Nathan Chen Olympics 2022: Recapping how the figure skater won gold and made history
Nathan Chen Olympics 2022: Recapping how the figure skater won gold and made history
American figure skater Nathan Chen was one of the headlining athletes for Team USA at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. The 22-year-old star was a favorite in the individual events in Beijing and lived up to the expectations.
He began his 2022 Olympic journey with a strong short program in the team event, opening the team competition with a 111.71 score, and eventually helping lead Team USA to a silver medal in team figure skating.
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He then Olympics history on Wednesday night. The American won gold in the men's figure skating event, becoming the first American men's skater to win gold since Evan Lysacek in 2010 and the seventh all time.
The 22-year-old star finished first and ahead of Japan's Yuma Kagiyama and Shoma Uno, who took home silver and bronze, respectively. Chen had a total score of 332.60 compared to Kagiyama's 310.05 and Uno's 293.
Chen's Olympic journey in Beijing came with high expectations and the hope of not repeating what happened in 2018 in South Korea. At those Games, despite a strong start, mistakes not typical for Chen caused him to finish fifth, and miss out on the medal podium.
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Nathan Chen gets gold: US figure skater dazzles to win at 2022 Winter Olympics
Chloe Kim, Nathan Chen win gold; Shaun White's final run on Friday
Chloe Kim and Nathan Chen cemented their greatness on Thursday with gold medals. No statement from the IOC on the Russian positive drug test.
Sandy Hooper, USA TODAY
BEIJING — For almost four years, Nathan Chen has been the most dominant male figure skater in the world – a cool, quad-jumping maestro unlike anything the sport has ever seen. He's won national and world championships. Broken national and world records. Over a span of more than 1,300 days, he did not lose a single competition.
All that had been missing in this marvelous four-year stretch was an Olympic gold medal.
Missing, that is, until Thursday.
Almost four years to the day after a disastrous performance in Pyeongchang, Chen aced his final appearance at the 2022 Winter Olympics and coasted to gold, becoming just the seventh American man to win the men's individual competition at the Games.
"I never thought I’d actually be able to make this happen," Chen said.
Wait... why not?
"It’s hard!" the 22-year-old said with a laugh. "I don’t know. It’d always been a dream of mine, of course, but it’s a pretty daunting mountain."
He made it look easy Thursday.
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Skating to a compilation of music from the 2019 film "Rocketman," Chen was equal parts graceful, technical and fun in his four-minute performance at Capital Indoor Stadium. He landed all five of the quad jumps in his long program for a score of 218.63, pushing his total for the competition to 332.60 – and winning by more than 22 points.
Japan's Yuma Kagiyama finished second to claim the silver, while his countryman Shoma Uno won bronze. Jason Brown, the other American in the field, finished sixth.
"He just is like no one else," Brown said of Chen. "He’s constantly proven himself, and he’s gone through so much. And you’ve seen him just get better and better and better. And the way that he’s dealt with the pressure is remarkable."
With Thursday's performance, Chen joins an exclusive club of American men to win gold at the Winter Olympics. He is the first to do so since Evan Lysacek in 2010.
It's a particularly impressive feat, given the external pressure on him to achieve it.
"I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but obviously he’s feeling the weight of the world," said teammate and close friend Mariah Bell. "He handled it so well. He deserves to be an Olympic champion, because few people can handle it."
When asked when she knew Chen had secured gold, Bell said: "Before he started, honestly."
"I knew when we came here, when we came to Beijing," his coach Rafael Arutunian added. "I mean, he’s better. He’s definitely better. (Did) anybody have doubt?"
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Chen's time on the ice Thursday will likely go down as the most memorable four minutes of his career to date – a captivating coda on a stretch of more than three years in which he won every major international competition he entered.
It will also probably come as something of a relief, because it will silence the what-about-your-2018-short-program questions that he has fielded almost ad nauseum.
In that 2018 short program, Chen made mistakes on all of his attempted jumps, including a fall on a planned quadruple lutz. He finished 17th in the event, which was supposed to be the beginning of a potential medal run. A victory in the long program portion left him fifth overall, two spots off the podium.
In the years since, he's mentioned feeling overwhelmed in his first Olympic appearance – like there was too much pressure, and not enough fun. He set out to change that this time, regardless of the result.
Chen talked Thursday about his decision to start working with a sports psychologist, which he called "really helpful." He tried to devote more time to his interests off the ice. He brought an electric guitar with him to Beijing and, before his long program, was throwing a football back and forth with Bell down a hallway at the arena.
"Just recognizing that within the course of my skating career, I only have a very limited amount of time on the ice and in competition, and especially at the Olympics," Chen said last week. "So if I can’t enjoy it, then what’s the point in doing it?"
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That outlook was evident on the ice Thursday, as he whisked around to a mishmash of Elton John tunes – complete with an intricate hip-hop step sequence at the end. He said that, at one point near the end, he tried to remind himself to smile.
"Once that started happening, I was kind of grooving a little bit more and enjoying the program," he said.
The son of Chinese immigrants, Chen said he never could have imagined that he would one day be here, in the city where his mother Hetty Wang grew up, skating to Olympic gold. They grew up "quite poor" in Salt Lake City, Utah, he said, leaving his mom to cobble together money to pay for equipment and coaching – which Arutunian started to refuse.
"His mom (is) giving me money in this hand, and I would take in this hand and give it back to him," the coach said. "That means something, right? So I knew it."
The "it" to which Arutunian was referring was Chen's potential – that the then-11-year-old boy had a chance to be one of the best. The coach said he knew it immediately.
And if there were doubts from anyone else, these Olympics have all but erased them.
Last week, Chen helped the U.S. take home a team silver medal by winning the men's short program event, recording the second-highest score of all time. Then, on Tuesday, he recorded the highest ever, 113.97, punching the air in celebration on the ice. He was so excited he even surprised himself.
"I almost never do stuff like that, so I was like, 'why'd I do that?'" Chen said, with a laugh. "I kind of broke character a little bit there."
There was no fist pump Thursday, when his long program ended. No primal scream or jumping up and down. When the music stopped, Chen just leaned his head back toward the ceiling and smiled – the pressure lifting, the moment settling, the goal of a lifetime, finally achieved.
Contact Tom Schad at tschad@usatoday.com or on Twitter @Tom_Schad
Nathan Chen skates his way to Olympic gold: Check out these photos of his dazzling win
Chloe Kim, Nathan Chen win gold; Shaun White's final run on Friday
Chloe Kim and Nathan Chen cemented their greatness on Thursday with gold medals. No statement from the IOC on the Russian positive drug test.
Sandy Hooper, USA TODAY
The USA's Nathan Chen dazzled the judges and became the first American male to win an Olympic gold medal in men's figure skating since 2010.
Chen, 22, landed all five of the quad jumps in his long program as he skated to a compilation of music from the 2019 film "Rocketman." His score after the performance was 218.63, making his total 332.60 and leaving his competitors in the dust. They were 22 points behind him.
After a devastating performance at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, Chen left no room for error in the men's individual competition and last week helped the U.S. to win silver by winning the men's short program.
The weight of trying to become an Olympic champion had lifted from his shoulders as he exited the rink and won the men's individual competition.
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"I never thought I’d actually be able to make this happen," Chen said.
Wait ... why not?
"It’s hard!" the 22-year-old said with a laugh. "I don’t know. It’d always been a dream of mine, of course, but it’s a pretty daunting mountain."
Check out these photos of Nathen Chen's Olympic gold performance:
Contributing: Tom Schad
Follow reporter Asha Gilbert @Coastalasha. Email: agilbert@usatoday.com.
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