Opinion: Nathan Chen's masterful start in team event helps him move past 2018 disaster

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BEIJING – Nathan Chen is a masked wonder on the ice. Unlike almost every other skater at the Olympic Games, he wears a mask throughout his practice sessions here. It’s all about caution. He wore a mask while zooming into a press conference earlier this season, even though he was alone in a room at his Southern California rink. You know, caution.

He isn’t going to march in Friday night’s opening ceremony. “Just close proximity with a lot of people,” he explained. Why? Caution. Plus he’s done it before, in 2018.

But when Chen took the ice to compete in the men’s short program of the team figure skating event Friday morning, caution left the building. Chen skated a masterful short program, full of flair with not one false step, to easily win the event and allow the United States to jump out to an early lead in the three-day competition.

It was a majestic comeback of sorts for the 22-year-old known as the Quad King. The last time Chen skated a short program at the Olympics, it was a disaster. He wasn’t first, second or third. He was 17th. That was in the men’s competition at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games. His short program in the team event there wasn’t very good either.

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No wonder he breathed a sigh of relief when he was finished Friday morning.

“I'm happy to be here and I'm happy with the way that I skated, so it feels great to be able to have a short program that I actually skated well and an Olympic experience,” he said afterward. “You learn the most from your mistakes, and I certainly learned a lot from that competition, and I don't think I would be able to be here where I am now without having had that experience. So, I think rather than that being the end, I think that was a very helpful learning experience.”

From the depths of the 2018 Olympics, Chen has gone on to win three world titles and four more national titles. He has lost only once since he ended up in fifth place after an excellent long program in that 2018 men’s competition. If he keeps that streak going here, the coveted men’s Olympic gold medal will be his by next week.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. For now, it was all about his stellar start on Olympic ice Friday. His 111.71 points, fueled by two smooth quadruple jumps, was his highest score internationally this season. He was equal parts athlete and artist at just the right time, calm and in control on the ice, thoughtful but not tentative.

Watching on TV from his home in Northern Virginia, U.S. Olympic judge Joe Inman texted, simply, “Just a stunning short.”

Chen is not expected to skate the men’s long program in the team event, which means his next competitive appearance here in Beijing will be in the main event, the men’s short program Tuesday. So that means lots of time on the practice ice, masked up.

“Certainly everyone has been doing a very good job trying to stay safe and do their part and helping keep it up," he said. "But when I'm on the ice, this is something that I've been doing for the past couple of weeks. I feel like I can be more at ease when I have the mask on. And so that's something that I'll just continue doing.”

He was asked if anything about wearing the mask in practice made competing without the mask easier, as if he has been training at altitude before coming back to sea level.

“I hope so, but I have no idea,” he said. “I haven't done any blood tests. I'm sure someone can try, but I don't really think so. I want to say I don't think there's too much of a difference but there's a lot of condensation in the inside of the mask so it feels great to be able to just breathe fresh air.”

He said all of that behind an N95 mask, held on securely by bands around his neck and the back of his head. You know, caution.