Nathan Chen wins figure skating gold for US and Olympic redemption

Nathan Chen left no doubt, making good on his long-held promise to finally take hold of figure skating’s ultimate prize.

The world’s most dominant skater over the past 47 months roared to the Olympic men’s title on Thursday, winning by more than 22 points after a mesmerizing long program that included five quadruple jumps and a pair of triples.

Chen, skating last after Tuesday’s record-breaking short programme, earned a standing ovation after completing a near-flawless routine an Elton John medley to finish with an overall score of 332.60, three off his world record and more than enough to hold off Japanese rivals Yuma Kagiyama, who won silver with a score of 310.05, and Shoma Uno, whose 293.00 was good for a bronze to go with his silver from four years ago.

Moving across the ice with athleticism and pace in a Vera Wang-designed galaxy-print costume befitting of his ascent into the cosmos of the sport’s all-time greats, the 22-year-old from southern California by way of Salt Lake City captured the lone prize missing from his trophy cabinet and finally put to rest the demons of his catastrophic Olympic debut back in 2018.

Chen nailed his opening quad flip-triple toeloop combination and quad flip before stumbling on his quad salchow but hanging on. “I had a little struggle on the [salchow],” he said. “Throughout the past two weeks but also two minutes before I skated, the triple sal felt really off, so I was a little worried about that. But I was happy to make that happen, and the rest felt great.”

His only substantial miscue came on the fifth quad of the program when he popped the closing triple of a planned quad toeloop-single euler-triple flip combination. But Chen immediately roared back with a triple axel followed