no Stiffly Stifferson before. Her personality alone is top-of-the-podium, and as for skating credits there were the U.S. championships for ladies she won in 2012, ’13 and ’15. But, of course, simple domestic bling lacks some of the cachet it once had in our increasingly all-or-nothing culture.

And, yes, it should probably be pointed out here that what Wagner won three weeks ago in Boston at the World Figure Skating Championships was not the gold medal.

But it was a pretty damned spectacular silver – and it’s not like the stuff is Kryptonite, you know.

So spectacular that Wagner herself acknowledged, “I was overwhelmed.”

And that was in the middle of the skating part, before they hung anything around her neck.

If you followed along on the telly back then, you’ll know that the 24-year-old Wagner was doing her usual just-off-the-pace thing. She was in fourth place after the short program, behind a couple of those Russian prodigies – including 16-year-old Evgenia Medvedeva – and, in first place, U.S. teammate Gracie Gold, who has the perfect name for skating stardom but whose struggles have often paralleled those of Wagner.

This time, Gold was on her own. In the long program, she fell once and ratcheted back a triple jump to avoid another disaster. With the mood at TD Garden downright funereal, Wagner arrived on ice as the final competitor – and yanked everybody out of their seats with the skate of her life.

It took a world-record performance by Medvedeva to keep her off the top step.

Even so, it was the first medal for an American woman at the worlds or Olympics since 2006 – and on the same ice where she crashed in 2014 at the U.S. championships to finish fourth, though she was later named to the Olympic team anyway.

So, retribution, validation, exultation – what else could Ashley Wagner need?

Well, more. Of course.

For the moment, though, she’s just digging her sliver of sunshine.

“I think it’s changed how people look at me, for sure,” she said. “But I’ve always known that I’m this athlete and I’m so happy I finally had access to that athlete in competition.”

And when that access was granted, she knew in an instant what it meant.

“That hard work really does pay off,” Wagner said. “This is something for me that has been 10 years in the making, at least on the senior circuit. So it was a testament to my willpower and devotion. That’s what got me here, and that’s why I’m so happy to have it pay off.”

Indeed, there is something of a lifetime achievement award wrapped up in Wagner’s world silver, at least in the world of ladies skating, where careers seem to last only as long as a pass of the Zamboni.

She will be 25 in less than a month. About five years ago, she was on the verge of bailing because the cost of going on was prohibitive – she clerked at a mall selling Lucky Brand jeans to pay the bills – and her reward was a lot of Internet chatter about how she couldn’t win the big one.

Well, maybe not the only reward.

“To be completely honest, I have friends sitting behind a desk at jobs they hate and I am 20 years into a career that I’m in love with,” Wagner said. “There are definitely highs and lows, and the lows are hard to push through. But at the end of the day, I’m truly madly in love with what I’m doing.

“I was 6 or 7 years old when I watched Tara Lipinski win her Olympics, and I owe it to that girl to see this through to the end.”

It required turning herself over to a new coach – Rafael Arutunian – three years ago and letting him turn her approach to conditioning, jumps and approach to the sport inside out. No longer is she all fiery determination; understanding has been acquired.

Her appearance in Spokane in the Team Challenge Cup is an encore by demand, and she confesses to both nerves – not wanting to let down her North America teammates – and relief.

“To be able to compete against Gracie in such a relaxed environment,” she said, “it’s going to be nice to be able to let our guard down.”

But only temporarily.

“I think I need to keep the momentum I gathered in Boston,” Wagner said. “I earned that silver medal, absolutely. And I need to be that skater on the international stage, because going into the Olympics I want to be seen as one of the front-runners for a medal.”

It’s resolution with a little star power behind it.