It's one of the most indelible images of the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018.
Nathan Chen, arms thrown wide, eyes cast upwards following a free skate in which he became the first skater ever to land five quads (and attempt six) in an Olympic program. Triumph giving way to disappointment, his face crumples, his hands ball into fists briefly before he rubs them down his face.
While his program was a masterpiece - and the best of the night, it would be good enough to vault him only into fifth place after a disastrous short program left him sitting in 17
th.
Though that program was just nine months ago, that's not the same Chen that takes the ice these days.
Not much of his life is the same, either.
He lives on a new coast, has his first World Championship title under his belt and is
famously attending Yale University.
While he was able to live in relative anonymity in his southern California home – "I'm Asian, so I sort of blend in with the SoCal crowd," he quipped – when news of his Yale acceptance got out, he couldn't escape his fame.
"They really publicized it as soon as I got in, so as soon as I got there a lot of people knew that I was on campus. A lot of people wanted photos," Chen said at U.S. Figure Skating Champs Camp in August. "But I'm sure that'll die off really quickly and I'll be a pretty normal student after that."
Chen has almost completed his first semester at college, and a quick scroll of his Instagram reveals glimpses of a pretty normal college student. A group photo with his suitemates – Chen has a single room but shares a suite with five classmates – and a shot of the bike he uses to get around campus wouldn't look out of place on any other student's feed.
But mixed in are photos from a fashion shoot with Spur Magazine, a shot of Chen FaceTiming coach Rafael Arutunian during a training session and one of Chen's
gold medal-winning performance from 2018 Skate America, where he competed during his October break from classes.
OK, so maybe winning medals during a school break isn't normal.
In fact, not much about Chen's current situation is normal, neither for a college student nor for an elite figure skater. While Chen lives, studies and trains in New Haven, Connecticut, Arutunian is still based in California. Chen now trains primarily by himself at a rink on Yale's campus or one 30 minutes away.
It's not ideal, maybe, but it's something the Olympic Team Event bronze medalist is determined to make work.
"We're still trying to figure it out as we go along," he said. "I'm definitely fully committed to Rafael until the end of my career, really, so we'll just have to play around with that and try to make the best scenario.
"I have a really good support team already at school, advisors and counselors that can help me arrange classes and my schedule and all of that. I think it should work pretty well, but I'll figure it out as I get there."
For starters, Chen was able to work his ISU Grand Prix assignments around school as to not miss too much class. Skate America fell during October break, and his next assignment, the Internationaux de France, is Nov. 23-25 and falls on Thanksgiving weekend. Additionally, the Grand Prix Final, which Chen could qualify for in France, is held Dec. 6-9, which overlaps with a reading period, and the ISU World Figure Skating Championships are March 18-24 and fall during Yale's spring break.
Very few, if any, elite figure skaters have attempted to attend college full-time at the peak of their career. But if anyone can do it without missing a beat, it could very well be Chen.
After all, not many skaters or university students can lay claim to the title of World champion.
Following his disappointing Olympic result, Chen returned home – back to his SoCal anonymity – and trained for the World Championships for a few weeks before heading to Milan, Italy, ready to redeem himself.
And that's exactly what he did.
He performed a clean short program and led heading into the free skate. The final skater to take the ice, he was following along on Twitter and aware that the wheels had fallen off for most of his competition.
"I didn't really want to think medals because that's what I thought at the Games and that definitely was not the right approach," Chen said. "I did a good long program at the Games, but I still wanted to build on that and keep moving forward from that. But mostly, I was just trying to focus on skating clean. And after I finished the program, I basically knew that what I had done was enough to give me the title. But it wasn't really just about winning, it was about all the lessons I'd learned all last season, and being able to confirm to myself that I was able to pull it together when it mattered."
Nathan Chen captures his first World title at the 2018 World Championships in Milan, Italy.
Chen scored 321.40 overall to win his first world title. Japan's Shoma Uno, who won silver, scored 273.77. A 1.86-point lead after the short program, after a six-quad free skate, became 47.63 points, the largest winning margin at a World Championships, Olympics or Grand Prix Final in the 14 years under the +3/-3 ISU judging system.
"I think that it has definitely instilled more confidence in me, knowing that I was capable of doing something like that," Chen said. "I learned quite a lot last season, so I can take what I learned from Worlds and the Olympics into next season. But it doesn't really change my perspective on the sport, it doesn't change my perspective on still striving to be better than myself."
Though Chen fell short last season in his goal of winning an individual Olympic medal, he walked away from the experience with a better understanding of himself and how to prepare for major competitions. It was also a handy lesson in what not to do.
"It made me figure out how to approach a competition like that. And also, honestly, just to enjoy myself more than I traditionally do," Chen said. "I was so wrapped up around medals and performances that I didn't have a chance to really enjoy the Olympic experience, and that's something that I definitely want to change."
The Chen that has taken the ice in the 2018-19 season thus far has been noticeably different than that of 2017-18. Not only was his hair longer, but his programs also have a new artistic flair and his costumes have left his standard black in the past. There are even a few less quads, conforming to the new tweaks to program requirements.
But the
Nathan Chen everybody knows and loves is still in there, and he plans on only getting better.
"Ultimately just skate as clean as possible, keep building on the artistic components that I started building on last year, and just try to become a more complete skater, because that's all I really want," Chen said of his goals for the season. "And let the results play out for themselves. I can't really predict that, so I don't really want to dwell on that. But really try to keep building from last season, keep trying to push myself as much as I can even with the new quad rule change - and honestly, even without. Maybe there'll be a little bit less quads, but outside of that there'll still be a lot of room for growth."
