Views from the Edge, by Ed Dionko
Watch out! Nathan Chen is on a mission with a vengeance. Since he finished in the 2018 Olympics with a disappointing performance, winning a bronze medal instead of the predicted gold, he hasn’t lost a single competition.
The Yale sophomore continued his unbeaten streak Sunday (Jan. 26) by winning the US men’s figures skating championship in dominating fashion. Though it wasn’t his cleanest skate (Chen is recovering from the flu), he still scored an impressive 216.04 points.
Combined with his record-setting short program, Chen finished with a total score of 330.17, a whopping 37.29 points above the second-place finisher Jason Brown.
During his long performance, perhaps because of his illness, Chen appeared to hold back even though he easily landed a pair of quad toe loops, a quad flip and a quad Salchow. He’s undefeated since placing fifth at the PyeongChang Olympics with a disastrous 17th-place short program. Only a stupendous free skate in which he performed six quadruple jumps vaulted him to third place.
There was a bit of minor controversy between the third and fourth place competitors.Tomoki Hiwatashi, the world junior champion, jumped from fifth to third after landing a pair of quads in a clean free skate. Usually that would be enough to be named to the three-man world championships team.
But that spot was instead given by a U.S. Figure Skating committee to fourth-place finisher Vincent Zhou, who has more international experience.
Olympian Zhou finished fourth with one quad in his free skate. Zhou had minor errors on some of his jump landings. As a freshman at Brown Universitiy, Zhou skipped training for the entire autumn. He only had a month of training before the nationals after moving to Toronto in late December and had a change in coaches.
The same kind of reasoning went into the decision to drop silver medalist Jessica Calalang and Brian Johnson from representing the US at the worlds. The committee awarded the second pairs spot to the more experienced team of Ashley Cain-Gribble and Timothy LeDuc, who finished fourth.
Dance team consisting of first-place finisher Hawaiian Chinese American Madison Chock and her partner Evan Bates will compete in the ice dance competition at world’s.
Calalang and Johnson will still be able to represent the US at the Four Continents Championships next month.
Alysa Liu, who won the women’s title, will not be in the US team for world’s because she is too young for international competition. It is expected that the Oakland, Calif. skater will compete in the world junior championship.
2018 Olympian Karen Chen, who finished fourth in the women’s competition, won’t be on the world’s team but will skate for the US at the Four Continents Championships.
AAPI skaters will continue to have a strong presence in US figure skating for the foreseeable future to at least the 2011 Olympics. In the 2018 Olympics, seven of the 14 figure skaters, seven were AAPI athletes.
The world championships are set for March 16-22 in Montreal. The Four Continents Championships will run Feb. 3-9 in Seoul.
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