At Grand Prix Final, Nathan Chen's brilliance nearly defied description - again

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At Grand Prix Final, Nathan Chen's brilliance nearly defied description - again

What Nathan Chen did in winning the 2019 World Figure Skating Championships was something I never had seen before and wasn’t sure if I would ever see again.

That explains the headline on my nbcsports.com story about Chen’s victory: “By any measure, Nathan Chen’s performance at Worlds matches standard for transcendent greatness”

So it’s no wonder I was left goggle-eyed at what the 20-year-old Chen did in Saturday’s free skate at the Grand Prix Final in Turin, Italy.

It was even better than what Chen had done some six months ago at the worlds in Japan.

Not only did Chen decisively beat his rival, two-time Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan, for a second straight time in a major event, Chen did it on a day when the competitiveness of both figure skaters also was transcendent.

That led me to embark breathlessly on a tweet storm that is the best way to describe all of the brilliance Chen displayed to win a third straight Grand Prix Final title - and the first victory in when he had competed in the event against Hanyu, who missed the last two with injuries.

The tweets cover it all. Here they are:

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1998 Women’s Hockey Team: Opening doors for generations to come

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1998 Women’s Hockey Team: Opening doors for generations to come

Angela Ruggiero’s hockey story was typical for many girls of her generation. Growing up in suburban Los Angeles of the 1980s and early 1990s, she was the only girl on boys’ teams, dressing by herself in girls’ bathrooms at the rink, unable to see much of a hockey future for herself because the few U.S. colleges that had women’s teams at the time were all 3,000 miles to the east.

But when she was 12, Ruggiero got an unexpected opportunity, one that would change her life.

And Ruggiero, in turn, helped change the lives of thousands of girls and young women who followed because she seized on the chance that presented itself July 21, 1992 — the day the International Olympic Committee announced that women’s hockey had been added to the program for the Nagano 1998 Winter Olympic Games.

“It gave me a purpose,” Ruggiero said.

Ruggiero had her mind made up: she wanted to be an Olympian in hockey, her preferred sport of the many she played.

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Erin Popovich: Swimming to her place on the wall

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Erin Popovich: Swimming to her place on the wall

One day about 10 years ago, Erin Popovich was walking down the hall to the pool at the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, where she was training for her fourth and final International Paralympic Committee Swimming World Championships.

As usual, Popovich passed the gallery of photographs on the hallway wall of champion swimmers who had trained in that pool. Michael Phelps. Janet Evans. Matt Biondi. Natalie Coughlin. And many more — all swimmers she had looked up to during her career. Pictures she had seen very often but that still continued to arrest her eye, even if only in passing.

“It truly was a wall of legends,” she said.

And then, on this day, Popovich stopped in her tracks. There was a new photo of a swimmer on the wall: Erin Popovich.

“No one had told me it was going up there,” she said. “I hope I have done it justice and that it can stay up there a while longer.”

As it turns out, the pictures have come down during a renovation.

But Erin Popovich’s place among U.S. swimming legends is assured forever with her selection to the Class of 2019 of the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Hall of Fame.

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Russian Quad Squad, Chen-Hanyu rivalry: Grand Prix season so far

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Russian Quad Squad, Chen-Hanyu rivalry: Grand Prix season so far

A little slow getting this onto Globetrotting, so here are a few updates:

*Anna Shcherbakova won Cup of China by nearly 15 points, making the Russian women 4-for-4 heading into the penultimate Grand Prix series event, Rostelecom Cup this weekend in Moscow (see item 1.)

*Shcherbakova got full credit on one of her two quad Lutz attempts in China (the other was judged under-rotated.) So 17 of the 21 women’s jumps credited as quads this season have received positive GOE (see item 2.)

*A second-place finish at Cup of China was the 12th straight Grand Prix medal for U.S. ice dancers Madison Chock and Evan Bates and made them likely qualifiers for the Grand Prix Final (see item 10.)

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With the senior Grand Prix series at its halfway point and skaters heading for Chongqing, China for the fourth of six “regular season” events, here are 10 things we’ve learned from the series so far:

WOMEN

1. The kiddie corps of Russian women has been even better than expected – and expectations were very high.

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In 4/4 time, Trusova accelerates future shock in figure skating

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In 4/4 time, Trusova accelerates future shock in figure skating


 In interviews for my recent story on the potential impact of the quad revolution on women’s skating, international judge Samuel Auxier told me he saw the possibility of a sport in which female skaters without a quad or triple Axel will not be able to rely on component scores and other triples to overcome the big jumpers’ big tech scores.

And Russian quad phenom Alexandra Trusova provided a stunningly clear example of that possibility becoming reality in outscoring compatriot Alina Zagitova at Saturday’s Japan Open in Saitama.

Zagitova, the reigning Olympic and world champion, skated at a level not far from absolute perfection and simply was no match for Trusova’s flawed, landmark four-quad performance in the free-skate-only team event.

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