“This year I was able to really get a feel for it and so when I started to land it, it was a very satisfactory feeling,” she said in December. “I could always visualize myself doing the jump, it was just getting my muscles to react as they needed to.”

She said she was successful about 70 percent of the time during practice in the summer, increasing to about 80 percent in the fall. By December, she said it was “as good if not better than some of my other jumps.”

She won her first United States Figure Skating championship at 14, becoming the second-youngest senior women’s winner. She placed fourth in the women’s event at the 2010 Olympics when she was 16.

But her absence on the 2014 Olympic team, a year in which she placed third at the U.S. championships but was passed over for Ashley Wagner, left her heartbroken.

Adam Rippon, a runaway star for the men’s team this year, was also left off the team in 2014, and they leaned on each other for support, he told Team U.S.A.’s website.

“It wasn’t good,” he said. “I told her as we were going through that, I said, ‘Mirai, I’m so lucky to have you by my side. We’re going to get through this together.’ And I kept telling her. I say it every five minutes. We room together at the village.”

Nagasu, from Arcadia, Calif., was the first American woman to return to the team after being left off at a prior Olympics.

And she appeared to be relishing the moment. On Twitter, she said she was “still on cloud 9.”

“Today has been the best day ever,” she said.