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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For reigning U.S. figure skating champion Alysa Liu, growing pains shrink expectations

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For reigning U.S. figure skating champion Alysa Liu, growing pains shrink expectations


It’s easy to understand why Alysa Liu has altered her perspective for the U.S. Figure Skating Championships next week in Las Vegas.

“I don’t necessarily care about my placement anymore,” Liu said via telephone Wednesday.

The two-time defending champion realizes she will be hard-pressed to make it three straight. Getting onto the awards podium might even be out of reach, given what the 15-year-old Liu has been dealing with this season:

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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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At 23, Mariah Bell believes her best is yet to come - including a spot at the Olympics

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At 23, Mariah Bell believes her best is yet to come - including a spot at the Olympics

Memory is an often-imprecise function of the mind. Much of how we remember something owes to the atmosphere of the environment in which it happened, in which we experienced it.

This is especially true of seeing performances live, whether they are athletic, artistic or a combination of both. A brilliant performance in a nearly empty, nearly silent venue often will become less than it was in our memory. The same performance before a cheering or applauding large crowd at a significant event often is remembered as more than it was.

Video allows us to test memory dispassionately against reality. Rarely does such replay of something remembered as spectacular make it look as good upon review, stripped from the emotions and context of the moment.

That is what makes Mariah Bell’s free skate performance at the 2020 U.S. Championships so singular, both for her and everyone who saw it at the Greensboro Coliseum in North Carolina last January.

After each of the several times watching it again to write this story, Bell’s elegant, near flawless skating to k.d. Lang’s haunting interpretation of the emotionally powerful Leonard Cohen song, “Hallelujah” actually has gotten progressively better than my memory of the live performance having been remarkable.

It was the epitome of what skaters strive for: the “whole package” of jumps, spins, footwork, ice presence, emotion, interpretation and striking body positions, all seamlessly and commandingly executed. At the national championships, with a roaring crowd on its feet 20 seconds before the four-minute performance ended, with tears streaming down Bell’s face before the music stopped.

It was also the unquestioned highlight of the then 23-year-old Bell’s lengthy and, at times, exasperatingly inconsistent career. It took her from third after the short program to second overall, the most impressive result in her eight seasons as a senior skater, beaten only by phenom Alysa Liu’s point-gobbling jumps. Under pressure in a major event, Bell finally had gotten past being undone by the final jump in her free skate.

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A taller Alysa Liu also hoping to show growth as a skater

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A taller Alysa Liu also hoping to show growth as a skater

Word on the street is Alysa Liu has grown.

The two-time reigning U.S. figure skating champion said that’s true… to a degree. The two inches of height she added between last season and her 15th birthday in August don’t change Liu’s perspective.

“I just went from really short to very short,” Liu said, wryly, via telephone after a training session last week in San Francisco. “I’m up to 5-0. I like the five-foot number, but it’s still short.”

Anyway, the more important measure will be how much Liu has grown as a skater since her successful 2019-20 debut in international junior competition.

As is the case for all skaters, especially those in North America, such skating growth risks being temporarily stunted by restrictions on training and lack of competition caused by the coronavirus pandemic. And physical growth, even if it is only two inches, can also be problematic.

In Liu’s case, issues related to the pandemic have complicated her sudden shift to a new coaching team in late June, when she announced a split from Laura Lipetsky, who had coached her since age 5. Cancellation of the Junior Grand Prix series is giving Liu more travel-free time to adapt to the new situation, although, ironically, travel restrictions are keeping her from having the two-country, three-coach arrangement work the way it was planned.

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