Nathan Chen is ever thus: calmer than a pool. And focused like a laser beam, although he doesn’t look it. He won his third consecutive world title with explosive point totals on Saturday. He had come to Stockholm, grateful to be there. He had shaken off his woolly lockdown curls, shrugged off a hiccup in […]
Nathan Chen
Nathan Chen Toiling in a COVID World
Finally, hearts are pumping: There is a real figure skating competition coming up. Who knows how many more there will be? Nathan Chen hopes to become a five-time U.S. figure skating championship next week, in a bubble at a Las Vegas rink. He’s competed sparsely this season, winning Skate America with 299.15 points, far short […]
Skate America: an Oasis of Skating
For a moment, just before Keegan Messing was about to begin his “November Rain” long program at Skate America on Saturday, he thought about others. “This is for you guys in Canada, to everybody who has to stay at home,” thought the Canadian skater, the only competitor from the land of the maple leaf to […]
Skate America Happens!
Keegan Messing turned his back to the camera and pointed with both hands to the CANADA emblazoned across the back of his team jacket: the only Canadian figure skater to compete at any of the Grand Prix events this season. He has become the beacon of the Canadian side, through unfortunate circumstance as the […]
World Figure Skating Championships: Cancelled
At last, the hammer came down. There will be no world figure skating championships this year, for the first time in 59 years when a plane crash killed the U.S. team and scuttled the most important event of the year. The Quebec health ministry decided to spare spectators and competitors and officials and […]
“Keegs”
What a night. Keegan Messing finished third in the men’s short program at Skate America. But he won much more than a placing. About a month ago, his younger brother, Paxon, a father of three little ones, was killed in a motorcycle accident in Alaska. I heard the news by text in the waiting room […]
Patrick Chan, a Farewell Look
When I first met Patrick Chan, he was peering over the Hershey Centre rink boards from the ice with only his eyes in sight. He was 10 years old but looked eight, maybe less, at the Canadian national junior championships. As a juvenile, the category on the lowest rung, he took a bronze medal. His […]
Patrick Chan, pulling himself to the finish
So much of what Patrick Chan does is linked to emotion, his inner life, how it feels to do something, what it means to him. It gives him a restless foot. And that’s how he’s found himself in Vancouver for the past couple of months to prepare for the national skating championships and Olympics, thousands […]
The wild and woolly men's event at Skate America
LAKE PLACID, N.Y. Nathan Chen still has a beautific head of hair. Perhaps a little more tousled than usual. Perhaps it’s the least of his worries. At least he is in one piece. Some of his competitors took a physical drubbing in the men’s free skate at Skate America. It was hurtful to watch at […]
The cast of characters in Skate America's men's short program
LAKE PLACID, N.Y. Nathan Chen has a beautific head of hair. Charcoal black curls sproinging out of his scalp like the crazy curves you encounter on a Lake Placid road. And what a ride he takes those curls on: up death-defying quads here, around some new fascinating body movement there. Heavens, even pair skater Eric […]