Chen "extremely proud"

The 18-year-old defending champion Chen under-rotated her first two jumps, but rebounded with a double Axel-single loop-triple Salchow combination to claim the bronze medal with 198.59 total points (129.11 free skate). Her result was incredible considering how poorly she felt.

“I couldn’t sleep at all after the short,” Chen said. “I must have caught a virus and was stuck in bed all day. I couldn’t do my practices. I had a lot of body aches and pains everywhere. I’ve done all I can, and I will keep thinking as positive as I can and all of the great things I have done. I spent the whole morning looking at going to the doctors. To keep thinking possibilities and visualizing the perfect skate today, I had to keep fighting for today.”

Skating just miles from her hometown of Fremont, Calif., Chen said her mentor Kristi Yamaguchi gave her encouraging words to fight through her illness.

“I am extremely proud of what I did today,” Chen added. “I trained so hard for this moment, and I am not going to let some stupid sickness win, and I’ll keep fighting. I’ve dealt with a lot of things this season, including music changes and program changes, so I knew I would feel so much pressure, and I managed to pull through. I have what it takes.”

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Good for Karen. I'm proud of her, too.

I hope she represents us well in Korea!

Good for Karen. Hope the USFSA will send her to Korea...

And those Karen's awesome spirals... No worse than those of Michelle Kwan, Sasha Cohen or Nancy Kerrigan

Hevari said:

Good for Karen. Hope the USFSA will send her to Korea...

And those Karen's awesome spirals... No worse than those of Michelle Kwan, Sasha Cohen or Nancy Kerrigan

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Glass half full half empty

In other words, she is 'just as good' if not 'darn right amazin'g as the very best of US ladies' tradition elements, including amazing spins (She and Mirai should rule in this). To top it off, one of the best 3lutz in the field! After her mentor Kristi. An excellent representative of the US ladies.

I was really worried to hear she was so ill in bed the previous night, so to come back from that is pretty amazing! She is also a risk taker, changing her SP so many times, while swallow her pride doing so. Hope she can skate her best @ the Olympics and makes a dream comes true.

Having Mirai and Karen at the Olympics is pretty amazing I must say... (if only Wakaba could have made it too, then I'd have all my favs there...)

Congrats to Karen :hap57: :yay:, that was impressive, especially considering that she is sick.

It was not a proud-worthy performance because it lacked her usual attacks and speed along with presentation although her spins were a top-notch as usual. She skated very tentatively and slower than usual not to make any critical mistake, so didn't bomb nor produce a mistake-ridden program unlike her subpar showings filled with falls and URs in the GP circuit. I'm lukewarm about her getting on the Olympic team and the placement, but that could've been for Ashley too if she were on the team instead of Karen. I was more upset about Bradie's undeserving scores. LOL. Both just let me down throughout the season as well as their undeserving placements at 2017 Worlds as their URs should've been called. And then they wouldn't kept their 3 spots, so there would be no controversies over the selection for the third lady to Pyongchang. I'm kind of fed up with the way of the USFSA has handled to pick skaters for Olympics and its following unnecessary controversies over the years such as Turin, Sochi and now Pyeongchang. I hope she stands on her own feet and doesn't rely on the fickle USFSA too much. Skaters speak for themselves with their skating, so show us.