Nathan Chen on rivalry with Hanyu, his coach's first visit to Yale and his future plans

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Nathan Chen on rivalry with Hanyu, his coach's first visit to Yale and his future plans

When Nathan Chen enrolled at Yale in the fall of 2018, his California-based coach, Rafael Arutunian, was concerned about Chen being able to keep up his level of skating with essentially a phone and FaceTime coaching arrangement.

Since then, the Yale sophomore has won all nine of his competitions, including a world title, two Grand Prix Final titles and a third and fourth straight U.S. title. His performances to beat two-time Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan at last season’s World Championships and at this season’s Grand Prix Final were both simply brilliant and also the best of Chen’s career.

With the 2020 World Championships beginning March 18, NBCSports.com/figure-skating recently spoke via telephone with Chen, 20, about Arutunian’s acceptance of the coast-to-coast separation, the rivalry with Hanyu, and Chen’s plans for next season.

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Yuzuru Hanyu's new (old) programs sound like a broken record. Same old, same old doesn't befit his skating genius

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Yuzuru Hanyu's new (old) programs sound like a broken record. Same old, same old doesn't befit his skating genius

I am going to start my discussion about Yuzuru Hanyu’s decision to recycle old programs with an effort (undoubtedly futile) to stave off an uprising by the Hanyubots, the unhinged slice of Hanyu’s huge and generally terrific fan base that turns into a cult to troll anyone who ventures a legitimate criticism of the skater they worship.

I can only hope they will read at least the next four paragraphs before beginning a knee-jerk rant, as they usually do when, for instance, Hanyu gets scores they deem unfair.

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"Trouble in paradise" between Yuzuru Hanyu and Brian Orser? Coach says no

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"Trouble in paradise" between Yuzuru Hanyu and Brian Orser? Coach says no

It looked strange, to say the least.

There was Yuzuru Hanyu, the world’s most acclaimed active figure skater, waiting by himself in the Kiss and Cry to get his scores after a disappointing short program performance at last week’s Grand Prix Final in Turin, Italy. At that moment in a competition, a coach is almost always at the skater’s side.

Once one of Hanyu’s coaches at his Toronto Cricket Club training base, Ghislain Briand, eventually showed up two days late, there would be a simple explanation for why Hanyu had been alone.

And yet even that would not explain why Hanyu’s primary coach, Brian Orser, had not gone to Italy for the second most important competition of the Japanese superstar’s season.

Was there a rift between the skater and the man who had coached him to two Olympic gold medals, two world titles and four Grand Prix Final titles in the seven seasons since Hanyu came to train under Orser?

“I know it looks like there is trouble in paradise, but there isn’t,” Orser said Tuesday via telephone.

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Takeaways from 2018-19 figure skating season: big props for Zagitova (and others)

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Takeaways from 2018-19 figure skating season: big props for Zagitova (and others)

A baker’s dozen takeaways, with some looks to the future, from the 2018-19 figure skating season, which ended Saturday in Japan with the United States winning the World Team Trophy.

1. It’s time to give Russia’s Alina Zagitova full – and massive – credit for what she has done the past two seasons.

Zagitova and her coaching team were unfairly criticized in some quarters for what turned out to be a brilliant strategy of doing all seven jumping passes in the second half bonus area of the 2018 Olympic free skate. Not only was that an impressive feat of stamina, the bonus points Zagitova got for those jumps were the difference between her winning gold and getting silver.

When a Zagitova worn down by a post-Olympic whirl of appearances flopped to fifth in the 2018 World Championships, staggered to fifth at this season’s Russian Championships and was beaten at Europeans, there were suggestions she might be a one-hit wonder. Then, as she later said in an interview on the Russian Skating Federation website, Zagitova became so unsettled by the pressure and the thought of failure at 2019 worlds her jumps deserted her in practice, and she had thoughts of quitting.

Some of her struggles were not unexpected. She had grown some three inches since the Olympics. Her body proportions were changing from those of a girl to those of a young woman. New rules minimized one of her strengths by limiting skaters to just three jumping passes in the bonus area.

And Zagitova overcame all that, the psychological and the physical issues and the scoring changes, to win the 2019 worlds with two clean programs, a dazzling short and a strong, commanding free. At 16, she had added a world title to her Olympic title. That is worthy of unqualified acclaim.

2. Nathan Chen had a remarkable season, even if judged only by what he did on the ice.

When one puts his undefeated record in the context of having done it while simultaneously being a full-time freshman student at Yale University whose coach was 3,000 miles away, Chen’s was a season for the ages.

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Long and short (form) of it: Nathan Chen's brilliance surpassing in both at worlds

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Long and short (form) of it: Nathan Chen's brilliance surpassing in both at worlds

With a baker’s dozen of tweets, I wrap up Day 4 of the World Figure Skating Championships, a big one for Team USA:

*Nathan Chen (gold), who was simply otherworldly, and Vincent Zhou (bronze), confident and solid, gave the U.S. two men on the podium for the first time since 1996, when Todd Eldredge and Rudy Galindo went gold/bronze.

*Madison Hubbell and Zach Donohue’s bronze extended the U.S. streak of world dance medals to five years.

I’ve enjoyed covering the meet this way. I hope you enjoyed reading about it this way. (High-quality, uninterrupted NBC Sports Gold live stream made it possible.)

I’ll have more about Chen’s victory Monday on nbcsports.com, and there also will be a link to it here.

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