16 TIME February 28/March 7, 2022
FIGURE SKATING
Nathan Chen fi nally
gets his gold medal
BY ALICE PARKSNOWBOARDING IT TOOK ONE MORE OLYM-
pics than he—and everyone
else in the fi gure- skating
world—expected, but
American Nathan Chen
fi nally has his Olympic
medal. And it’s gold.
The 22-year-old Salt
Lake City native skated the
program of his life in Bei-
jing’s Capital Indoor Sta-
dium on Feb. 10 to stand
atop the podium. Japan
fi lled the remaining spots,
with Yuma Kagiyama earn-
ing silver and Shoma Uno
bronze. “I just had a blast
out there,” said Chen,
who skated to a medley of
Elton John tunes includ-
ing “Rocket Man.” “I’m so
happy; that program is so
much fun to skate.”
It was Chen’s gold to
lose, just as it was heading
into the Games four years
ago. He was considered a
favorite in PyeongChang,
but Chen couldn’t meet
the moment and skated an
uncharacteristically error-
fi lled short program that
led to his fi nishing off theNORDIC COMBINED
SNOWBOARDING
podium entirely. The per-
formance fueled the Yale
student over the past four
years. Indeed, talk to any
member of Chen’s team and
they say the same thing: he
knows what he wants. And
in Beijing, Chen wanted to
prove that his performance
in PyeongChang did not de-
fi ne him. Chen set a world
record with his score in the
short program on Feb. 8,
easily taking the lead with a
margin of almost six points.
He built on the momentum
in the free program, eff ort-
lessly landing fi ve quadru-
ple jumps and cementing
his reputation as one of the
most talented men’s fi gure
skaters in history.
The “Rocket Man” pro-
gram was a departure for
Chen, who normally skates
to more abstract music
selections. For the chore-
ography, he approached
noted ice-dance coach
Marie-France Dubreuil,
who coaches the top three
U.S. ice-dance teams. “I
was looking to change upthe choreography, and had
seen the amazing work that
Marie-France was doing,”
Chen told TIME before the
Games. Dubreuil was “puz-
zled” when Chen reached
out. “Normally my head
likes to create for four legs,
four arms, two heads, and
four eyes,” she says. “When
he called me, I said ‘Why?’ ”
Dubreuil helped intro-
duce Chen to hip-hop cho-
reographer Sam Chouinard.
The fast and boisterous
dance sequence at the
end—a hit with both fans
and judges—was Choui-
nard’s eff ort to show a dif-
ferent side of Chen. “I tried
to see if he can dance and
perform when he is getting
ready to jump, so it would
be easier to tell the story
and easier to keep the au-
dience involved in what he
was trying to do on the ice,”
Chouinard says. “When
skaters understand the
blend of the two, this is the
perfect recipe for gold.”
For Chen, the gold medal
is the payoff for a lifetime of
training that began on the
practice rink for the 2002
Salt Lake City Olympics,
and for the long hours his
mother spent driving him
a couple of times a month
from their Utah home to Los
Angeles, where he started
taking lessons when he
was 12. “My mom has been
with me since the fi rst day I
stepped on the ice, and even
now is right by my side,” he
told TIME. “When I was 12
we didn’t have the fi nances
to aff ord fl ights, so driving
was the only way to get me
back and forth at the time.”
It fi nally paid off , with
gold. ◁
Chen during his gold-
medal-winning skate to
“Rocket Man” in Beijing