Men's Figure Skating: Men’s Figure Skating Highlights: Nathan Chen Wins Gold (Published 2022) (2024)

Nathan Chen wins gold at the men’s individual event.

“I never thought I would actually be able to make this happen,” Chen said. “It’s hard. It’s always been a dream, of course. It’s a pretty daunting mountain.”

Chen, 22, made it happen with five jet-fueled quadruple jumps and a series of gyroscope-like spins that turned his bright top into a tangerine blur. The crowd watched him, on edge.

As the final skater to perform, and with the gold in his reach at last, Chen nearly demanded that the spectators hold their breath. After each of his jumps, the crowd rewarded him with cheers.

He won the gold medal in breathtaking fashion, finishing first in the short program on Tuesday and again in the free skate on Thursday to end up with a total of 332.60 points, leagues ahead of the silver medalist Yuma Kagiyama of Japan (310.05) and another Japanese skater, Shoma Uno, who was third with 293.0.

Kagiyama, 18, and Uno, 24, both had a high degree of difficulty in their routines, but each made mistakes on his jumps, and against a skater at the peak of his talents like Chen, any bobble was one too many.

Bigger mistakes kept Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan, who was fourth, from winning the gold medal for the third Olympics in a row. In the short program, Hanyu aborted his first jump, later claiming he had hit a hole in the ice, and couldn’t make up the lost points in the free program. He faltered twice, including on his bold attempt to execute quadruple axel, a four-and-a-half revolution jump never landed in competition. He came close to nailing it.

“No matter how hard, no matter how unimaginable, I want to push a little bit more for those who have expectations in me,” Hanyu said.

Uno, who finished second to Hanyu at the 2018 Games, said, “Nobody can expect perfect jumps, except Nathan.”

Chen’s free skate was nearly impeccable, and it showed why he is a three-time world champion considered the best skater in the world. He has lost only once since winning the 2018 worlds. That was the year he was at his lowest a month earlier, when he came into the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics hyped as the next great American champion but failed to live up to those expectations, or his own.

Stumbling in the short program, he was out of medal contention even before the free skate. But he rose to fifth place from 17th with a spectacular free skate that he said changed his perspective on the sport, and on life. It wasn’t the end of the world, he concluded, when he didn’t win Olympic gold at 18. It was, in a way, a new beginning.

Chen studied at Yale for two years while continuing to compete on the international stage, expanding his horizons beyond the world of skating he had known since he started competing as a boy, the youngest of five Chen siblings.

Back then, his life had revolved around the sport. When he was about 11, he began training under the coach Rafael Arutyunyan in California, first traveling to sessions there from his home in Salt Lake City by car with his mother. The Chens would sleep in their car on those trips, he said, because a hotel room was an unmanageable expense.

Arutyunyan quickly saw promise in the young Chen, but he knew that the boy’s parents — Chinese immigrants who had arrived in the United States in the late 1980s — did not have the resources to finance an expensive elite skating career. So when Nathan’s mother, Hetty Wang, would scrape up money to pay Arutyunyan with cash, the coach would sometimes hand it right back to Nathan.

The coach knew Chen had the makings of a champion, and the two got along because, as Arutyunyan said on Thursday, Chen liked that he was a straightforward, not-so-cuddly coach.

“I’m honest, and he likes to have somebody honest,” Arutyunyan said. “He doesn’t like, ‘Good job!’” he added, spitting out the phrase as if it were a bitter taste in his mouth. From the hard-shell coach, praise like that for Chen was a long time coming.

When Chen won the gold medal, Arutrunyan grew teary. He said he had known when he arrived in Beijing that Chen would win, and when he did, the coach turned to his pupil and told him, with all seriousness, “Good job.”

Then, he added, “Now, go thank your mother on TV.”

In reflecting on the support system that helped him reach the top of the sport, Chen acknowledged his family and friends, including his training partners Mariah Bell, the United States national champion who is skating next week in Beijing, and Michal Brezina of the Czech Republic, who was by Chen’s side in California as a friend and an adviser throughout the pandemic.

It was Brezina, a four-time Olympian, who hosted skater-only game nights at his house, competitions that Chen would always win. And it was Brezina who talked to Chen about seeing a sports psychologist last year. Chen said that mental health support had made a big difference in his performance, helping him stay grounded before and during the Games.

“Heading into the season, I was like, you know, I’ve never really tried it and I don’t really want to leave a stone unturned, so I was just going to give it a try to see how it goes,” Chen said.

Chen’s psychologist talked to him regularly as the competition grew closer and another Olympic short program loomed. Four years ago, Chen’s disastrous performance in that program had cost him any chance at a medal. This year, the short program — and how he finally conquered it — set him up for the gold.

But these Olympics also saw a new Nathan Chen, now all grown up, wiser and more confident: a Nathan Chen OK with removing his blinders, with cherishing the small moments as well as his big chance.

Turning inward in Beijing, Chen said he stayed off social media, played his electric guitar, and texted and talked with his family every day, feeling bolstered by their resounding, soothing pep talks. On the way to the Olympic rink, he took in the sights, making sure to look at the Beijing Zoo, where his mother, who is from the Chinese capital, had brought him when he was 10.

At his final practice on Thursday in the Olympic rink, hours before his gold medal skate, Chen stood alone for a while. He scanned the arena and immersed himself in the Olympic rings painted under the ice, in the stands and on the walls. And he reminded himself how lucky he was to be able to chase a gold medal.

How many people actually win one? Not many. Now, he is only the seventh American man to win the Olympic singles title, and just the second since 1988.

“This still hasn’t sunk in,” Chen said.

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Yuma Kagiyama is in first with only Nathan Chen left.

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Chen will turn to the ‘Rocket Man’ for his free skate soundtrack.

So how does music selection work?

The 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, after a rule change by the International Skating Union, were the first Games in which singles and pairs skaters could compete to music with words. The shift to vocal music was an effort to make the sport more appealing to a younger generation. (Ice dancers have used vocal music since the late 1990s.)

While skaters are not obligated to select music with words, this new lyrical era has introduced artists as varied as Daft Punk and Beyoncé to skating’s more traditional disciplines.

Not everyone was receptive to the changes, fearing that a departure from classical music could trivialize a sport whose foundation was built in part on the genre.

But coaches and Olympians say that lyrics present an artistic opportunity that allows athletes to tell a bigger story and let their personalities shine.

A piano player himself, Chen has said that learning to stroke the keys had instilled in him rhythm, timing and coordination — skills that have propelled him to the top of his sport. (His musical talents also include guitar and ukulele.)

One of his earlier Elton John programs was at the Skate America competition in Las Vegas in October 2019, when his choreographer suggested a “Rocket Man” medley that incorporated hip-hop dance.

“Originally, she just said ‘Rocket Man,’ and I said, ‘Oh yeah, that’s fine,’” Chen said of the conversation with his choreographer in an interview with NBC Sports. “Then she threw in the hip-hop. I said, ‘Wait a minute.’ She didn’t tell me until I got there and she played the music.”

That December, Chen set a free skate world record with a score of 224.92 at the Grand Prix of Figure Skating, where Elton John’s music helped him win his third consecutive competition title.

Most recently, Chen performed to Elton John at the World Championships in Nashville in January.

Shoma Uno of Japan lands in first place.

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It might have something to do with the fact that Kagiyama is skating to music from the movie “Gladiator.” I feel like soon I will have to fight for my life.

Cha Jun-hwan demonstrates his raw talent.

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Yet Uno moves into first! He scores 293.00.

In his second Olympics, Morisi Kvitelashvili moves up to seventh place.

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In the team figure skating event, a ‘legal issue’ raises questions about the medals.

Since then, Olympics officials have declined to elaborate on what is causing the delay.

“Obviously we ask for hope for the patience and understanding of all the athletes involved here,” Mark Adams, a spokesman for the I.O.C., said at a news conference Thursday in Beijing. “But it is a legal case, and I’m bound by this legal case, and I’m unable to say anything more.”

Adams was asked about reports in the Russian news media that the issue involved whether an athlete on the Russian team had tested positive for a banned substance, but would only say, “I have seen the reports but I cannot comment on them.”

Adams on Wednesday had said there would be more information imminently but none came on Thursday morning. He had said Olympic officials were consulting with lawyers and the International Skating Union, the sport’s global governing body, to resolve the matter.

There was no more clarity on the situation at the figure skating venue, where the men’s singles competition was taking place Thursday morning.

Russian skaters there declined to answer questions on the matter.

Russia won the team event Monday behind a breakout performance by its 15-year-old star, Kamila Valieva.

The team event is a mixed-gender competition that made its debut at the 2014 Games in Sochi, Russia. A Russian team won that year and then claimed the silver medal behind Canada four years later in Pyeongchang, South Korea. The United States won the bronze medal in both previous editions.

This year, the American team, led by the three-time world champion Nathan Chen, finished second behind the Russian team in the best finish in the event for the U.S.

At the news conference, Adams said that the I.O.C. generally was not responsible for drug testing and any punishments, noting those responsibilities fell to organizations like the International Testing Agency and the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

But Adams was vague on who was looking at the current case.

“Even if I comment on who is handling the matter, it tells you what kind of matter it is, so I’m not going to,” he said.

He took the same stance when asked whether any potential doping case involving Russia would force the I.O.C. to re-evaluate a decision to allow the country’s athletes to compete at the Games under the moniker “Russian Olympic Committee.” The country was officially banned from the Games as part of the fallout of a state-sponsored doping scheme.

“Quite a lot of speculation in that question,” he said.

The team event is contested over several days. In it, each country is represented by men’s and women’s singles skaters, a pairs team and a set of ice dancers. The athletes compete in several rounds of performances, and the scores are combined to crown a winner.

The event can showcase the breadth of a team’s skating talent, but team events also come with risks. Germany and Ukraine failed to score points in portions of this year’s competition after losing athletes to positive coronavirus tests, ending their slim medal hopes.

But the disqualification of any athlete from a medal-winning team — a regular occurrence in other Olympic sports — mean the loss of that athlete’s points. That could alter the final standings.

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Jason Brown of the U.S. moves into second place, for now.

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Evgeni sem*nenko makes the best of his chance in Beijing.

Yuzuru Hanyu, Nathan Chen’s rival, appears to fall short of a comeback.

He took deep, long bows to every corner of the arena and bowed again after stepping off the ice. I think he even grabbed some ice and put it up to his forehead. (Hard to see from where I’m sitting in the stands.)

In his short program Tuesday morning, he shockingly pulled out of his first planned jump, a quad salchow, rotating just once instead of four times, and scoring zero points for the maneuver. So what happened? His skate got caught on a groove in the ice, he said on Japanese television afterward. He jumped with the right form and the right timing, he said, but at that moment, “I was in the hole. It was the hole from the toe jump. So I couldn’t help it.”

Hanyu compared the jump to one at the 2019 world championships, where he under rotated on a quad salchow but still managed to finish second to Nathan Chen.

Hanyu injured his ankle in November, but he said that his preparation for the Olympics had gone well.