It took two Olympic cycles, eight years of coaching, and a pandemic, however U.S. determine skater Nathan Chen lastly has his Olympic medal. And it’s gold.
The 22-year-old Salt Lake Metropolis-native skated this system of his life in Beijing’s Capital Indoor Stadium on Thursday afternoon to face on high of the rostrum. Japan stuffed the opposite two spots, with Yuma Kagiyama incomes silver and Shoma Uno the bronze.
It was Chen’s gold to lose on the 2022 Olympics, simply because it was heading into the Video games 4 years in the past—earlier than he skated an uncharacteristically error-filled brief program that prevented him from cracking the highest three after the free program.
This time, it was completely different. Chen set a world report along with his rating within the brief program on Feb. 8, simply taking the lead with a margin of just about six factors. He misplaced none of that momentum coming into the free program, effortlessly touchdown 5 quadruple jumps and cementing his fame as some of the achieved males’s determine skaters in historical past.
Chen’s win breaks what Japan’s Yuzuru Hanyu hoped to make a 3rd consecutive Olympic title. Whereas Hanyu hoped to vault into medal rivalry with a deliberate quadruple Axel, and make historical past as the primary skater to land that almost all difficult bounce, he couldn’t full all 4.5 rotations, and fell on the touchdown and on his subsequent bounce try as nicely. He ended up simply off the rostrum in fourth.
