English by Irene Luo | Photography by Getty Images and Benjamin Chasteen
After a decade and a half of rigorous training, figure skater Nathan Chen had finally made it to his dream—the Olympics—and the podium was in sight.
As the only undefeated men’s skater this season, Nathan was touted as America’s chance for Olympic gold in Pyeongchang, South Korea. The two-time U.S. figure skating champion was the world’s first skater to successfully perform five quadruple jumps in one program, a previously unimaginable feat. As his name was splattered across newspaper headlines, audiences across America strung their hopes to the 18-year-old skating prodigy.
But everything swiftly unravelled when Nathan skated a short program for the team event riddled with costly errors and a fall on a triple axel jump. In the individual event, he plummeted even further with a short program that cast him into 17th place.
Buckling under the pressure, Nathan had lost his chance to the Olympic podium.
But the next day, Nathan rose from the abyss of failure to make Olympic history, breaking his previous world record by landing six quadruple jumps in his free skate program. He scored a new personal best of 215.08 points, almost nine points higher than Yuzuru Hanyu, the Japanese Olympian who would win gold. This was the Nathan audiences had come to know and love—a king on ice who dazzled with his technical mastery and breathtaking confidence.
Nathan Chen rejoices after performing a historic free skate with six quadruple jumps at the 2018 Winter Olympics.
Dedication, Sacrifice, and Triumph
When 3-year-old Nathan stepped onto the ice of one of the former Olympic skating rinks in his hometown of Salt Lake City, Utah, he fell in love almost instantly. “At the end of the session, the Zamboni comes on and cleans the ice, and everyone has to get off. I refused. I threw this huge tantrum,” Nathan shared with Elite Lifestyle Magazine a few weeks prior to the Olympics.
Like many Chinese immigrants, Nathan’s parents came to the United States with little money, and they worked hard so their five children could flourish. Nathan’s family was unable to afford new skates when he first started, so he used a pair of his sister’s hand-me-downs. When Nathan outgrew them, his father turned to a foundation run by two-time U.S. Olympian Michael Weiss, which offered scholarships to budding skaters. Although Nathan was too young to apply for the scholarship, Michael offered to fund the purchase anyway. And over the next 10 years, Michael’s charity would continue to support Nathan’s figure skating career, sending him up to $75,000 in total, according to USA Today.
Besides figure skating, Nathan’s mother, Hetty, also enrolled him in gymnastics and ballet. This was a decision that would prove to be central to Nathan’s figure skating career as he refined his movements and cultivated his artistry.
Behind the demanding “tiger mom” persona was a woman dedicated to helping her son live a life of fulfillment. “She does allow me to be a kid,” said Nathan. “She really considers my social life and my happiness to be a very vital part of my success.”
Nathan always feels grateful to his parents for the sacrifices they made when they immigrated to the United States. “We owe it to them to continue working hard, to continue pursuing our dreams,” Nathan said.
With the support of his family, Nathan swiftly improved and started entering and winning competitions. At the 2010 U.S. Championships, 10-year-old Nathan became the youngest novice champion in the history of U.S. figure skating.
When he grew older, he chose to forfeit traditional schooling for a rigorous training regime from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily, which included a combination of warmups, stretching, on-ice and off-ice training, and recovery. Behind his stunning competition programs are years of toil, sweat, and injuries, including a hip injury in 2016 that required surgery and took him off the ice for five months.
Despite the demands of training, Nathan treasures his time practicing, as he pushes himself to meet ever higher standards. “It’s time where I can always improve on myself,” Nathan says. “When I do something successful in training, I get an adrenaline rush, and I just feel so happy that I did something different.”
Through persistent hard work, Nathan mastered difficult techniques like the quadruple jump—the most celebrated maneuver in men’s figure skating and the move that gave him worldwide renown. The difficult trick, called a quad for short, requires skaters to launch into the air and spin four rapid-fire revolutions before landing gracefully back down.
At the 2017 U.S. Championships, Nathan became the world’s first figure skater to successfully land five quadruple jumps in one program—a feat once considered impossible. Although quads now seem indispensable to a medal-winning program, American Evan Lysacek managed to secure Olympic gold without performing a single quad just eight years ago.
Nathan seems to pull off multiple quads almost effortlessly, but it is extraordinarily taxing to successfully land just one, let alone five in quick succession. Fumbles and falls dot the records of even the world’s best figure skaters. And Nathan was no exception when he stumbled on a quadruple toe loop and fell on his famed quadruple lutz during his short program at the Pyeongchang Olympics.
Nathan Chen competes at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
“As much as I tried to deny it, I think I did feel the pressure a lot, thinking about medals and placement and things like that, things that were entirely out of my control,” Nathan told reporters after the competition. “That just tightened me up, made me really cautious on the ice, and that’s not the way to skate.”
The pressure to win gold had temporarily crippled Nathan, but audiences watched with astonishment when he rebounded the next day to land a world record of six quads and receive the highest score for the long program.
“I think after having such a disastrous short program and being so, so low in the ranking—lower than I usually ever am—it allowed me to completely forget the results and focus on enjoying myself out on the ice,” Nathan said, “and getting rid of expectations helped a lot.”
“The sixth quad was almost a game-time decision. I knew I had nothing to lose,” he said.
Precisely because he had nothing to lose, he was able to achieve the greatest triumph. Although he didn’t place, he achieved a spectacular personal victory and made an unprecedented leap from 17th to 5th place.
Nathan had regained his confidence and perhaps tapped into that euphoric energy he had described to Elite Lifestyle Magazine before the Olympics: “Once the music starts, once you really get into the program, it’s like you go into a completely different world. It’s just an incredible feeling I haven’t found anywhere else.”
Despite skating on a left blade with a nick in the outside edge, Nathan wins gold at 2017 Skate America.
