Opinion: Nathan Chen wins at U.S. national figure skating championship, but COVID does too
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A most unusual U.S. national figure skating championship is over, and the results are crystal clear:
Nathan Chen won. Sadly, so did COVID-19.
Chen, the 22-year-old American superstar who will be a gold-medal favorite at next month’s Beijing Winter Olympics, fell twice — one of them on footwork, a “silly mistake,” he said — but landed four quadruple jumps in Sunday’s long program to easily win his sixth consecutive national title, the most in U.S. men’s skating since the legendary Dick Button’s seven consecutive titles back in the 1940s and early 1950s.
“Clearly today wasn’t perfect,” Chen said afterward. “Risk/reward is always part of the game. I made a couple of silly mistakes but I’m happy I won. Someday I want to be able to look back on my skating career and say I really had a lot of fun on the ice, and that’s what this program allows me to do.”
It’s no surprise that Chen won. He almost always wins. He’s a three-time world champion as well. But what was unexpected was who followed right behind him. Not 21-year-old Vincent Zhou, a 2018 Olympic teammate of Chen’s. Not 27-year-old Jason Brown, a 2014 Olympian.
No, it was a name almost no one outside of figure skating had heard even a few days ago. A figure skating star was born here this weekend. His name is Ilia Malinin, he’s 17, he’s the son of two highly-regarded international skaters and he looks like he can jump to the moon.
He is a prodigious young talent training in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., whose Instagram handle says it all: “quadg0d,” as in Quad God. He landed two quads in the short program and four in the long program, each looking light as a feather, to finish second to Chen.
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Chen’s winning score was 328.01 points, but Malinin broke the 300-point barrier as well, finishing with 302.48, well ahead of Zhou (290.16) and Brown (289.78).
“I wasn’t expecting to skate this good and to finish second,” Malinin said after bringing the roaring audience to its feet. “I was surprised today. Even though I trained for this moment, I was a bit surprised how easily everything went together and how it all came together. I’m really excited for this moment. I think this gave me a shot to go to the Olympics.”
That decision came later Sunday, when a U.S. Figure Skating committee picked Chen, Zhou and Brown, leaving Malinin as the odd man out — but also as the alternate, which could become important with COVID raging.
Chen was asked if Malinin reminded him of himself before he won his first national title.
“I think Ilia is miles ahead of where I was in 2016,” Chen said. “He has an amazing future.”
Malinin brought a much needed breath of fresh air to an event racked by COVID. After knocking out defending national pairs champion Brandon Frazier and two-time national women’s champion Alysa Liu earlier in the week — both of whom received Olympic berths while in quarantine in their hotel rooms — COVID dealt the event another blow Sunday morning.
Tracy Wilson, Brown’s coach with whom he drove from Atlanta to Nashville earlier in the week, tested positive. Brown’s test Sunday morning was negative, according to USFS.
It was only the latest setback in a difficult week for Brown, a majestic artist on the ice who fell on the only quad he attempted Sunday.
Brown’s trip from his training base in Toronto to Nashville took 33 hours and included, as he wrote on Twitter, “five cancelled flights, four airline changes, three airports, two countries, an overnight in Atlanta, a rental car and a ton of help.” And then his coach tested positive.
It was that kind of week, an event where uncertainty and anxiety were constant companions and COVID test results became more important than quad-triple combinations.