Nathan Chen (born May 5, 1999) is an American figure skater who competes in the men's singles discipline. He is the 2018 World champion, the 2018 Winter Olympic bronze medalist in the team event, the 2017-18 Grand Prix Final champion, the 2017 Four Continents champion, and a two-time U.S. national champion (2017, 2018). Earlier in his career, he won bronze at the 2014 World Junior Championships and gold at the 2015-16 Junior Grand Prix Final.
Chen is the first, and currently only skater competing with five different types of quadruple jumps--toe loop, salchow, loop, flip and lutz.
Video Nathan Chen
Personal life
Nathan Chen was born in Salt Lake City, Utah and he has four older siblings. He attended West High School in Salt Lake City and Rim of the World High School in Lake Arrowhead, California, and graduated from California Connections Academy. In addition to figure skating, Chen trained in ballet with Ballet West Academy and competed in gymnastics at the state and regional levels for seven years.
Maps Nathan Chen
Skating career
Early years
Nathan Chen started figure skating at age three in a pair of his sister's white skates. He entered his first skating competition in 2003. From 2007 to 2009, he qualified to compete in the U.S. Junior Nationals at the juvenile and intermediate levels. He placed 10th and 3rd in juveniles at the 2007 and 2008 Junior Nationals. At the 2009 Junior Nationals, he won the intermediate men's silver medal.
Chen advanced to the novice level in the 2009-10 season. He became the youngest novice champion in the history of U.S. Figure Skating at age 10 by winning the national novice title at the 2010 U.S. Championships in Spokane, Washington. Due to his young age, he opted to remain at the novice level for the 2010-2011 season and defended his novice title at the 2011 U.S. Championships in Greensboro, North Carolina.
In the 2011-2012 season, Chen moved up nationally to the junior level. He was coached by Genia Chernyshova and also traveled to Lake Arrowhead, California, to work with jump specialist Rafael Arutyunyan. Arutyunyan became his main coach in mid-December 2011. Chen won the junior men's title at the 2012 U.S. Championships in San Jose, California on January 24, 2012. Making his first international appearance, he won the novice men's event at the 2012 Gardena Spring Trophy in Selva Val Gardena, Italy.
2012-2013 season: Junior international debut
Chen became age-eligible (13 years old) to compete in the ISU Junior Grand Prix (JGP) series. His first assignment was JGP Austria in Linz from September 12-16, 2012. He won the gold medal with the highest score (222.00 points) ever awarded at the time in the JGP series. A lower leg injury resulted in Chen's withdrawal following the short program at JGP Croatia in early October 2012, ending his chances of qualifying for the JGP Final. Nationally, having stayed at the junior level, he won the junior men's bronze medal at the 2013 U.S. Championships in Omaha, Nebraska, on January 22, 2013.
2013-2014 season: Bronze at Junior Worlds
Chen started his season by winning gold both at the ISU Junior Grand Prix in Mexico, in September 2013, and JGP in Belarus. He qualified for the Junior Grand Prix Final in Fukuoka, Japan, where he won the bronze medal. On January 9, 2014 Chen broke a six-year U.S. junior men's record of 213.76 at the 2014 U.S. Championships in Boston, Massachusetts, en route to his second U.S. junior title. His final combination spin in the short program received 4.86 points, the highest among active male skaters in the world. Chen was awarded the bronze medal at the 2014 World Junior Championships in Sofia, Bulgaria in March 2014. The results of Chen and his teammates, Jordan Moeller and Shotaro Omori, gained three entries for the United States to the 2015 World Junior Championships.
2014-2015 season: Senior national debut
Chen moved up to the senior level domestically. At the Pacific Sectional Championships in November 2014, he landed a clean quadruple toe loop and double toe loop combination (4T+2T) in his free skate, winning the senior men's division, and advanced to the 2015 U.S. Championships in Greensboro, North Carolina. He developed a growth-related heel injury one week before the national championships, and ended up competing with scaled-back versions of his short and long programs. He placed eighth overall in his senior national championship debut in January 2015. After the competition, Chen was named to the U.S. team for the 2015 World Junior Championships. He finished 4th at the event in Tallinn, Estonia, on March 8, 2015.
2015-2016 season: Junior Grand Prix Final champion
In the 2015-16 ISU Junior Grand Prix series, Chen won gold in both Colorado Springs, Colorado and in Logroño, Spain. In December 2015, he stood atop the podium at the JGP Final in Barcelona.
In January 2016, Chen made history at the U.S. Championships by becoming the first American man to land two quadruple jumps in the short program. On January 24, he became the first man in the world to land four quadruple jumps in a long program. He finished third overall behind Adam Rippon and Max Aaron, who landed zero and two quads, respectively, reigniting the debate over whether artistry should trump athleticism in figure skating scoring. While attempting a jump during exhibitions on the same day, Chen sustained an avulsion injury to his left hip, leading to surgery on January 27. As a result, he withdrew from the 2016 World Junior Championships in Debrecen, Hungary, and the 2016 World Championships in Boston. Chen underwent a month of rehabilitation at the U.S. Olympic Training Center (OTC) in Chula Vista, California, and by May was training off-ice at OTC in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He resumed full-strength on-ice training around July.
2016-2017 season: Senior international debut
Ahead of the 2016-2017 season, Chen traveled to Canton, Michigan, to have his programs choreographed by Marina Zueva. "I spent a week there, and we hit it off really well. We talked it over and thought it'd be a good idea to go to Michigan and work on PCS a little bit." By September 2016, six months after his hip surgery, Zueva and Oleg Epstein were coaching him in Canton. In preparation for his international senior debut, he started to train the 4Lz and 4F.
Armed with four different types of quads -- 4T, 4S, 4F, and 4Lz -- Chen began his season with a gold medal at the 2016 CS Finlandia Trophy, 7.71 points ahead of silver medalist Patrick Chan of Canada. He then competed at two Grand Prix events. For his Grand Prix series debut at the 2016 Trophée de France in Paris, Chen cleanly landed a 4Lz+3T combination jump and a 4F jump in both his short and long programs. His short program scored 92.85, breaking the American short program record of 90.30 held by Olympic champion Evan Lysacek since the 2010 Winter Olympics. After finishing fourth in France, he returned to Arutyunyan in California. At the 2016 NHK Trophy in Sapporo, Chen placed second behind the reigning Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu and thus qualified for the Grand Prix Final (GPF) in Marseille, France.
In December at the GPF, Chen placed 5th in the short program but won the free skate with a performance that included four quadruple jumps. Having obtained a total score of 282.85 points, he was awarded the silver medal behind Yuzuru Hanyu and became the second-youngest male skater (age 17) to medal at the GPF after Evgeni Plushenko, who won his first GPF medal at age 16 in 1999. He spent two weeks later that month working in Canton, Michigan, modifying the element order and choreography of his programs.
At the 2017 U.S. Championships in Kansas City, Missouri, Chen performed two quadruple jumps (4Lz+3T and 4F) in the short program and five in the free skate (4Lz+3T, 4F, 4T+2T+2Lo, 4T and 4S), the first person to ever do so. He won the U.S. title with the highest scores in U.S. Figure Skating history (106.39 in the short program, 212.08 in the free skate, 318.47 overall). Following the event, he and teammate Jason Brown were named to the 2017 World team by U.S. Figure Skating.
In February, Chen won the short program at the 2017 Four Continents and subsequently, the competition, becoming the third person to score over 100 points in a short program and over 300 points in an International Skating Union competition. In April, at the World Championships in Helsinki, the boots that he had begun using after Four Continents were on the verge of falling apart; however, he decided to continue using them, using duct tape and hockey laces, because he felt that the back-up boots were too new. He attempted a record total of eight quadruple jumps, two in the short program and six in the long program, but fell on two quadruple jumps in his long program and placed sixth overall at the competition. He and teammate Jason Brown, who placed seventh, secured three berths for the United States in the men's event at the 2018 Winter Olympics.
Chen rounded off the season with a 3rd place team and 2nd place personal finish at the 2017 World Team Trophy in Tokyo.
2017-2018 season: Olympic season
Chen started the 2017-2018 season by winning the 2017 CS U.S. International Figure Skating Classic in September, debuting his short program "Nemesis" choreographed by Shae-Lynn Bourne and free skate "Mao's Last Dancer" choreographed by Lori Nichol. He landed his first quad loop in the free skate and thus became the first skater to land five different quads (4T, 4S, 4Lo, 4F and 4Lz) in competition.
He was selected to represent Team USA alongside Jeremy Abbott, Karen Chen, and Mirai Nagasu at the Japan Open. There, his free program earned second place behind Javier Fernandez.
In his second Grand Prix series, Chen won his first Grand Prix title at the 2017 Rostelecom Cup in Moscow. After placing first in the short program and second in the free skate, he defeated the reigning World and Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan. At 2017 Skate America, Chen won his second Grand Prix title finishing ahead of Adam Rippon. He skated the short program, which earned him a new personal best score, with a left blade that had a nick in the outside edge. He replaced the blade for the free skate but stated afterward, "I think that was a bad call. It was a little too sharp on the inside edge, and every time I pressed into it for sal(chow), toe and even flip, it would catch into the ice way harder than I was used to." With two victories, Chen earned the top qualifying spot for the Grand Prix Final.
At the Final in Nagoya, Chen took the lead in the short program and the competition over Shoma Uno of Japan and Mikhail Kolyada of Russia to win his first Grand Prix Final title. He became the third American in history to win the Final, the first since Evan Lysacek in 2009.
At the 2018 U.S. Championships in San Jose, California, Chen performed a total seven clean quadruple jumps (two in the short program and five in the free skate) and scored 315.23 to win his second consecutive national title. Following the event, Chen, Adam Rippon, and Vincent Zhou were nominated by U.S. Figure Skating to compete at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea as part of the U.S. Olympic Figure Skating Team.
At the 2018 Winter Olympics, Chen placed 4th in the men's short program of the team event. Chen won a bronze medal in the team event alongside teammates Mirai Nagasu, Bradie Tennell, Adam Rippon, Alexa Scimeca Knierim, Chris Knierim, Maia Shibutani, and Alex Shibutani. In the individual men's event, Chen performed poorly in the short program, placing 17th. In the free skate, he made Olympic history by becoming the first man to attempt six quads and land five cleanly (official video at the reference link ). He placed first in the free skate with a score of 215.08, the highest in Olympic history, and earned a total score of 297.35 to move up 12 places from the short program to finish in 5th place overall.
In March at the 2018 World Figure Skating Championships in Milan, Chen placed first in both the short (101.94) and free (219.46) programs. He again attempted and landed six quads in the free program, winning the 2018 world champion title with a total score of 321.40 points and becoming the second skater to have ever broken 320 points after Yuzuru Hanyu. Chen becomes the first U.S. men's world champion since Evan Lysacek in 2009 and the 10th in history, joining the group of great world champions from the United States - Dick Button, Hayes Alan Jenkins, David Jenkins, Tim Wood, Charlie Tickner, Scott Hamilton, Brian Boitano, Todd Eldredge and Evan Lysacek. At age 18, he is the youngest world champion since Evgeni Plushenko in 2001. Chen's victory and teammate Max Aaron's 11th place finish ensure Team USA three men's berths at next year's World Figure Skating Championships in Japan. His margin of victory over silver medalist Shoma Uno is also the highest in history at 47.63 points.
Records and achievements
- First skater to land eight quadruple jumps in a competition (2018 World Championships).
- First skater to attempt and land six quadruple jumps in one program at the Olympics (free skate, 2018 Winter Olympics).
- First skater to land five clean quads one program at the Olympics (free skate, 2018 Winter Olympics).
- First skater to land two quadruple Lutzes in one program (2017 Skate America).
- First skater to land five different quadruple jumps (4T, 4S, 4Lo, 4F, and 4Lz) in competition (4Lo landed at 2017 CS U.S. International Figure Skating Classic).
- First skater to land seven clean quadruple jumps in a competition (2017 U.S. Championships).
- First skater to land four different quadruple jumps (4T, 4S, 4Lz, and 4F) in a competition (2017 U.S. Championships, 2017 Four Continents Figure Skating Championships).
- First skater to land five quadruple jumps in a free skate (2017 U.S. Championships, 2017 Four Continents Figure Skating Championships).
- First skater to land a quad flip-triple toe loop (4F+3T) combination in a competition (2016 NHK Trophy).
- Youngest U.S. male skater (18 years old) to win the Grand Prix of Figure Skating Final.
- Youngest U.S. male skater (17 years old) to qualify for and medal at the Grand Prix of Figure Skating Final.
- Youngest U.S. men's national figure skating champion (17 years old) since 1966.
- First skater to land a quad flip at an Olympic Games.
(Usually, ISU does not homologate national records.)
Programs
Competitive highlights
GP: Grand Prix; CS: Challenger Series; JGP: Junior Grand Prix
Detailed results
Small medals for short and free programs awarded only at ISU Championships. At team events, medals awarded for team results only.
Honors
- Selected to represent Coca-Cola, Nike, BridgeStone, United Airlines, and Kellogg's at the 2018 Olympic Winter Games in PyeongChang, Korea.
- Awarded Team USA's Best Male Athlete of the Month by the U.S. Olympic Committee in December 2016, January, October, December 2017, and January 2018.
- Won SKATING magazine's 2016-17 Readers' Choice Award (Michelle Kwan Trophy)
- Performed with "Stars on Ice" in May 2017 in Hershey, Chicago, San Jose, Anaheim, Seattle, and Wenatchee, Washington
- Selected one of the 2017 "Next Generation Leaders" by the Time
- Named Team USA's Top 16 Men of 2016 and Team USA's Top 17 Men of 2017
- Recipient of Best Male Performance Award at 2017, 2016 U.S. Championships by Professional Skaters Association
- Recipient of 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, and 2009 Michael Weiss Foundation Scholarship
- Recipient of 2012 Ron and Gayle Hershberger Award
- Recipient of 2011 Athlete Alumni Ambassador Award
- Recipient of 2011, 2010 Cecilia Colledge Memorial Fund award
- Recipient of 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, and 2008 U.S. Figure Skating Memorial Fund
- Member of the 2016-17, 2015-16, 2014-15, 2013-14, 2012-13, 2011-12, 2010-11 U.S. Figure Skating Team Envelope
- Featured as ABC World News' "Person of the Week" on February 19, 2010
- Performed in the WiWa Ice Shows in Hangzhou, China, May 1-5, 2010
- Skated in the annual Sun Valley Summer Ice Shows in Sun Valley, Idaho, since 2010
- Performed as a guest skater at Skate Asia 2010 in Hangzhou, China, Skate Asia 2011 in Bangkok, Thailand, Skate Asia 2012 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Skate Asia 2013 in Bangkok, Thailand
References
External links
- Official website
- Former official website
- Nathan Chen at Ice Network (subsidiary of U.S. Figure Skating)
- Nathan Chen at the International Skating Union
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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