Chen's autobiography provides a rare revelatory look at the man who won Olympic skating gold a year ago

/
Chen's autobiography provides a rare revelatory look at the man who won Olympic skating gold a year ago

The idea of covering figure skating is something of a contradiction in terms.

Oxymoronic, if you will, like covering all individual sports, in which athletes compete infrequently, train all over the world, and the media rarely sees them in practice.  A far cry from my experiences covering pro football, baseball and hockey, when I saw the athletes nearly every day. The latter is what a journalist thinks of as covering a sport.

I wrote about Nathan Chen’s figure skating career for seven years, beginning with the 2016 U.S. Championships, which would be one of his many history-making performances.

I saw him only at competitions, when the chances to have insightful conversations are minimal.

Even though Chen was gracious enough to do several one-on-one telephone interviews with me, they were generally brief – even if he always spoke so fast you could get 20-minutes-worth of answers in a 15-minute call.

So I never had any misconceptions about really knowing Chen or his family or what he (and they) went through in the nearly 20 years between his putting on skates for the first time and his winning the men’s singles gold medal at the Olympics exactly one year ago.

Sure, there snippets of “revelations,” one coming soon after Chen’s Olympic triumph when his coach, Rafael Arutunian, mentioned giving Chen back money his mother had paid for lessons because he knew how pressed they were for funds.  And, in doing a story about his years taking ballet, I learned from his teachers what a quick study and gifted dancer he was.

But how little I or anyone outside the shy Chen’s inner circle knew about him became apparent in reading his recently published autobiography, “One Jump at a Time,” written with Time magazine’s Alice Park.

Read More

Ilia Malinin, the “quadg0d,” seems heaven-sent for U.S. figure skating

/
Ilia Malinin, the “quadg0d,” seems heaven-sent for U.S. figure skating

When Ilia Malinin started skating, at age 6, the rink was basically a day care center for him.

His parents, Tatyana Malinina and Roman Skorniyakov, each a two-time figure skating Olympian for Uzbekistan, both were coaching, and it was both easier and less expensive to have their son with them after school at the SkateQuest facility in Reston, Virginia.

“At the beginning, we didn’t take it seriously,” Malinina said. “We just took him to where we were working, and he was skating there.”

That changed three years later.

With minimal preparation, skating just three times a week, Malinin qualified for the 2015 U.S. Championships in the juvenile division when he was just 9 years old. He finished ninth.

Suitably impressed, Malinin and Skorniyakov started having him skate under their tutelage five times a week. In 2016, just after his 11th birthday, he became national juvenile champion.

Many others soon would be as captivated as his parents by their son’s nascent talent.

Read More

Valieva case spotlights an old question in figure skating: Will age minimum be raised?

/
Valieva case spotlights an old question in figure skating: Will age minimum be raised?

Would raising the minimum age in figure skating prevent another Kamila Valieva situation in the future?

It would not directly deal with the issue of doping that is at the center of this highly controversial case, which has utterly overshadowed the 2022 Winter Olympic figure skating competition for the week since it became public.

But it would address part of the multi-layered problem that may have contributed to Valieva, 15, having a banned drug, trimetazidine, appear in a doping control sample she gave Dec. 25.

Olympic champion Nathan Chen’s coach, Rafael Arutunian, has advocated raising the age minimum for several seasons. He thinks the Valieva case will put more pressure on the International Skating Union to do it.

“If you are skating in an adult competition, you should be an adult,” Arutunian told me this week via telephone.

NBC Olympics has confirmed a Russian TV report that the ISU governing council will put forward a proposal to raise the minimum age for Olympic-level (senior) international competition on the agenda of the ISU congress in June. The minimum would go from 15 to 17, cover only figure skating and be phased in.

Read More

Nathan Chen credits Massimo Scali for finishing touches on gold medal routine

/
Nathan Chen credits Massimo Scali for finishing touches on gold medal routine

Funny how things work out sometimes.

Massimo Scali had hoped to go to the 2022 Winter Olympics as Alysa Liu’s coach.

That did not happen, so Scali is watching the Olympics from his home in Oakland, California.

But he still was present at the Games through Nathan Chen.

Chen had sought input from Scali soon after learning the three-time Italian Olympic ice dancer suddenly and surprisingly was free of coaching commitments to Liu.

"He has been incredibly helpful, so I just feel a need to mention that," Chen said at a press conference the day after winning the gold medal.

"I am so happy for being able to collaborate with Nathan recently," Scali said Friday by telephone. "To have seen him skate the way he did in this Olympics was quite a show. I’m so proud."

Read More

From Michelle Kwan to Nathan Chen, passing an Olympic torch of representation

/
From Michelle Kwan to Nathan Chen, passing an Olympic torch of representation

Nathan Chen has talked frequently about the motivational impact of growing up in Salt Lake City, where reminders of the 2002 Winter Games were widely visible around town throughout his childhood. He began skating at 3, not long after watching snippets of NBC’s Olympic broadcasts.

What captivated Chen equally was seeing -- both at the Olympics and in the following years -- a skater who was not only a champion but also a person who looked like him ... and his four siblings ... and his Chinese immigrant parents ... and others in the Chinese-American community.

That was Michelle Kwan, one of the most decorated and most admired skaters in history, who won an Olympic bronze medal in 2002 -- and, coincidentally, the third of her nine U.S. titles in Salt Lake City three months before Chen was born in 1999.

In interviews following his Olympic triumph Thursday, the first gold medal by a singles skater of Chinese ethnicity, Chen acknowledged more than once how much Kwan had meant to his career as a figure skater.

"Growing up in Salt Lake City and having a face like Michelle Kwan is very inspirational," he said. "Having an athlete that looks like you gives you the hope you can do the same. Michelle Kwan is certainly that for me. That goes back to the power of representation."

Read More