In figure skating’s long, strange trip of a season, Nathan Chen showed the way

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In figure skating’s long, strange trip of a season, Nathan Chen showed the way

What a long, strange trip it has been for figure skating over the past 13 months.

From the cancellation of the 2020 World Championships in Montreal when the first wave of the pandemic hit full force last March through dealing with two more COVID waves since then, the International Skating Union had to:

*Cancel six of the 10 events (and indefinitely postpone two more) in the second-tier Challenger Series of international events.

*Remake the top tier, six-event Grand Prix Series as domestic-only, with no Final and both France and Canada cancelling their GP events. (Canada also cancelled its national championships.)

*Cancel its two regional championships, the European Championships and Four Continents Championships.

For all that, the season came to a satisfying end. The ISU pulled off both the 2021 World Championships last month in a Stockholm, Sweden, bubble with no spectators other than skaters and officials and the 2021 World Team Trophy last week in an Osaka, Japan, bubble with limited spectators – while Osaka prefecture was in a state of emergency due to a surge in COVID cases.

Here are some takeaways from the 2020/21 season (such as it was):

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By the (likely) final performance, Nathan Chen became a mirror for Glass music

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By the (likely) final performance, Nathan Chen became a mirror for Glass music

My observations from Day 2 of 3 at the World Team Trophy, where Nathan Chen was Same As He Ever Was in winning the free skate after winning the short program on Day 1.

(Wait…maybe Talking Heads for him in the Olympic season?)

1. It’s too bad that Friday was most likely the last time Nathan Chen will skate the free program Shae-Bourne artfully choreographed to selections from the music of the minimalist composer, Philip Glass.

Chen clearly had a physical as well as intellectual understanding of Glass, having studied his music at Yale and having learned how to play part of it on the piano. The skater’s interpretation got more nuanced each time he performed it, with the final half of the four minutes at the World Championships and the opening 30 seconds at World Team Trophy clear evidence of how he “got” the music.

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