Nathan Chen ends Yuzuru Hanyu’s reign as men’s figure skating gold medalist

BEIJING — In the city where his parents met, Nathan Chen had a date with his own destiny.

Chen, who was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, won the gold medal in men’s singles skating at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games, preventing a Japanese sweep of the medals.

“I never thought I’d actually be able to make this happen,” Chen said.

Why not?

“It’s hard,” Chen, 22, replied with a laugh. “It’d always been a dream of mine, of course, but it’s a pretty daunting mountain.”

At his first Olympic Games in 2018, the mountain crushed him. Chen had medal aspirations, but a disastrous short program put him in 17th place going into the free skate. He won the free skate to pull himself up to fifth overall.

In the last four years, Chen has won three world titles and likely would have won another if not for the pandemic cancelling the 2020 world championships. He held the world record for the free skate and overall total and was pushing the limits for quadruple jumps, becoming the first man to land five in a competition. Now it was the pressure that was crushing.

But Chen exorcised his demons from 2018 in the short program at Capital Indoor Stadium, winning with a world record score of 113.97 points. He even pumped his fist at the end, an uncharacteristic gesture for the usually buttoned-up Yale University student.

“The short was a little bit more emotional,” Chen said. “Today was a little bit more business.”

For the free skate, Chen performed to “Rocket Man,” by Elton John, and was over the moon when he finished. Chen landed five quadruple jumps, more than any other skater, and finished with a score of 218.63 for an overall score of 332.60.

“After you’re done with the jumps, it’s quite a relief and you can start enjoying he footwork and the rest of the program,” said Chen, who even told himself to smile a bit more. “I almost tripped because of that, and I was like, ‘I have to lock back in.’”

Chen was the only skater in the top four who did not have a major mistake.

Yuma Kagiyama, the reigning world silver medalist, was second (310.05), followed by 2018 Olympic silver medalist Shona Uno (293.00).

Coming in fourth was Yuzuru Hanyu, the two-time Olympic gold medalist from Japan, who struggled in his comeback from injury. He was eighth after the short program when he popped out of his first jump due to a hole in the ice. Despite two falls, he finished third in the free skate to accumulate 283.21 points.

“As soon as you hear the name Yuzuru Hanyu, you’re like, ‘OK, this competition is going to be hard,’” Chen said. “Yuma’s been on an amazingly hot trajectory and Shoma has always bee doing his thing quietly, just making it really hard on the rest of the competitors.”

Chen thanked his coach, Rafael Arutyunyan, who was born in Soviet Georgia and emigrated to the United States from Russia.

After the program, Arutyunyan was still instructing the pupil he has coached since he was 11 years old.

“As soon as I sat down, he was like, ‘Thank your mom on TV,” and I was like, “Thanks for reminding me,” Chen said.

The youngest of five children, Chen and his mother moved to the Los Angeles area to train with Arutyunyan.

“My mom and I grew up quite poor,” Chen said. “We didn’t really have very much money. She would just scrap together some dollars and try to pay Raf. Raf obviously knew about the situation and thanks to the kindness of his heart was able to continue taking me in.”

Chen said that the coach would sometimes give the money back to him. “He was like, ‘I don’t really need that. I just want to help you achieve the goals that you want.’”

Still, Chen said that after Arutyunyan gave him the money back, “I would always try to stick it in his pocket and run away.”

And so Chen became his coach’s first Olympic champion.

He is the first U.S. athlete to win a figure skating singles gold medal since Evan Lysacek squeaked past Evgeni Plushenko of Russia by 1.31 points in 2010.

Chen’s gold medal was the third for the United States at these Games and first by a male athlete.

He said he has been working with a sports psychologist for the past year and talked to him a lot the past couple a days “to help keep me grounded.”

But at the Olympic rink on Thursday, he was flying high.