No way to sugarcoat this: Nathan Chen has been awful in his first Olympics

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No way to sugarcoat this: Nathan Chen has been awful in his first Olympics

GANGNEUNG, South Korea - There is no way to sugarcoat this, to find a silver lining or a saving grace, or to think that the light at the end of the tunnel is anything but an oncoming train.

Nathan Chen has simply been awful in his first Olympics.

As poor as Chen was in the team event short program a week ago, he was significantly worse in the individual short program Friday.

"Honestly, it was bad," Chen said. "I made as many mistakes as I possibly could have."

The most gifted jumper in U.S. men's skating history did not have a clean jumping pass among the six he completed in the two short programs. The three in the individual short produced a fall, two step-out landings and failure to do a required combination.

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Quad revolution Chan helped start swept away his medal hopes, but not his legacy

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Quad revolution Chan helped start swept away his medal hopes, but not his legacy

GANGNEUNG, South Korea - In his 12 years at the senior level of figure skating, Canada's Patrick Chan has been a transformative athlete.

"I am never going to look at Patrick as anything but a three-time world champion who was the first man to do beautiful skating and multiple quads," said four-time world champion and fellow Canadian Kurt Browning. "He was alpha dog for a long time."

What Browning could not include in that encomium is the one thing missing from Chan's much-decorated career: an individual Olympic gold medal. He let it slip from his grasp in 2014, and it seems out of his reach in the men's competition that begins with the short program Friday morning.

When Chan got his first Olympic gold medal Monday, it was for the team event, in which he had two mistake-riddled performances. That could have made it seem a bittersweet prize, but he refused to see it that way.

"At the end of the day, a medal is a medal," Chan insisted. "I'm going to hold this medal tight to me. That's how I am going to see it. That's how I am going to enjoy it."

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Parents' support and her own will got Nagasu up to Olympics again

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Parents' support and her own will got Nagasu up to Olympics again

It was one of those boilerplate questions that often draws a rehearsed answer from athletes:

"You have listed Michelle Kwan as your inspiration. What do you say to little girls who look to you as their inspiration?" the now two-time Olympian was asked on a media teleconference Tuesday.

This time, though, the response was anything but rote. That's because the subject on the other end of the line was Mirai Nagasu, who speaks from the heart rather than from a script and whose sometimes whimsical-sounding, often rambling responses are always grounded in cliché-free sincerity.

Nagasu, you see, has bounced back not only from the disappointment of being left off the 2014 Olympic team but, with the help of her parents' indomitable support and sacrifice, has overcome financial obstacles that come with being in an expensive sport. And her mother, Ikuko, is a cancer survivor.

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With time on her side, Alina Zagitova, a young woman vibrant in red, catches' judges fancy

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With time on her side, Alina Zagitova, a young woman vibrant in red, catches' judges fancy

As the Olympic figure skating season moves into the national championship phase, a few more observations about the Grand Prix season and Grand Prix Final:

1.  All you Alina Zagitova detractors (that includes you, CBC) aren’t going to like this: the new Grand Prix Final winner, age 15, looks better every time I see her.

Part of it owes to the costuming and free skate program pattern that emphasize her strengths, which are jumps.

The vibrant red in the tutu-qua-dress and long gloves Zagitova wears grabs the eye, says she is portraying a ballerina and limns her movement so beautifully it is easy to forget she does no jumps in the first half of the four-minute free skate to the Russian ballet classic, “Don Quixote.”  And while I hope the rules are changed to eliminate such 100 percent back loading, who can fault her coaches for taking advantage of the point bonus that comes with those jumps?

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Men's figure skating has mess on its hands (and knees, and butts)

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Men's figure skating has mess on its hands (and knees, and butts)

The Grand Prix and Challenger Series events ended last weekend, moving this Olympic figure skating season into the national championship phase (the first two of note are Russia, Dec. 19-24 in Saint Petersburg and Japan, Dec. 20-24 in Tokyo.)

There are big questions related to each.  Will injured reigning world champion Evgenia Medvedeva compete in the Russian Championships? Will injured reigning world and Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu be ready for Japanese nationals?

A 2018 Olympic spot for each should be a foregone conclusion, notwithstanding the unanswered questions about eligibility for all Russian athletes.  Given that Medvedeva did not compete at the Sochi Olympics, the epicenter of current Russian doping issues, and given that she has had no doping positives, nothing but injury should keep her from competing in Pyeongchang.

The Grand Prix Series also has left other unanswered questions.  Here are a few involving men’s singles (I’ll get to women, pairs and dance later in the week):

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