Today, Nathan Chen releases his debut memoir, "One Jump at a Time: My Story." He called the writing process "insightful" and said it offered him a chance to reflect.
"After a lot of competitions, it's such a big burst of emotions, then it's off to the next thing," the 2022 Olympic gold medalist said in between classes at Yale University. "You don't really get time to reflect. This book almost forced me to reflect back on not just the season but my whole skating career. It was really cool to be able to think back on where did I come from and where did I get to."
Chen said in order to create the book, he started by sitting with writer Alice Park to do multiple hours of interviews to flesh out the concept and structure of the book.
"It's really hard to condense a whole life into, you know, 300 pages," he joked.
Once pen got put to paper, the team went through "edit after edit after edit" and "went over the book many, many times," Chen said.
While the book is essentially chronological, he brought many other people from his life into the shaping of the story. Using the perspective of others allowed Chen the opportunity to view his career accomplishments with a new perspective.
One of the people that played a role in sculping the story – both in real life and on paper – was Chen's mother, Hetty Wang.
"She was a pretty big part of the writing process, considering that she had such a large part in my career," he said. "It was only right for her to be a big part of making sure that the story was told appropriately."
In one famous example, Chen, then 11, and his mother put 350,000 miles on their Toyota Prius driving from their home in Salt Lake City Utah to Lake Arrowhead, California, so he could train.
"My skating career is definitely intertwined with her and helping me as a little kid, always, get to the Olympics," Chen, now 22, went on. "Giving me support when I needed it and structure, especially when I was a little kid. Learning how to communicate with her and with the team was a huge thing that we had to hash out as we were heading into 2022. Learning what our strengths and learning what our weaknesses are, and trying to combine the best with the best."
He also spent time reconnecting with other people in his life to remember how things felt at the time – because many of the milestone moments in the three-time World champion's remarkable life went by in a bit of a blur, he admitted.
"I was trying to extrapolate from other people's memory and try to come together on how things actually went," he explained.
But his two Olympic experiences were easier to recall.
"The [2022] Olympics was the most fresh so it was easier to pick apart what things I had done, what were things that I was thinking, what were things that I was feeling, and all of that," he said of his journey to the top of the Olympic podium.
"Also, from 2018 to 2022, of course I did a lot of reflection on 2018," he said. "It was a little bit easier to piece together the differences between the two events – how I matured, how I grew, how my team grew, how we started understanding how to work together as a team efficiently, rather than try to fight each other on our ideas."
Sitting down to reflect on his skating career gave Chen time to comprehend and value the ways he may have changed over time.
"It's cool to be able to just track that process chronologically and see how are the ways that I felt when I was preparing for 2018 versus the way that I was feeling when I was preparing for 2022," he said. "Also, accepting that I need help from people and accepting that I can't do this by myself."
Another voice he called on for the book is renowned fashion designer Vera Wang, who was a pairs skater herself in the 1960s.
"I'm really lucky that I've been able to work with Vera for the past many years with costume design," Chen said. "Again, it seemed really right to have her help me out with that considering that she's such an inspiration to me and the Asian-American community. I know that she knows skating well, so it makes sense that she would write the foreword for me. I'm really honored by her words. She did an amazing job with the foreword."
"One Jump at a Time: My Story" is published by HarperCollins Publishers and available wherever books are sold.
"Everything – as in a skating career – with the book was a team effort," Chen said in closing. "I'm really appreciative of all the people that helped me."
