Nathan Chen Becomes First Figure Skater Ever To Land 5 Quads En Route To His First National Title

[TexasTowelie]

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Nathan Chen took all the mystery out of the men’s free skate at the 2017 U.S. Figure Skating Championships.

With a record-setting score of 106.39 in the short program, his lead over second-place Ross Miner was nearly 18 points. It would’ve taken an utter catastrophe for Chen to lose the top spot of the podium.

His free skate was far from a catastrophe. Landing a staggering five quadruple jumps – one in the second half of his program, a last-minute decision that ultimately earned him a scoring bonus – Chen posted an overall score of 318.47 to claim his first national title, at 17 becoming the youngest U.S. men’s champion since 1966.

Chen’s performance was historic, as his free skate earned him 212.08. Not only did it demolish the prior record-high U.S. championships overall score of 274.98 and free skate score of 187.77, he is the first skater ever to land five quads in a single program. Though he trained his program with the additional quad – in competition it normally contains four – it was an all but game-time decision to include it in competition.

Read more: http://www.teamusa.org/News/2017/January/22/Nathan-Chen-Becomes-First-Figure-Skater-Ever-To-Land-5-Quads-En-Route-To-His-First-National-Title

[TexasTowelie]

1. Here is the video:

[Tanuki]

3. Thanks for posting this!

What an unbelievably talented young skater!

[TexasTowelie]

4. You're welcome.

That was a great performance and his artistry has improved since I saw him skate a year ago. There is a lot of fire in that 5' 5" package.

[lunasun]

5. OH wow Thanks

[TexasTowelie]

6. You're welcome.

It was only about 20 years ago that there were only one or two men doing quadruple jumps and they would only do one in a program. The quads were toe loops and salchows. Now the men are doing quad flips and lutzs. It will be interesting to see if they add quad loop jumps and axels in the future, but they don't have the advantage of using the toe picks for those jumps. I'd like to see some stronger spins though.

It will also be interesting to see if they send the 16 year old guy to worlds rather than Jason Brown who outshines him in artistry. Their long programs are available to view in the queue after the video I posted.

[dhill926]

2. incredible talent...

still some room to grow artistically before the Olympics, but wow....

[TexasTowelie]

7. He has the Russian coaches to help with that aspect of his skating.

However, the consistency of those jumps is amazing and should make him competitive at the world championships and Olympics.