With comeback drama adding to the moment, Nathan Chen skates into a league of his own

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With comeback drama adding to the moment, Nathan Chen skates into a league of his own

In any sport, a competitor embraces praise from live spectators and other fans but nothing means more than acclamation from his or her athletic peers and decorated predecessors.

So it was that even at a 2021 World Figure Skating Championships where no spectators were allowed because of COVID-19 safety precautions, Nathan Chen still could hear and see the tribute he deserved.

The few people allowed in the Stockholm stands, who were accredited skaters, coaches and officials, gave Chen a standing ovation Saturday after the free skate of surpassing brilliance that would give him a third straight world title.

“There truly aren’t enough eloquent words I could use that would describe what Nathan just did,” his U.S. teammate, Jason Brown, said in a text message. “I watched in absolute awe.”

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Shocking U.S. failures and awesome Japanese successes in men’s short program at figure skating worlds

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Shocking U.S. failures and awesome Japanese successes in men’s short program at figure skating worlds

Shock.

Nathan Chen of the United States opened his short program at the World Figure Skating Championships Thursday by falling on a jump in an individual competition for the first time after having stayed upright on 120 straight dating to 2018. That meant he lost a program after winning 19 straight live individual competitions since the 2018 French Grand Prix short. Now in third place, 8.13 points behind the leader, Chen will be hard pressed to win a third straight world title.

Vincent Zhou of the United States, the reigning world bronze medalist, made an utter hash of all three short program jumping passes and finished 25th, one place below what was needed to advance to Saturday’s free skate. That complicates U.S. hopes for three men’s spots at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

And awe.

Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan may not have been fully content with his skating, but the two-time Olympic champion finished first after making no mistakes in an electric performance that fulfilled the title of his music, “Let Me Entertain You,” by Robbie Williams.

Yuma Kagiyama of Japan, a 17-year-old in his senior worlds debut, skated fearlessly at Mach 2, collected the highest combined scores of the day for two jumping passes with quads and a huge personal best score (100.96) while finishing second to his countryman, Hanyu (106.98).

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Reigning champ Nathan Chen doesn’t hide his anxieties about getting to, competing at figure skating worlds in Sweden

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Reigning champ Nathan Chen doesn’t hide his anxieties about getting to, competing at figure skating worlds in Sweden

Nathan Chen could have given a blandly optimistic answer to a question of whether he had any concerns over the long flight (with a connection) to get him from Los Angeles to Stockholm for next week’s World Figure Skating Championships.

Chen could have given a similarly anodyne response to a question about his concerns about staying safe and healthy once he is on the ground in Sweden for nine days.

But during a Zoom teleconference last week, the two-time defending world champion chose not to do either a Pollyanna or a Pinocchio about issues related to travel and the competition environment at a worlds taking place during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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At Beijing Winter Games, now just a year away, figure skating will be a morning and evening affair (as you read here last March)

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At Beijing Winter Games, now just a year away, figure skating will be a morning and evening affair (as you read here last March)

Under usual circumstances, the day marking one year to go until the next Olympics directs a substantial amount of attention toward the upcoming Games.

But there is nothing usual about the current circumstances of a world turned inside out by the Covid-19 pandemic. So the next Olympics is not the 2022 Winter Games in China, where competition begins with curling Feb. 2, 2022, which is one year from today (the Opening Ceremony is a year from Friday).

Next up is the postponed 2020 Tokyo Summer Games. Beijing 2022 seems much further off than it is.

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By the numbers, Nathan Chen’s jumps add up to a new dimension of skating

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By the numbers, Nathan Chen’s jumps add up to a new dimension of skating

Having basically exhausted the English language’s supply of superlatives to describe Nathan Chen’s skating over the past three seasons, I woke up Sunday morning looking for other ways to find context for what seemed his almost certain fifth straight U.S. title.

Without more than a gut feeling, which was intensified by his commanding execution Saturday of the most technically difficult short program he had done since 2018, I had a sense that Chen has had a remarkable success rate for several years in programs packed with the toughest array of jumps anyone ever has tried in the sport.

So, with the help of the data mining genius behind the invaluable web site skatingscores.com (who prefers anonymity), I set off to dredge through old scoring protocols to see whether statistical evidence supported my intuition about how consistently good Chen’s jumping has been during an unbeaten streak in 12 individual live competitions that began with the 2018 World Championships.

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