Nathan Chen | Page 683 | Golden Skate

Nathan Chen

It would be really dumb to withdraw from an entire semester for one competition. That’s just silly.
I don’t see it either. Forget to address the part. No way Nathan is going to withdraw. But I don’t have the impression they think Nathan is doomed, maybe I missed that part? I just listened the part from 1:06 and stopped when Nathan part is done. To me they would not even bring up the the world title thing if they think Nathan is doomed. Nathan is always the top 3 in their ranking and they really love his two programs this year. They want Nathan to capitalize on the opportunity and then to win the Worlds, which I don’t think Nathan would agree to it either. Nathan is looking forward to compete against Yuzuru. Dave does have the tendency to nag if thing doesn’t go the way he expected.

Heyheyhey, I agree with you Worlds probably should be the priority, and for the first semester I just want him to have grades he would like to have, then on top of that, have as much sleep as possible. To stay healthy and injury free is more important than anything else. As to 4cc, I know he would have schedule conflict. But as you said, I am not sure if he needs to test his layouts, who would have thought he becomes the target of edge calls this season, and the judges are really stingy in giving out levels. We know the calls are BS, but how can you argue with judges and TPs as a powerless skater?
 
Next semester there are only two competitions: Nationals and Worlds (assuming he skips 4CC). Men's SP at Nationals is Jan 26 and Worlds occurs during Yale's 2-week Spring break. If anything it would seem less stressful than this semester.
 
Worlds is during his spring break.

GPF might not seem as important as Nationals and Worlds, but he does have quite a winning streak going on for GPs ... and even with his current situation, he could still win gold there.

He has A LOT going on in the next few weeks with studying, finals, papers, training, etc.

Stay strong Nathan! And good luck on your finals!
 
Among the things those two said:

This training situation clearly isn’t working
It’s like Michelle Kwan 2.0
4Lz and 4S are gone - this is what happens when you skate on your own
This ‘experiment’ has run its course and it can run uglier if he continues another semester of this
It’s just too hard
Nathan is trying to survive at this point
He’s barely hanging on
Right now it’s at the bare minimum
He should withdraw next semester and focus on defending his world title

They make the situation out to be worse than it is
 
His 4Lz is fine, they should be worrying about his flip since he keeps getting bogus edge calls on that instead lol. I think the boot problems kept him from going with the 4Lz based on his experience from Worlds 2017 when his boots basically fell apart.

Yes, his training clearly isn’t working. He only won both his events by 20+ and 40+ points instead of his usual 50+ points and still has the second highest total score of all the men even with a lower BV content than his biggest competitions, extremely tragic. Wonder how he’s coping, poor kid.

Reminds of that one poster that was trying to pass off like Nathan wasn’t good enough for Harvard so he “only” got into Yale lol. The expectations on this kid exhaust me oy vey
 
Nathan just skated back to back cleanish long programs, which in men's fs is kind of amazing. Meanwhile most of the other guys are still struggling with the new rules changes, but what's their excuse? Is everyone else going to college full time, too? I mean, Aliev was second in the FS and landed exactly one 4T and one 3A. But it's Yale's fault that Nathan isn't landing 5 quads?
 
His 4Lz is fine, they should be worrying about his flip since he keeps getting bogus edge calls on that instead lol. I think the boot problems kept him from going with the 4Lz based on his experience from Worlds 2017 when his boots basically fell apart.

Reminds of that one poster that was trying to pass off like Nathan wasn’t good enough for Harvard so he “only” got into Yale lol. The expectations on this kid exhaust me oy

Actually I am not quite sure about 4lz, he did have some good 4lz during practice at SkAm, but the one in free had really bad landing, and almost close to UR. 4S and 4lz are definitely not gone, but from that Olympic channel article, they must be reason why both 4lz and 4s were replaced. Maybe more than 3 quads would take away too much focus from him and impacted performance so a safer route with 3 quads?

sheetz, nobody is saying Yale is causing him losing his quads here. And we are talking about Nathan is competing against Yuzuru and Shoma. These three are way ahead of other skaters.

What I said previously about Yale is him not having enough sleep, which impacted his training schedule as he indicated in his interview. Why bother with what others are progressing when he said his performance is what it matters. I just want him to have good rest, stay healthy and stick to Raf‘s training plan for him. It is hard to see him still coughing during Liza’s interview.

And I mentioned Yale’s workload because I am so proud of what he has been doing academically. Yale is not a place to have easy time, he is working so hard to get to his goal of staying top at school.
 
I’d have to rewatch later but I thought the 4Lz had positive GOEs at Skate America? Not his best but I don’t remember it being like a big red flag or something. To me it seemed like he wanted to concentrate more on having a clean program since he was behind and felt 3 quads was enough but also he was clearly having boot problems this competition hence why he wasn’t practicing too many jumps for the long, probably didn’t want to over use it just to be safe. His 4S was always his lesser consistent jump than the other ones (not counting loop bc he rarely does it) so I’m not surprised he didn’t want to risk it given he doesn’t really need it at the moment.
 
4lz wasn’t perfect at SA, but it was the best one done by anyone so far this season - as far as I know

4S - was only at 80% (according to Raf), and this was before Yale

Nathan has really only been underperforming when measured against his own very high 5/6 quad standard.
 
Obviously the jumps are not gone, perhaps just not at the level that he can confidently add to the program given the boots issue and rule changes. He may keep the jumps under the same situation last year, however with the new rules, he played it safe with his back up plan ABC.
 
He did two quads in his SP and got beat by 10 points by someone who had no quads at all, he & Raf are smart and observant. They read the situation and go with the best strategy. For right now it means he has to be more conventional and less ambitious with his layout than he’s used to. Tbh I think with his current layout, 2 quads in short and 3 quads in long, he can beat Shoma as long as he’s clean (if he switched the flip in the SP to another quad toe, it’d prob be easier for him to go clean). Upping it to 4 quads comes into play to beat Yuzu but I think if he focused on maximizing his points on his current layout, it can be enough until atleast Worlds.
 
My point about bringing up other skaters is that we can't say exactly how much of Nathan's current condition is due to Yale and how much is due to the rule changes. Obviously he's not in an ideal training situation but TSL seems to implying that he would landing 5 quads if he were still in Lakewood.
 
Just speaking of 4lz goe, Boyang got 3.12 GOE in his free in IdF.

http://www.isuresults.com/results/season1819/gpfra2018/gpfra2018_Men_FS_Scores.pdf

He got 3.29 in his free at Helsinki

http://www.isuresults.com/results/season1819/gpfin2018/gpfin2018_Men_FS_Scores.pdf

Again, we are talking about competing against Shoma and Yuzuru, unless they have falls, as Shoma did in both his GPs, Nathan could not beat both of them in GOEs and PCS, he needs to have more than 3 good quads. He might be able to deliver more than 3 now, but we haven’t seen it yet.
 
Among the things those two said:

This training situation clearly isn’t working
It’s like Michelle Kwan 2.0
4Lz and 4S are gone - this is what happens when you skate on your own
This ‘experiment’ has run its course and it can run uglier if he continues another semester of this
It’s just too hard
Nathan is trying to survive at this point
He’s barely hanging on
Right now it’s at the bare minimum
He should withdraw next semester and focus on defending his world title

They make the situation out to be worse than it is

They always do because they are drama queens to the highest degree. Going on speculation most of the time.

In other news: Nathan is not headlining the SOI show in Lake Placid right before New Years. Much of the eligible cast is there but Vincent will be skating instead of Nathan. :(
 
Nathan and Shoma are pretty even this season (points wise)

I agree with sheetz - there have been a lot of changes this season and we don’t know how much can be attributed to him attending Yale.
 
IC3Rabbit, would you mind commenting on the edge calls of his flip? The calls are so bothersome. He had such a beautiful, effortless 4f yesterday.

Thanks for the news, I am fine with him not attending. I would rather him having some good rest and have quality training with Raf.

And I hope SOI schedule next year could accommodate his school schedule so he can be with his SOI family.
 
Just speaking of 4lz goe, Boyang got 3.12 GOE in his free in IdF.

http://www.isuresults.com/results/season1819/gpfra2018/gpfra2018_Men_FS_Scores.pdf

Again, we are talking about competing against Shoma and Yuzuru, unless they have falls, as Shoma did in both his GPs, Nathan could not beat both of them in GOEs and PCS, he needs to have more than 3 good quads. He might be able to deliver more than 3 now, but we haven’t seen it yet.

If he focused on maximizing his content rather than adding more content to make up for BV than he absolutely can beat Shoma atleast. His GOEs on his quads yesterday were great and he’s been fairly clean twice now on his FS. If he can have that level of consistency & not keep leaving points on the table in his SP or levels, he can beat Shoma. Yuzu he would need to at least add one more quad in the free. His main problem is that he keeps leaving points on the table, he needs to work more on the quality rather than quantity.

@Ic3Rabbit Hello! It’s been awhile, nice to hear from you :) As always thanks for the info
 
IC3Rabbit, would you mind commenting on the edge calls of his flip? The calls are so bothersome. He had such a beautiful, effortless 4f yesterday.

Thanks for the news, I am fine with him not attending. I would rather him having some good rest and have quality training with Raf.

And I hope SOI schedule next year could accommodate his school schedule so he can be with his SOI family.

I tend to agree with the call from what I can see. The edge isn't clear with the takeoff, but the landing edge was fairly clear that it was outside. The takeoff edge looked more flat of the blade than inside to me, and then from the angle I'm getting from replays I can't tell if it was fully rotated or not. :(

Again, this is just going off of the angles I'm able to get online. Not from in person.
 
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