Nathan Chen digs into advanced statistics textbook while writing his own such numbers in U.S. skating record book

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Nathan Chen digs into advanced statistics textbook while writing his own such numbers in U.S. skating record book

The wonk in Nathan Chen has ensured that even while he is taking time off from attending college, he isn’t taking time off from studying.

Chen, a rising junior at Yale, decided last fall was as good a time as any to begin a leave of absence from school to prepare for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics because his classes would have been remote even if he had been in New Haven, Connecticut.

But he got friends to send him the textbooks he will eventually be using in chemistry and advanced statistics courses for a little light reading.

“Nothing super serious,” he said during a Zoom interview last week. “Just trying to get through a chapter a day.”

After two seasons of questions about whether he could remain among the world’s leading skaters with a full course load at a university 3,000 miles from his coach (the answer was an emphatic, “yes”), Chen came to realize that the balance between school and skating helped him with both.

On the skating side, Chen’s results speak for themselves as he seeks a fifth straight title at the U.S. Championships in Las Vegas, with the men’s short program Saturday and free skate Sunday.

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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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Nathan Chen weighs unknown variables of next figure skating season

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Nathan Chen weighs unknown variables of next figure skating season

Nathan Chen is a statistics and data science major at Yale.

But even his fluency in those subjects can’t help Chen much now in finding answers to questions about his future.

“Too many variables,” Chen said this week via telephone from California.

Not to mention all the complete unknowns in any equation Chen might use to help define his plans.

For the two-time defending figure skating world champion, that starts with the unknown about when he can back on the ice for the first time since the 2020 World Championships were cancelled in mid-March because of the coronavirus pandemic.

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