BEIJING — For almost four years now, 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.
Skating to a compilation of music from the 2019 film “Rocketman,” the 22-year-old was equal parts graceful, technical and fun in his four-minute performance at Capital Indoor Stadium in Beijing. 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.
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.
“Everything is still a whirlwind, but I never thought I’d actually be able to make this happen,” Chen said.
A reporter asked: Why not?
“It’s hard!” Chen said with a laugh. “I don’t know. It’d always been a dream of mind, of course, but it’s a pretty daunting mountain.”
NATHAN…
