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Nathan Chen


LoveNDino
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Nathan Chen, figure skater, U.S.A.

 

GettyImages-879191854.w710.h473.jpg

 

Nathan Chen is only 18, but he’s already the only U.S. figure skater slated to win gold in South Korea this year. He’s also the first U.S. figure skater in the world to land five quadruple jumps in a single program — and he has amazing hair.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCwUX24dbjM

Edited by LoveNDino
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I am amazed that his legs don't seem that built up, if you know what I mean. Like his thighs don't appear that muscular. I'm sure they are but they don't look like it. Nor do his calves. It is amazing to me to have that strength. I guess I compare that to what I generally see (and love) in male gymnasts.

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He seems like a nice kid. Nowhere near as beautiful as Adam Rippon, though. In a world where numbers rule, Adam the Artist has no chance of medaling; Nathan the No-Mistakes is almost a lock.

T

 

Rippon has no chance of medaling because he's simply not up to those standards, dude didn't even qualify for the Olympics on his own (placed 4th @ Nationals), politics & backroom deals is what got him on the team over Miner.

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Nathan is super hot. Way better than Adam.

 

Hugs,

Greg

 

Agree. I don't care what a skater's sexuality is and I certainly don't want it to interfere with the artistry of his program. Rippon is a media darling for being openly gay, but he's nowhere near the big talent in this competition.

 

As for the physics of Chen: He doesn't need huge legs if his core is strong. That's how you land a quad. You don't just power through it... It's finesse, balance and strength.

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Rippon has no chance of medaling because he's simply not up to those standards, dude didn't even qualify for the Olympics on his own (placed 4th @ Nationals), politics & backroom deals is what got him on the team over Miner.

 

Curious?... This is the second time you've mentioned this. Do you have a link to this accusation?

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No way Nathan is a lock. Last year at the worlds everyone said he would win and he ended up 6th. Barely won the Grand Prix finals. Has has to be perfect to win.

Because a free program with five (six?) quads is fraught with risk, it's crazy to say he's a lock. Plus in both the short program and free skate, Nathan has to face his bête noir, the treacherous triple axel, which he crashes more often than he lands clean.

 

A lot of Nathan fans are begging him to ditch the triple axel & opt for the far simpler double (Nathan has no problem with the 2A). True, it's a huge loss of tech points, but Nathan has so many quads in his two programs that he can bridge the gap and then some. I wish he would, but chickening out is just not the guy's modus operandi.

 

Besides all the risk packed into Nathan's programs, five other skaters are strong, solid contenders for Olympic medals. Yes, if Nathan skates perfectly, he should medal because his tech score is so high and his PCS (what used to be called "artistry") has improved so much. But even a little bobble (reminder: ice is slippery) could knock him off the podium.

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Agree. I don't care what a skater's sexuality is and I certainly don't want it to interfere with the artistry of his program. Rippon is a media darling for being openly gay, but he's nowhere near the big talent in this competition.

 

As for the physics of Chen: He doesn't need huge legs if his core is strong. That's how you land a quad. You don't just power through it... It's finesse, balance and strength.

Rippon starts his free skate with the most difficult jump in the sport, the quad lutz (no one has landed a quad axel in competition yet), but never ever lands it clean. Maybe he's managed to hold on & stay on his skates somehow (two-foot landing, under-rotation, spin-out), but I've only see him fall in the attempt. I wonder if that's his way of telling himself that he belongs with the big boys ("yeah, I start with a quad lutz"), never mind the eensy-weensy detail that he falls every single time.

 

I agree that quads are very much a matter of finesse, balance, and strength. No, you don't need huge legs. If anything, huge legs just weigh you down, which handicaps your jumps. I would add that you also need a good ratio of fast-twitch muscle fiber (like sprinters & NBA slam-dunkers) as opposed to the slow-twitch muscles of marathon runners. Of course, a high percentage of fast-twitch doesn't translate to particularly developed or large legs. Novak Djokovic is one of the fastest men in tennis, yet his legs are pretty slim.

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I agree that quads are very much a matter of finesse, balance, and strength. No, you don't need huge legs.

 

It's why Tara Lipinski could land jump after jump: She was the size of a keychain. For all her skills as a jumper, she had the artistic quality of a wet Bloomingdales bag.

 

However, my whole who needs strong legs argument goes right out the window when I talk about Surya Bonaly.

 

That was one bad bitch. That one-footed backflip fuck you to the judges at the 1998 Winter games was AWESOME.

Edited by Benjamin_Nicholas
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I really like Nathan Chen's combination of Athleticism and Artistry. His Ballet training has given him excellent posture. He also skates complete programs where he focuses the same level of energy on the spins and footwork as on the jumps.

The triple Axel is a terribly difficult jump, the only jump started skating forward which means it is 3.5 rotations. Still he really needs to get this fixed, particularly for the short program where it will be compulsory. The starting value of a triple Axel is 8.5 while a double is only 3.5. Shoma Uno from Japan has been very impressive and will be one to watch. Rippon has always been inconsistent, and I doubt that the pressures of an Olympic Games performance will help his consistency. For me, the three favorites are Chen, Fernandez, and Uno- but the Russians, and Chinese also have strong challengers on the Men's side.

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Curious?... This is the second time you've mentioned this. Do you have a link to this accusation?

 

Well, I agree with this writer:

 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/christinebrennan/2018/01/07/us-figure-skating-pyeongchang-controversy-ross-miner-adam-rippon/1011464001/

 

 

If you’ve been paying attention to skating the last week, you know the word “criteria” has been mentioned more than the word “salchow.” A three-tiered system of ranking athletes on competitions past and present, the criteria make you think there’s some kind of real system behind what U.S. officials are doing, when the fact is they can do whatever the heck they want.

 

So they booted Miner off the team and moved Rippon into his spot, then added another insult to the poor guy, refusing to even give him the honor of being first alternate to the Olympic team.

 

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I really like Nathan Chen's combination of Athleticism and Artistry. His Ballet training has given him excellent posture. He also skates complete programs where he focuses the same level of energy on the spins and footwork as on the jumps.

The triple Axel is a terribly difficult jump, the only jump started skating forward which means it is 3.5 rotations. Still he really needs to get this fixed, particularly for the short program where it will be compulsory. The starting value of a triple Axel is 8.5 while a double is only 3.5. Shoma Uno from Japan has been very impressive and will be one to watch. Rippon has always been inconsistent, and I doubt that the pressures of an Olympic Games performance will help his consistency. For me, the three favorites are Chen, Fernandez, and Uno- but the Russians, and Chinese also have strong challengers on the Men's side.

Many skaters do struggle with the triple axel, but of the Big Six (Chan, Chen, Fernandez, Hanyu, Jin, Uno - the top contenders for the Olympic podium according to conventional wisdom, whatever that's worth) only Nathan really struggles with it. When was the last time he landed a perfectly clean 3A in competition? The difference between the triple and double axel is 5.2 points (8.5 vs. 3.3 on the ISU website), so a difference of 10.4 for the two programs. In both the short and free skate, an axel jump is compulsory, but it can be either a double or a triple. If Nathan plays it safe and opts to do doubles in both programs, he can make up the deficit by doing a quad lutz in both programs. I don't know why he opted out of the quad lutz at Nationals considering that it's been a pretty solid jump for him in the past. The problem with ditching the triple axel is that Nathan can probably win a medal without it, but winning gold will be very tough, and of course Nathan wants to go for the gold.

 

I can't believe how much Nathan has improved his PCS in just a year. The difference between his skating at the 2017 US Nationals and the 2018 Nationals is amazing. He got a decent bump in his scores: 2017 short/free PCS were 44.32/91.00, 2018 short/free PCS were 46.54/94.92. But the scores fall far short of telling the whole story. His improvement in posture, positions, and body lines can't be quantified.

 

The competition in Pyeongyang will be killer. The men's short is next Thursday, Feb 15, with the free skate the next day. I'm already defecating a brick :eek:

 

PS: Rippon's chances of winning a medal are about the same as my chances of getting a date with Ricky Martin :rolleyes:

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