In figure skating’s long, strange trip of a season, Nathan Chen showed the way

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In figure skating’s long, strange trip of a season, Nathan Chen showed the way

What a long, strange trip it has been for figure skating over the past 13 months.

From the cancellation of the 2020 World Championships in Montreal when the first wave of the pandemic hit full force last March through dealing with two more COVID waves since then, the International Skating Union had to:

*Cancel six of the 10 events (and indefinitely postpone two more) in the second-tier Challenger Series of international events.

*Remake the top tier, six-event Grand Prix Series as domestic-only, with no Final and both France and Canada cancelling their GP events. (Canada also cancelled its national championships.)

*Cancel its two regional championships, the European Championships and Four Continents Championships.

For all that, the season came to a satisfying end. The ISU pulled off both the 2021 World Championships last month in a Stockholm, Sweden, bubble with no spectators other than skaters and officials and the 2021 World Team Trophy last week in an Osaka, Japan, bubble with limited spectators – while Osaka prefecture was in a state of emergency due to a surge in COVID cases.

Here are some takeaways from the 2020/21 season (such as it was):

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Nathan Chen won’t bite off more than he can chew with next Olympics soon on his plate...and 6 other takeaways from 2021 figure skating worlds

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Nathan Chen won’t bite off more than he can chew with next Olympics soon on his plate...and 6 other takeaways from 2021 figure skating worlds

What’s next for Nathan Chen after yet another stunning performance, this one with five clean quadruple jumps, a striking interpretive affinity to his music and the mental strength to forget the fall in the short program that had left him some eight points behind longtime rival Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan?

Pandemic-related uncertainties make his planning uncertain. He would like to go to the World Team Trophy, still scheduled for next month in Japan. He has no idea if there will be any shows for him to do this summer. Even the usual fall events could be affected should there be resurgence of COVID cases.

That means Chen’s attention could turn completely to the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics before he expects.

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In sequel to 2017, Karen Chen reprises her worlds role with the same aplomb

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In sequel to 2017, Karen Chen reprises her worlds role with the same aplomb

Was this an episode of “The Twilight Zone”?

Or a spinoff using the plot of the movie, “Groundhog Day”?

And it may be said that those who fail to learn from history can be condemned to repeat it, but this was a case where Karen Chen’s redo came with as much to celebrate for U.S. figure skating as the original event at the 2017 World Championships in Helsinki.

This time, the historical record will show an even more unlikely path to the same outcome, which was having Chen’s free skate at the World Championships be the key to getting a third women’s singles spot for her country at the upcoming Olympics after a more decorated teammate had faltered.

You want more uncanny coincidence? Both took place in Nordic countries, first Finland, now Sweden.

And just as in 2017, Chen fought through mistakes on jumping passes late in her four-minute free program to come up with a good enough performance to succeed despite the pressure of a situation that, once again, she could not avoid being aware of.

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Shocking U.S. failures and awesome Japanese successes in men’s short program at figure skating worlds

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Shocking U.S. failures and awesome Japanese successes in men’s short program at figure skating worlds

Shock.

Nathan Chen of the United States opened his short program at the World Figure Skating Championships Thursday by falling on a jump in an individual competition for the first time after having stayed upright on 120 straight dating to 2018. That meant he lost a program after winning 19 straight live individual competitions since the 2018 French Grand Prix short. Now in third place, 8.13 points behind the leader, Chen will be hard pressed to win a third straight world title.

Vincent Zhou of the United States, the reigning world bronze medalist, made an utter hash of all three short program jumping passes and finished 25th, one place below what was needed to advance to Saturday’s free skate. That complicates U.S. hopes for three men’s spots at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

And awe.

Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan may not have been fully content with his skating, but the two-time Olympic champion finished first after making no mistakes in an electric performance that fulfilled the title of his music, “Let Me Entertain You,” by Robbie Williams.

Yuma Kagiyama of Japan, a 17-year-old in his senior worlds debut, skated fearlessly at Mach 2, collected the highest combined scores of the day for two jumping passes with quads and a huge personal best score (100.96) while finishing second to his countryman, Hanyu (106.98).

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In world women’s short program to leave viewers gasping, Anna Shcherbakova’s breathtaking skating filled the rare air at the top

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In world women’s short program to leave viewers gasping, Anna Shcherbakova’s breathtaking skating filled the rare air at the top

Whew.

Maybe it’s because we are all out of viewing shape from not having had a significant international figure skating competition in more than a year, since the coronavirus pandemic forced cancellation of the 2020 World Championships and everything else of consequence this season until this week.

Or maybe it’s because there was so much to wrap our heads around during the first part of the first event at the 2021 ISU World Figure Skating Championships.

Whichever you apply, it was easy to be left breathless after trying to process the multiple storylines emerging from Wednesday’s women’s short program in Stockholm, Sweden.

There were some breathtakingly beautiful skating moments, too.

And, unsurprisingly, it took just a few hours in front of screens of various sizes for everyone to get fittingly exercised about the judging.

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