Chen looks like world-beater in short program at skate nationals

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It's easy to get carried away at moments like this, to get ahead of yourself, to forget what you have seen is just one performance that lasted just under three minutes, in what was only the first of two phases at a championships event.

And yet what 17-year-old Nathan Chen did Friday night at the 2017 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Kansas City was so far ahead of its time in the history of U.S. skating that no one wants to wait any longer to envision the medals and titles -- both national and global -- that now seem within his reach.

"I honestly don't think he's going to have to wait his turn," 1984 Olympic champion Scott Hamilton said. "He can beat anyone in the world right now."

Chen already did that in winning the free skate at December's Grand Prix Final. He beat the three men who have won the last six world titles, did it by landing four quadruple jumps cleanly and did it in his debut season on the Grand Prix circuit, winding up second overall in the event to 2014 Olympic and world champion Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan.

His two most recent short programs entering the U.S. championships, however, were badly flawed. That was what made this performance, with its two quads, such an important measuring stick for him -- and led everyone else to start measuring Chen's chances for a world medal this year and an Olympic medal in 2018.

He landed a quad lutz-triple toe combination despite imperfect takeoffs on both, explaining the mishaps by saying, "Part of the program is learning how to fight and secure the jumps that aren't perfect." He followed the combination with a flawless quad flip, then tossed off his nemesis jump -- the triple axel -- with spread eagle transitioning in and out of it. He received maximum levels for his spins and footwork sequence as well.

For the first time, Chen showed a real ability to link skating and dance, which he had studied growing up in Salt Lake City. Skating to the ballet piece Le Corsaire, Chen moved in ways that must have pleased his old teachers at Ballet West Academy.

"It's something I have been striving for the whole season," Chen said of the artistry. "Of course, having the jumps helps that performance quite a lot. I'm glad it finally came together tonight."

It added up to a score of 106.39, breaking the U.S. record of 99.86 set by Jeremy Abbott in 2014. The 42.83 he scored for the three jumping passes was higher than the total technical score of all but two other skaters -- Vincent Zhou (48.53) and Ross Miner (46.21).

Chen's total technical score was 62.07. He has a lead of nearly 18 points over runner-up Miner and nearly 19 over third-place Zhou going into Saturday's free skate, making it a virtually foregone conclusion he will become the youngest men's national champion in 51 years.

"I've never in my long life seen a short program with that difficulty matched with world class artistry," Hamilton said. "I honestly feel he was under-marked.

"This kid is so crazy great and absolutely owns these jumps that everybody else loses sleep over."

Many would have lost sleep facing huge expectations in a competition for the first time, as Chen did here. His performance at the Grand Prix Final started a hum that had grown to a roar in the ensuing six weeks.

"It does add a lot of pressure and a little bit of nerves," Chen said. "At the same time, it gives me a lot more excitement. I feel the praise, and I feel it's something I'm expected to do. I feel like I'm able to deliver."

That does not surprise his coach, Rafael Arutunian, who said Chen has been dealing with expectations at every level of his career, which includes two national titles at each of the novice and junior levels.

"He grew up as a warrior," Arutunian said. "Since he was eight, he was winning his events against competitors usually much older than him. At the junior worlds in 2014, Chen finished third with a cast on his hand. Who does that?"

Chen's performance at the 2016 U.S. Championships, with a third-place finish and four quads in the free skate, had also started a buzz. It died quickly when Chen hurt his hip in the exhibition at the same event, leading to surgery that kept him out of last season's world junior championships and world championships.

Keeping Chen healthy is Arutunian's biggest concern. The coach made a point of saying how much he would like to have the financial means to hire a trainer or physical therapist who could work with Chen every day, an appeal that was clearly directed at U.S. Figure Skating.

Chen has done free skate practices this week with five flawless quads, adding a salchow to the lutz, flip and two toe loops.

"There is no limit," Arutunian said. "We are looking to do more and more. The only scary part is not to get damaged."

Neither Arutunian nor Chen shies away from questions about Chen winning medals or titles at worlds in March or the 2018 Olympics. No U.S. man has earned a senior global championship medal since Evan Lysacek won the 2010 Olympic title.

"I don't think [the medal talk] is something I should be afraid of," Chen said. "It's something I have wanted my entire life. It will bring more energy to my skating versus pulling me down.

"At the Grand Prix Final, I was able to stack up against high-level skaters," he continued. "This short program helps me push that further, to think (of a world medal or title) as a possibility."

Yes, we're getting a bit overheated. But it has been so long since anyone could be carried away by the medal prospects for a U.S. male skater that even the possibility casts a glow.

(This article originally appeared on icenetwork.)

The Time Has Come To Make Allyson Felix The Toast Of The Sports World

Allyson Felix after winning the 400 meters at the 2015 World Championships

Bob Kersee does what he calls the bar test to assess name recognition.

Walk into a moderately crowded bar, the celebrated track and field coach says, and toss out the names Mickey Mantle, Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky and Carl Lewis. Someone in the crowd will be able to fill you in on each of those sports superstars.

“Even if it’s only one person who knows,” Kersee said.

Now put Allyson Felix into that mix.

Kersee knows the result almost certainly will be blank stares, and that is enough to drive a man to drink.

“It’s time for Allyson to be recognized in the same way as some of the great American athletes, if not world athletes, of all time,” Kersee said.

Why should she be?

Since winning a senior national indoor title three months before her graduation from Los Angeles Baptist High School in 2003, Felix has been one of the world’s top sprinters. No woman in history has won as many world outdoor championship gold medals as her nine. No track and field athlete in the last three Olympics has won more medals than her six – four golds, two silvers.

Read the whole story at TeamUSA.org

Fernández' path to success unlikely as they come

Javier Fernandez (third from right) with (l. to r.) his parents, sister, girlfriend Miki Ando's daughter, Himawari, and Ando last summer on a Spanish beach.  (Courtesy Javier Fernandez via Instagram)

There are many unlikely and compelling scenes, both professional and personal, in the script that recounts how Javier Fernández got to the 2016 World Figure Skating Championships in Boston this week as the defending men's champion.

It's a screenplay just waiting to be made into a biopic.

Start with how he was discovered, convinced to move to the United States and helped financially by a leading international coach, Nikoli Morozov, despite Fernández' thoroughly unimpressive skating when Morozov saw him at a summer camp in Andorra.

Continue with how he was admittedly not the hardest-working guy in the rink most of the time.

Have him become the first Spanish man in 54 years to compete in the Olympic Winter Games two years after coming to North America.

Then make him bounce around as Morozov moved his training group from New Jersey to Russia to Latvia until the instability caused so much stress for Fernández that it led him to Toronto and Brian Orser in the summer of 2011.

Get him into a settled situation at the Toronto Cricket, Skating and Curling Club and watch Orser prod Fernández into adopting the work ethic that has helped make him the first Spanish skater to win a European title (he has since added three more) and the first to win not only a world medal but, two years later, the world title.

For a little soap operatic touch, put him in a long-distance romance with a two-time world champion from Japan, Miki Ando, who previously was in a relationship with Morozov. Have Fernández introduce Ando in the gala at the Grand Prix Final in Barcelona last December (when he won the silver medal) before she surprised him by skating an exhibition routine and then have them skate as a pair in a Madrid Christmas gala last December. Bring Ando to Boston to cheer on her boyfriend in a men's event that begins with the short program Wednesday night.

Make Fernández' two main rivals at worlds a Japanese, 2014 Olympic and world champion Yuzuru Hanyu, who trains with him at the Toronto Cricket Club; and a Canadian, three-time world champion Patrick Chan, who trains in suburban Detroit.

Flesh out the story with an older sister, Laura, 27, a Spanish champion who twice skated at worlds; a Navy officer father, Antonio, who worked extra jobs to pay for his kids' skating; a mother, Enriqueta, who is a mail carrier; and a 5-year-old cat, Effi, who lives with Javi in an apartment near the Cricket Club. Oh, yes, Fernández is allergic to cats.

Finally, make him a thoroughly unpretentious 24-year-old who often walks or bikes up a steep half-mile hill to the rink, spends summer vacations with his family in tents at a campsite near a beach on Spain's Almeria coast and still can go unrecognized in his hometown, Madrid.

"At first, it was like, 'We have a figure skater? On ice? In Spain?'" Fernández said.

When he beat Hanyu for the world title last March in China, one of his soccer-mad country's sports dailies, Marca, put him on the front page.

"To steal that page from soccer…," Fernández said, shaking his head while vainly searching for words to explain just how big a deal that was.

That may be the unlikeliest scene in this story, which began when the 6-year-old Javi followed his sister -- now studying to be a pediatric nurse -- to a Madrid rink. He, too, fell in love with a sport hard to find in a country that had just 14 indoor rinks and 600 registered figure skaters among a population of nearly 47 million when Fernández won his first of four straight European titles in 2013.

"I never thought I would be up at that level," Fernández said. "If you told me I would be world champion one day, I would have thought, `You are screwed up.'"

Five years earlier, after Fernández finished 35th and 30th in his first two appearances at the world championships, he went to the fateful camp where Morozov was a guest instructor.

"I can see you have a big talent, but you are not using it and are not motivated," Fernández recalled Morozov telling him. "'If you want to come to New Jersey and train with my team," the coach continued, "you have to do it in 10 days.'''

Fernández, then 17, answered yes before asking his parents, who supported his decision despite knowing they would struggle to afford it. The Spanish Ice Sports Federation could offer little financial help, so Morozov, who coached Shizuka Arakawa to the 2006 Olympic gold, filled in the gaps.

"He took a risk to say, 'Come to me,''' Fernández said. "He paid for costumes and didn't charge me for training at first."

When Fernández arrived in Hackensack, New Jersey, late in the summer of 2008, Morozov was coaching Ando as well as soon-to-be Japanese men's champion Nobunari Oda and then reigning world junior champion Adam Rippon of the United States.

After 18 months, the group became nomads, living in dorms and hotels while training in Russia and Latvia. That existence got old for Fernández by the summer of 2011, so the Spanish federation helped arrange his visit to the Cricket Club for a summer session with its coaches, including Orser.

Fernández immediately liked what he saw. The coaches weren't as sure.

"When Javi first came, he wasn't an athlete, just a talented boy with no discipline, like a pleasure skater," said David Wilson, who has become Fernández' primary choreographer.

Said Orser: "It was a battle at the beginning."

Fernández was used to the Russian philosophy of rarely doing full run-throughs of programs in practice. That approach was reinforced when he won his first Grand Prix Series medals after just a few months of working with Orser. Less encouraging results at the 2012 Europeans and worlds helped convince him otherwise.

"That's when I had to dig in my heels and train him harder," Orser said. "He was lazy. He is not lazy anymore."

Fernández said he now does more full run-throughs in a week of practice than he did in an entire season with Morozov. His newfound commitment began to pay off the next season, when his mastery of quadruple jumps propelled him to the historic European title and a landmark world bronze medal.

In 2014, he won another world bronze after a fourth-place finish at the Olympics, where he missed a medal by barely one point. In 2015, he upset Hanyu for the world title.

This season, as Hanyu delivered what NBC skating analyst Johnny Weir called "otherworldly" performances to win the Grand Prix Final, Fernández did the best free skate of his career but finished a distant second.

That result has led Fernández to increase his technical value for worlds, with a second quadruple jump in the short program and a second triple axel in the free skate. Even if he nails those jumps, Fernández likely cannot outscore an error-free Hanyu.

"It's different to be world champion than to feel like you need to be world champion," Fernández said.

"We both have pressure. I'm sure he is thinking, 'I can't let the Spanish guy beat me again.' And I know it's going to be hard.''

Although he can be a show-stopping performer, as reflected in this year's free skate to Guys and Dolls, Fernández realizes he trails Hanyu in some of the other areas that factor into figure skating's five categories of program component scores.

"I know I have improved a lot, but I also can see my weaknesses, which are some of the skating skills and the presentation," he said.

Fernández insists the rivalry with Hanyu has not complicated their relationship, which does not extend beyond the practice rink in Toronto. It helps that Hanyu, a megastar athlete in Japan, spends a few months each winter training at home.

And maybe it also helps that Fernández is managing another relationship with a renowned Japanese skater, 2007 and 2011 world champion Ando, that was complicated from the beginning.

Fernández first was intimidated by her.

"She was Miki Ando, and I was nobody," he said.

Then there was the matter of her off-ice relationship with Morozov, who is 12 years older than Ando. No sparks flew between Ando, now 28, and Fernández until three years after both had split with the Russian coach.

In that time, Ando gave birth to a daughter, Himawari, who will be 3 next month. Ando, who retired from competition in 2014, has chosen not to reveal the father's identity.

Fernández announced on Instagram that he and Ando were in a relationship soon after he competed in the Japan Open in October 2014. Since then, they have been able to see each other for an aggregate of only 3-4 months of the year. Some of that time is when they perform in shows together.

"I always thought she was cute," Fernández said, "but I never said anything to her. I can't even explain how the relationship began. It just happened one day."

They communicate daily, mainly via voice messages because of the time difference between Toronto and Ando's home in Yokohama. Since both have only rudimentary knowledge of each other's native tongue, English has become their common language.

Fernández provides Ando with financial support for Himawari.

"We're in a relationship, and if I want it to go farther, I have to be responsible," he said. "A child is expensive.

"She says, 'Oh no, it's (the child) not yours,' but I like to do it. So I say, 'Can you please take it? This is just for Hima, use it if you need to buy her clothes.' But she does not like to take the money. She does not.''

His Instagram feed includes a 2016 New Year's card with a picture of him, Miki and Hima, and a beach photo of the three of them from last summer that also includes his parents and sister.

"We want to take this step by step," he said of the relationship with Ando.

The final step in his competitive skating career could be the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, unless Fernández lobbies successfully to bring the 2019 European or world championships to Spain. Hosting either would be both a first for the country and a fitting final scene for the unlikely story of Javier Fernández, who has turned a seemingly quixotic quest for a Spaniard into a tale impossible dreams are made of.

(This article originally appeared on icenetwork.)