Nathan Chen | Page 18 | Golden Skate

Nathan Chen

I'm not too surprised by the results based on what I saw of the practice sessions. I'm only really surprised by Patrick bombing as badly as he did because his practices seemed pretty good. Best part was watching Raf shaking the water bottle.

Really want to see what happens in the LP because Nathan skates last. The other competitors know they have to skate well because they can't simply assume he will make mistakes.

On a separate note, the 4CC competition program/guidebook has profiles of the top skaters, and they've devoted entire pages to Yuzu, Patrick, and Nathan. Shoma and Boyang have to share a page. I wonder who made the decision for that?
https://twitter.com/miki9700261/status/832037171519369216/photo/1
 
I'm not too surprised by the results based on what I saw of the practice sessions. I'm only really surprised by Patrick bombing as badly as he did because his practices seemed pretty good. Best part was watching Raf shaking the water bottle.

Really want to see what happens in the LP because Nathan skates last. The other competitors know they have to skate well because they can't simply assume he will make mistakes.

On a separate note, the 4CC competition program/guidebook has profiles of the top skaters, and they've devoted entire pages to Yuzu, Patrick, and Nathan. Shoma and Boyang have to share a page. I wonder who made the decision for that?
https://twitter.com/miki9700261/status/832037171519369216/photo/1

For some skaters, their practice performance isn't that indicative of their competition performance.

I think the competition organizer probably decided on the program book profiles. Nathan, Patrick and Yuzuru are the no.1 skaters of USA, Canada and Japan. So they each get a page. I think these 3 skaters are the ones expected to medal at 4CC. Shoma is the no.2 skater from Japan. Boyang is from China and China isn't strong in men (I think Chinese top pair would get an entire page devoted to them) and haven't produced any champion in men's skating, so Shoma and Boyang share a page.
 
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On a separate note, the 4CC competition program/guidebook has profiles of the top skaters, and they've devoted entire pages to Yuzu, Patrick, and Nathan. Shoma and Boyang have to share a page. I wonder who made the decision for that?
https://twitter.com/miki9700261/status/832037171519369216/photo/1

I think Korea likes doing them [skaters photobooks/guidebooks/programs, I don't know how to call them] lol They also did them for Korean Nationals. Well they're top contenders so choosing them is not really suprising.

Congratulations to Nathan for his mini-Gold for winning short program and good luck to him in free :cheer:
 
For some skaters, their practice performance isn't that indicative of their competition performance.

For sure, I know that Shoma usually does quite a bit better in competition than in practice. But in this case the competition turned out fairly similar to practices.
I think the competition organizer probably decided on the program book profiles. Nathan, Patrick and Yuzuru are the no.1 skaters of USA, Canada and Japan. So they each get a page. I think these 3 skaters are the ones expected to medal at 4CC. Shoma is the no.2 skater from Japan. Boyang is from China and China isn't strong in men (I think Chinese top pair would get an entire page devoted to them) and haven't produced any champion in men's skating, so Shoma and Boyang share a page.

Knowledgeable fans would know Nathan is a top contender, but I'm surprised the organizers would realize this or even care. Usually I would assume they try to pander to the "average" fans, who in this case are largely from Japan and China. Sure Nathan is US #1 but he's still very new to international competition and there are very few Americans in the arena. On paper Nathan's accomplishments aren't much different than Boyang's or Shoma's.
 
Knowledgeable fans would know Nathan is a top contender, but I'm surprised the organizers would realize this or even care. Usually I would assume they try to pander to the "average" fans, who in this case are largely from Japan and China. Sure Nathan is US #1 but he's still very new to international competition and there are very few Americans in the arena. On paper Nathan's accomplishments aren't much different than Boyang's or Shoma's.

I think South Korea has received a lot of help from the USA and Canada for hosting the Olympic games. I don't think the competition organizer would want to put off American and Canadian top skaters and thus offend USFSA and Skate Canada.
 
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Thanks so much! I love hearing him talk. He's so confident. What are soft boots exactly? Hopefully they won't affect him too much in the long :)

From what I gather from being on this forum for a while, a skater needs ice skates with enough support to protect their feet doing all these quad jumps, but at the same time, it can't be TOO hard or else their feet will be in pain. When their skates have been used for a while, it will start to break down and get soft.
 
Giving him mad props for delivering that performance skating last and after Yuzuru! Worlds will be fun!
 
It's not important that he won--this is just a relatively minor competition. It's more important that he was able to hold up fairly well under such intense pressure despite skating not his best. Hopefully he'll polish things up by worlds.
 
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