Just like four years ago, Nathan Chen won the U.S. figure skating title ahead of the Olympics. He hopes the Winter Games go much different this time.
Chen fell twice in Sunday’s free skate (once in a choreographic sequence) but still easily earned his sixth national title — the second man to achieve the feat in the last 70 years. Like the others, it was a rout.
“Today went OK,” Chen said. “I made a couple of silly mistakes.”
He landed six quadruple jumps between two programs, totaled 328.01 points and prevailed by 25.53 over a surprise, 17-year-old Ilia Malinin.
FIGURE SKATING NATIONALS: Full Results
Malinin is the world’s top-ranked junior skater in his first senior national championships and could become the youngest U.S. Olympic men’s singles skater since 1964, according to Olympedia.org. But Malinin, who landed four quads in a clean free skate, could be passed over for a spot on the three-man Olympic team by a selection committee.
“It’s definitely my dream to go to the Olympics, and I definitely think I should deserve to go,” Malinin, who this season sometimes trained with Chen and Chen’s renowned jumping coach, Rafael Arutunian, said on NBC. “It’s ultimately down to the committee.”
Vincent Zhou and Jason Brown, the third- and fourth-place finishers more than 20 points behind Malinin, entered nationals as the clear Nos. 2 and 3 U.S. men over the last year. The committee considers results dating back to the 2021 U.S. Championships and is set to decide on the team later Sunday.
Zhou, who handed Chen his lone defeat in this Olympic cycle at Skate America three months ago, was just 2.61 points behind after Saturday’s short program. But he unraveled in a free skate with five quad attempts, botching landings and falling on his last jump, a triple Axel.
“I was so nervous that my body froze up on me,” Zhou said. “I believe that the committee will make the appropriate decision in the end.”
Up until this season, it was thought that only two-time Olympic champ Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan could rival Chen at the Beijing Games (Hanyu and Chen have not gone head-to-head this season). Zhou, ranked second in the world this season behind Chen, was challenging that notion. But not on Sunday.
Brown, 27, fell on his lone quadruple jump attempt but was otherwise strong to stay in fourth place, as he was after the short, just .38 behind Zhou. Brown has struggled learning a quad for most of the last decade. Had he performed a clean triple instead of falling on the quad Salchow, he would have moved ahead of Zhou.
Brown can become the first U.S. figure skater to go eight years between Olympic appearances. He persevered through a challenging week, not arriving in Nashville until Friday after 33 hours of travel from Toronto including five canceled flights, an overnight in Atlanta and a rental car drive.
Then on Sunday morning, Brown’s coach Tracy Wilson tested positive for the coronavirus in a previously scheduled test per event protocols. Wilson said she was feeling fine. Brown tested negative Sunday morning.
The rest of the U.S. Olympic team was named earlier this weekend — Mariah Bell, Karen Chen and Alysa Liu, pairs’ teams Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier and Ashley Cain-Gribble and Timothy LeDuc and ice dance couples Madison Chock and Evan Bates, Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue and Kaitlin Hawayek and Jean-Luc Baker.
The U.S. could win five medals with the best shots being Chen, either Chock and Bates or Hubbell and Donohue and in the team event behind favorite Russia.
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