Last night I stayed up to watch Nathan Chen perform. I have been a big fan of Chen ever since seeing him win the U.S. Nationals in 2020 at Little Caesars Arena with the greatest athletic performance I have ever seen. I started watching last night when there were seven skaters to go in the men’s final. As the leader following the “short program”, Chen was the last skater of the night. I found myself getting more nervous the closer it came to Chen’s final skate. Following the outstanding performance of Yuma Kagiyama of Japan, Chen had very little room for error.
It was clear in the opening seconds that Chen was on his game as he completed the first of five quad jumps flawlessly. When he completed his final quad with nearly one minute left in his program, Chen knew he was going to win. He then went into his final “boogey routine” to the tune of Elton John’s Rocket Man and Bennie and the Jets which he performed flawlessly while smiling the entire time knowing that he accomplished what he has been working for since early childhood. His final score of 332 was 22 points higher than the silver medalist and 39 points higher than the bronze medalist.
Here is the write-up on Chen’s performance from The Guardian.
Nathan Chen left no doubt, making good on his long-held promise to finally take hold of figure skating’s ultimate prize. The world’s most dominant skater over the past 47 months roared to the Olympic men’s title on Thursday, winning by more than 22 points over a talent-stacked field of established champions and polished newcomers with a mesmerizing long program that included five quadruple jumps and a pair of triples.
Chen, skating last after Tuesday’s record-breaking short program, earned a standing ovation after completing a near-flawless routine to an Elton John medley to finish with an overall score of 332.60, three points off his world record and more than enough to hold off Japanese rivals Yuma Kagiyama, who won silver with a score of 310.05, and Shoma Uno, whose 293.00 was good for a bronze to go with his silver from four years ago.
Moving across the ice with athleticism and pace in a Vera Wang-designed galaxy-print costume befitting of his ascent into the cosmos of the sport’s all-time greats, the 22-year-old from southern California by way of Salt Lake City captured the lone prize missing from his trophy cabinet and put to rest the demons of his catastrophic Olympic debut back in 2018. After landing a textbook quadruple lutz, Chen’s only substantial miscue came on the fifth quad of the program when he popped the closing triple of a planned quad toeloop-single euler-triple flip combination. But the American immediately roared back with a triple axel followed with a triple lutz-triple toe-loop combo to pile on the points and leave the trio of Japanese opponents in hot pursuit as specks in the rear-view mirror.
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Orchid of the Day: Nathan Chen.
Onion of the Day: The ghosts of the 2018 Winter Olympics who were put to rest with Nathan Chen’s performance last night.
Quotes of the Day: . “Of course, there are certainly many things I could have done better, but overall, I was very happy. I was able to do the program that I put down. It means the world. I’m just so happy.” Nathan Chen, following his gold medal performance