Four years ago, the U.S. figure skating team had its worst results ever at the Winter Olympics.
The 2022 team named after the U.S. Championships ended Sunday could do better than 2018 – although it may not be a substantial improvement, and the assessment of it will depend largely on Nathan Chen’s performance in men’s singles.
Read MoreNathan Chen won his sixth straight national figure skating championship Sunday, a feat unmatched since Dick Button won his sixth of seven straight in 1951.
Ilia Malinin finished second, but he upstaged Chen and everyone else in the competition, both in the short program and the free skate.
That Malinin’s two stunning performances still did not earn the 17-year-old a place on the U.S. team for next month’s Winter Olympics in Beijing was not really surprising, given selection criteria that broadly favored results in senior level events the past two seasons.
In a decision complicated by the free skate performances in Nashville, the U.S. Figure Skating selection committee gave the three men’s singles spots to Chen, Vincent Zhou and Jason Brown.
“I think all three of us have really shown over the past two years why we deserve this spot,” Chen said.
Read MoreIn a span of less than 15 minutes, everyone watching the men’s short program at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships saw a summary of the last decade in men’s singles skating.
You had a 17-year-old, Ilia Malinin, whose Instagram handle is @quadg0d, burst onto the senior nationals scene with a demonstration of why that choice of sobriquet was not self-aggrandizing and how fast a mastery of big jumps can push a skater toward podiums at significant events. He is a young man for these times in the sport.
And next you had a 27-year-old, Jason Brown, who competed in his first senior nationals 11 years ago, using his mastery of movement, expression and edge work as he fights to stay on podiums without the big jumps that bring big rewards in the sport’s judging system. His skating is timeless and yet relatively out of fashion on contemporary score sheets.
Malinin and Brown each was brilliant in his own way during a competition Saturday in which the overall level was extraordinary, with Nathan Chen and Vincent Zhou taking command at the top and others, like Jimmy Ma and Camden Pulkinen, earning career-best scores with performances that commanded full attention.
“That was a pretty incredible competition,” Zhou said, “not just in U.S. history but in relation to ISU international competitions. Definitely an insane, high-level event.”
Read MoreThree-time world champion Nathan Chen has gone back to the programs that produced his career best scores.
They are the short program to Charles Aznavour’s version of “La Bohème” and the free skate to an Elton John medley that Chen used in the 2019-20 season, which ended prematurely when the onset of the Covid pandemic forced cancellation of the 2020 World Championships in Montreal.
At the 2019 Grand Prix Final, Chen’s short program to the Aznavour earned him a personal best 110.38 points. With the Elton John free skate at that event, Chen scored a world record 224.92 for a world record total of 335.30.
Read MoreI love figure skating’s Grand Prix Final. It has six elite entries in each senior discipline, based on qualifying from results on the six-event Grand Prix circuit. No competition session lasting more than an hour, unlike the three-plus-hour sessions at the Olympics and World Championships. And over the years, many stunning performances and record scores.
So, like all those who are interested in the sport, I was disappointed by the Covid-related cancellation of the event scheduled to begin Thursday in Osaka, Japan.
It is the second straight year the global pandemic has led to the Grand Prix Final being cancelled. Last season, the entire series was changed to domestic-only events.
This one would have let us see whether Nathan Chen, invincible from the 2018 Olympics until finishing third at Skate America in October, could win a fourth straight GPF title and reestablish himself as the clear favorite for the upcoming Beijing Olympics. And whether the latest Russian female phenom, Kamila Valieva, could continue her record-setting dominance. And whether the evergreen Chinese pair, Sui Wenjing and Han Cong, could hold off the top Russians. And whether French ice dancers Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron would gain a winning edge over their top rivals before Beijing.
Those questions will go unanswered for the time being. And that leaves questions about competitions to come.
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Philip Hersh, formerly Olympic specialist for the Chicago Tribune, has covered 20 Olympic Games. He often uses sport as a way to write about the culture of a country or athlete. READ FULL BIO
