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Of all of the American skaters and groups, although, Chen is the most effective hope for an Olympic gold medal. He’s a three-time world champion and a drive on the worldwide stage. Japan’s Yuzuru Hanyu, the two-time Olympic gold medalist, is anticipated to be his largest rival.
However at these Olympics, with the final a number of years of dominance in thoughts, Chen is poised to beat him.
His efficiency at nationals made that clear.
Beneath the stress of making an attempt to keep away from the extremely contagious Omicron variant, and after a minimum of six skaters examined optimistic for the coronavirus at nationals, Chen remained calm and targeted.
Within the brief program on Saturday, he broke his personal occasion file by scoring 115.39 factors to place himself ready to win one more title. And his fellow prime People delivered personal-best outcomes. Each Zhou and Malinin scored greater than 100 factors, hinting that the U.S. males’s staff might be formidable in Beijing.
“There have been many superb performances which were carried out over the historical past of determine skating, so I can’t say definitively that that is for positive the most effective, however in my profession that is positively one of many standout few,” Chen mentioned in regards to the brief program.
Right here at nationals, Chen determined to revert to his 2019-20 packages as a result of, he mentioned, he feels linked and comfy with them. After dropping at Skate America in October with new packages, the transfer to the outdated standbys appeared to make sense.
He skated his brief program to “La Bohème” and his free skate to snippets of reworked Elton John songs, with the gang at Bridgestone Enviornment giving him a standing ovation each instances. On Sunday, it appeared like Chen was genuinely having a great time — regardless of the 2 falls. When the final beat of music echoed all through the world, he laughed and smiled all the best way to the kiss-and-cry space to attend for his scores.
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