The Quad King's Four-Year Journey to Olympic Gold

Nathan Chen is the "Quad King" in more than one respect.
 
He earned the nickname upon becoming the first skater to land five quadruple jumps in one program. Then, he became the first to land six.
 
But quad also stands for quadrennium, the four years between Olympic Winter Games. And Chen has reigned over men's figure skating in the quad between February 2018, when he skated an Olympic short program to forget, and February 2022, when he won an Olympic gold medal to remember.
 
During that span, Chen won three World titles — and was favored to win a fourth if not for the cancelation of the 2020 World Championships due to the pandemic. He held the world records for the free skate and overall point total. And he went into the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 having won 16 of his past 17 competitions.
 
And yet Chen, 22, was one of the few people in Capital Indoor Stadium, who didn't believe he'd capture the gold medal.
 
"I never thought I'd actually be able to make this happen," Chen said.
 
Why not?
 
"It's hard," Chen, replied with a laugh. "It'd always been a dream of mine, of course, but it's a pretty daunting mountain."
 
Chen was 3 years old when he started the climb, the youngest of five children growing up in Salt Lake City. Videos and photos of the precocious youngster have been melting hearts on the Internet.
 
Eleven years ago, Chen started working with Rafael Arutunian in southern California. Chen and his mother, Hetty Wang, would make the long drive to train with him three or four times a year. They would sometimes sleep in their car before practices.
 
"And then one day, he said, 'Mom, if we do not move, I will not make it,'" Arutunian said. "Then, I knew it's a chance (he could be a champion)."
 
He also knew he would train Chen for free if that's what it took for the young skater to succeed.
 
"He's just a good boy," Arutunian said. 
 
A good boy without a lot of resources.
 
"My mom and I grew up quite poor, we didn't really have very much money," Chen said. "She would just scrap together some dollars and try to pay Raf. Raf obviously knew about the situation and thanks to the kindness of his heart was able to continue taking me in, taking as much money as we could provide him. But then at a certain point, he was like, 'I don't really need that. I just want to help you achieve the goals that you want.' 
 
"I'm forever grateful for that support.'"
 
Arutunian said Chen's mother would be "giving me money in this hand and I would take it in this hand and give it back to him."
 
Or at least he would try.
 
"He'd give me the money back sometimes, but I would always try to stick it in his pocket and run away," Chen said.
 
Wang made sure her son had everything he needed.

"She certainly faced a lot," Chen said. "A lot of it she sheltered from me, so I don't even know a lot of the details. When I ask her she always just gets very upset."
 
After the Games, when Chen was on his whirlwind tour of talk shows, he was able to put his gold medal around his mother's neck on the TODAY show.
 
And Chen is also proud he could give Arutunian the satisfaction of training an Olympic champion.
 
"I know how much he wanted to be able to coach an Olympic gold medalist and he hadn't been able to do that," Chen said. "So it really means the world to be able to be a part of that with him. He's certainly been the reason why I'm able to do what I'm able to do."
 
The gruff coach became emotional talking about his star pupil and what they have achieved together.
 
"I am emotional, because I started work in 1976," Arutunian said. "And I was like walking through the swamp to this time. And it was hard, I was like almost dying in the middle of this journey and I made it. And now I'm happy, just emotional, I made it. You understand what I mean? I made it.
 
"He made it, but I made it for myself."
  
Arutunian said he and Chen work well together because he deals with the skater honestly.
 
Yet while Chen said that Arutunian "covers a lot of my bases," he found an extra set of eyes in Massimo Scali who was available in the weeks leading up the Games.
 
"Throughout the season, I just didn't really want to leave any stone unturned," Chen said. "So knowing that Massi was now available and had the opportunity to work with me, I asked if that's something he'd be willing to do and just made sure it was OK with everyone else. I got the all clear and started working with him and it was really, really helpful to me."
 
Chen also worked with a mental coach to keep him grounded and arrived in Beijing ready to compete in the city where his mom grew up and met his dad. Now he had a date with his own destiny.
 
"As soon as you touch down and you see the (Olympic) rings in front of you, it's like 'Oh my God, I'm here,'" Chen said.
 
He tried not to peruse social too much regarding the Olympics and to stay within his own mental bubble.

"But I think coming into this, in my mind I did not feel that I was the favorite to win," Chen said. "As soon as you hear the name Yuzuru Hanyu, you're like, 'OK, this competition is going to be hard.'"
 
He also knew in addition to the two-time Olympic gold medalist, his Japanese teammates Yuma Kagiyama (2021 World silver medalist) and Shoma Uno (2018 Olympic silver medalist) were also contenders.
 
"The rest of the field is super deep as well, so you can't really count out anyone," Chen said.
 
The first order of business for the six-time U.S. champion was exorcising some demons from 2018. Only 18 years old at his first Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, he didn't have much international experience. However, he was already the Quad King after landing five quads.

"That honestly elevated me to a place where I was like, 'Oh crap, I actually have a chance,'" Chen said. "And that just made things worse."
 
He had two disastrous short programs, first in the team event and then again in the individual competition. Chen called the latter skate, in which he placed 17th, "terrible."
 
After Chen got over the shock and the despair, he won the free skate to pull up to fifth overall.
 
Now four years later, he was faced with two more short programs. Chen nailed them both while skating to "La Boheme" by Charles Aznavour. It was the hardest short program in the field, with a quad Lutz/triple toe loop combination in the second half.
 
"I think you learn the most from your mistakes and I certainly learned a lot from that (2018) competition," Chen said. "I don't think I'd be able to be here where I am now without having had that experience, so I think rather than that being a demon, I think that was a very helpful learning experience."
 
Both short programs went "as well as I could have hoped," he said.
 
In the individual event, he broke the world record with a score of 113.97 points. The previous mark was held by Hanyu.

"I'm honored to be alive at the same time as him," Chen said. "Watching him when I was a kid, I never even dreamed I would have the opportunity to even skate with him."
 
Chen even pumped his fist at the end, an admittedly "unconventional" gesture for the usually reserved Yale University student.
 
"Yeah," he said, almost sheepishly. "Looking back on that, I almost never do stuff like that. But, I mean, it's indicative of just how I felt in that moment… I kind of broke character a little bit there, but was just really happy."
 
"I think that was a big weight off his back," said Mariah Bell, Chen's close friend who competed in women's singles for Team USA.
 
Chen said he felt excitement, relief, a whole spectrum of emotions. Then he did some laundry, cleaned his room at the Olympic Village and tried to get some rest to be ready for the free skate.
 
While Chen said he gets nervous before every competition, he tried to keep the butterflies at bay by tossing a football with Bell as he waited to go out on the ice.
 
She knew he was going to win the gold medal "before he started, honestly," she said. "I really was so confident in what he could do. I was talking to him before and he seemed so cool and he's so trained. Anything can happen, obviously, but I was like, 'I felt really good about it.'"
 
Skating last, Chen had kept up with the scoring and knew all three Japanese skaters had made mistakes.
 
Performing to selections from Rocketman, he soared to the music by Elton John while wearing an orange shirt that was much louder than his usual attire.

"You don't really argue with Vera Wang," Chen said of the designer. "Whatever she gives you, 'Ah, cool, I'll take it.'"
 
He landed five quads and was grooving on the ice to the fun beat, his only flaw a quad toe with a single flip instead of the planned triple. 
 
Chen said Scali had encouraged him to smile as he boogied. "He said, 'You need to make sure you're showing that you're enjoying the program.'"
 
With the program going well, smiling came naturally. "I was having a really good time," Chen said. "After you're done with the jumps, it's quite a relief and you can start enjoying the footwork and the rest of the program and I almost tripped because of that. And I was like, 'I have to lock back in.'"
 
When it was over, he had locked up the gold medal, the first for Team USA in the men's event since Evan Lysacek in 2010, with a score of 218.63 in the free skate and an overall total of 332.60. Chen's winning margin over Kagiyama was 22.55 points. Elton John tweeted his congratulations.
 
"The short was a little bit more emotional," Chen said. "Today was a little bit more business."
 
In the kiss and cry area, Arutunian was still instructing his pupil.
 
"As soon as I sat down, he was like, 'Thank your mom on TV,' and I was like, 'Thanks for reminding me,'" Chen said.
 
While he is the seventh U.S. man to win the Olympic gold medal, Chen is the first Asian-American. 
 
"For me, growing up in Salt Lake City and having a face like Michelle Kwan was very inspirational," he said. "I know that having athletes that look like you certainly gives you the hope that you can do the same, and Michelle Kwan was certainly that for me."
 
Now Chen hopes he can be that face for others. 

When he stood on the victory podium, Chen said he felt excitement, happiness and pride. He thought of all the people that had helped him and realized that the ceremony would not have been possible without them.

"Just being able to get the medal definitely makes it more real," Chen said. "Although it's still absurd to me that I'm here and that all of this sort of happened."

When Chen reflected on his 2018 experience a couple of years ago, he said, he didn't appreciate how amazing the Olympics were.

"Instead, it was like, 'This is the most terrifying experience of my life," he said. "I hate this. I hate this. Now that I'm able to take a step back from that, I can tell myself, 'Man, the Olympics are really cool; you should have enjoyed them more."
 
Flash forward to 2022.
 
"It was definitely a pretty crazy two weeks, but I had a lot of fun with it and just really enjoyed my time here."