Mirai Nagasu: I thought of performance as a 'Dancing With the Stars' audition

— -- GANGNEUNG, South Korea -- Mirai Nagasu, who made history by becoming the first U.S. woman to land the triple axel at the Olympics earlier in the Games, pulled out of doing the jump again Friday in the women's long program and finished well off the podium in 10th place.

Afterward, she said that having already won a bronze medal in the team event, she considered her performances in the individual competition as her audition for "Dancing With the Stars."

"I smiled in the middle of my program, which is very rare for me. I thought of this as my audition for 'Dancing With the Stars,'" she said before adding later, "I would like to be on 'Dancing With the Stars' because I want to be a star."

Nagasu fell back on her stellar performance in the team event, which helped the U.S. secure a bronze, and said she considered that medal her main objective at these Olympics.

"I saved the team event with Adam [Rippon] and the Shibutanis. We were about to lose our medal," she said. "So today I put my medal in my pocket and I said, 'Mirai, you've done your job already. This is all just icing.'"

(The Americans were in fact never behind the Italians during the course of the competition, and ended up beating them by six points.)

She also talked about her growing exhaustion over the course of the Games, especially after the euphoria of winning bronze.

"It has been so emotionally draining, but this is what I wanted, and I've been crying every day since the team event because I was so happy," she said. "But we had to keep training and training and training. We're just exhausted.

"I've watched my roommates compete, and then I still have had to go to bed at 8 p.m. and to wake up at 4 a.m. It's not easy."

When confronted with the notion that many other skaters who did go on to medal, including Canada's Kaetlyn Osmond?and Russia's Evgenia Medvedeva and Alina Zagitova, also competed in the team event, Nagasu gave a meandering answer in which she blamed, among other things, traffic and the lack of hot water in the Olympic Village.

"I love competing as part of a team, but also it's been a long, long journey. We've had so many other commitments. We went to the Team USA House on the lunar holiday, and it took four hours just to get to the mountain," she said. "I also haven't taken a warm shower because there are a lot of people on Team USA and somehow I keep trying to take a shower when all the hot water is gone."