In making history with fifth straight U.S. title, Nathan Chen competes against his own singular past

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In making history with fifth straight U.S. title, Nathan Chen competes against his own singular past

The trouble with being Nathan Chen is, nearly all the time, you are being judged against your past brilliance.

Unless the redoubtable two-time reigning Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan is in the competition, that is.

But the two have met just twice since the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics, with Chen winning both, and pandemic-born uncertainty over the fate of the 2021 World Championships, currently scheduled for late March in Stockholm, and perhaps even next season’s events makes it is impossible to know when the next Chen-Hanyu showdown will take place.

Chen has simply been so extraordinary for so long and has dominated U.S. men’s skating so thoroughly since 2017 that it is getting too easy (and unfair) to take him for granted and forget he commandingly won a historic fifth straight U.S. title Sunday in Las Vegas because he did it with a less-than-jaw-dropping free skate.

A modest (by only his own standards) winning score of 322.28 still left Chen more than 30 points ahead of runner-up Vincent Zhou (291.38), a national medalist for the fourth time, this one after a one-year absence from the podium. Jason Brown, the 2015 U.S. champion was third (276.92), his sixth medal at nationals.

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Gracie Gold’s progress stalled again after poor short program at U.S. Championships

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Gracie Gold’s progress stalled again after poor short program at U.S. Championships

With her characteristic and often searing honesty, Gracie Gold had minced no words in evaluating her dismayingly poor performances at Skate America in October.

“Terrible today and yesterday,” Gold said after finishing dead last of 12 competitors in both the short program and free skate, with the lowest free skate and overall scores of her eight years in senior competition.

“We have to salvage what we can from the wreckage,” she said. “I’m a little worse off than I thought.”

And the two-time U.S. champion had to reassemble herself in barely a month for what became a virtual qualifying competition to earn a place for this week’s U.S. Championships.

She made it to nationals but wound up feeling the same way after Thursday’s short program as she had at Skate America.

“It was pretty terrible. There’s not much else to say,” Gold said.

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His optimism challenged by ‘life on repeat,’ Jason Brown learns to take each day as it comes

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His optimism challenged by ‘life on repeat,’ Jason Brown learns to take each day as it comes

Jason Brown’s usually boundless optimism finally hit its limits about a month ago.

“I just shut down,” Brown said.

His intrinsic motivation to keep improving and his consummate love for figure skating had already been challenged several times since Brown returned from his parents’ home in the Chicago suburbs to his Toronto training base in late June. Eventually, in December, he found himself thinking about practice like a 26-year-old terrible two, his mind saying louder and louder, “I DON’T WANT TO GO.”

“A lot of weird moments,” he said.

There were days when his training was going so well he felt the sky was the limit but more days when, for the first time in his two decades in the sport, he felt burned out and done.

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As the IOC assumed its (usual) amoral posture, Olympic sports athletes stood tall as a moral counterpoint in 2020

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As the IOC assumed its (usual) amoral posture, Olympic sports athletes stood tall as a moral counterpoint in 2020

For the past 33 years, Globetrotting has selected annual medal winners in international sports, given to those athletes for whom an Olympic gold is the ultimate goal.

The pandemic that has shattered lives around the world made it impractical and unsafe to have most international sports competitions for the last nine months – and even those that have taken place in the current winter season have been changed by having athletes opt out or, in the case of figure skating, becoming essentially domestic events.

Given that, trying to give awards in the format I used in the past seems like a fool’s errand.

Yet it would not be good to let the year pass without some shout-outs to athletes in Olympic sports, both active and retired, whose achievements or courage (or both) were noteworthy.

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Serendipitous addition of Jeremy Abbott to Alysa Liu’s coaching team helping her work through growth spurt

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Serendipitous addition of Jeremy Abbott to Alysa Liu’s coaching team helping her work through growth spurt

Serendipity is part of this story. And both happenstance and coincidence also played a part in how Jeremy Abbott became a full-time member of Alysa Liu’s coaching team this fall.

Abbott describes the way it all developed as “organic,” a word he also uses to explain the process Team Liu is using to further her growth as a skater. It is a word that seems especially appropriate for Liu this season, when organic physical changes have challenged the two-time reigning U.S. women’s figure skating champion.

Four months past her 15th birthday, Liu is some three inches taller, with longer limbs and a different center of mass, than she was at this point a year ago. All that has made it harder for her to spin in the air as quickly as she could.

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