GANGNEUNG, South Korea — By the time the music stopped and the deafening applause was flooding his ears, Nathan Chen pulled his far-flung arms to his face, covered his flushed cheeks, and wiped his eyes. Could there ever be a way to contain the flood he was feeling inside, this unknown mixture of heady joy over an historic free skate and deep regret over a botched short program?
“Just a mix of emotions,” he would describe it later. “Happy that I did what I did and then kind of upset that I did what I did with such a short program and it won’t balance out.”
Japan’s Yuzuru Hanyu repeated as Olympic gold medalist in men’s figure skating; countryman Shoma Uno took the silver and Javier Fernandez of Spain the bronze. Chen finished in fifth place.
Of all the Olympic stories taking hold here in South Korea, Chen’s might be remembered as the one most confusing, so full of promise yet so much lost opportunity, so high at its peak and so low in its valley. After bringing down the house by landing an Olympic-record six quadruple jumps and scoring a whopping 215.08 in his free skate, not a soul paying attention could help but wonder: What if he hadn’t flamed out so spectacularly in the short program, when falls and mistakes left him out of podium striking distance?
Such is the Olympic story for the 18-year-old American, the skating wunderkind who just found out what it’s like to experience the downside of the Olympic machine, how glittering gold and instant hero status can give way to blinding disappointment and lasting infamy, how the four-year cycle of going for gold can chew you up and spit you out. There is no greater athletic prize for a skater than the one awarded on this world stage, no US championship (which Chen holds back-to-back), no Grand Prix prize (which Chen also holds) that can shine brighter than this.
You know it. I know it. Chen knows it.
“I tried to think of [the Olympics] as any other competition, but as much as I tried to tell myself or tell you guys that, that’s not really the truth,” Chen said. “It’s so much bigger than that. Again, there’s a lot of stigma around it being the one competition that you’re dreaming your whole life to go to and it truly is that. I think that added a lot of pressure to me but having a bad short program like that, being so low, it allowed me to forget about all of that and just really the enjoy the experience and enjoy skating.”
That Chen was able to rebound the way he did, that he was able to go to bed late Friday night in Korea fueled by his anger and his competitive pride and decide to add an unprecedented sixth quad (without even telling his coach), that he was able to wake up Saturday morning and deliver on his own redemption arc, well that says an awful lot about the mental makeup of this young man. And he’ll need it: Chen won’t just have the rest of the skating world to contend with going forward, but will have to duel American teammate Vincent Zhou (at 17, the youngest US Olympian) for the right to stay part of the Olympic team in Beijing 2022.
If this free skate proved anything, it’s that he’s ready to ride the roller coaster.
“As much as I tried to deny it, I think I did feel the pressure a lot before the short program, especially thinking about medals and placement and all that, things that were completely out of my control,” Chen said. “That just tightened me up, made me really cautious out on the ice and that’s not the right way to skate. Then being in such a low place going into the long allowed myself to really forget about expectations and allow myself to be myself.
“I’m really happy I was able to end my Olympics experience like that, with that long program. I was really worried that it would be just like the short program, but really, having such a rough short program allowed me to forget about expectations. . . . Adding the sixth quad was almost like a game-time decision. I knew at that point that I had literally nothing to lose so I decided to just try it.”
It was a hell of a way to go out, even if it proved too little to undo the damage.
So here we are, schooled yet again by the best reality show of them all, reminded we should wait till the next big thing gets here before anointing it prior to competition. Chen was tabbed a breakout star before the US team took off for PyeongChang, NBC cameras in his backyard, advertisers and sponsors at his doorstep. With the quad-jumping game finally ready to compete with traditional powerhouse skaters from the likes of Japan and Russia, with a fresh, engaging personality, Chen was supposed to be it.
Until he wasn’t.
No, it wasn’t supposed to happen this way. We weren’t supposed to see Chen out on the ice so early, nearly two hours before the top contenders, among the second group of skaters, long before even his own American teammates Zhou and Adam Rippon. But this is what can happen when you carry the growing expectations and rising hopes of an entire nation’s skating program onto Mount Olympus only to crumple under their burden.
But you know what else can happen too? You can get up, dust off, and skate the way Chen did Saturday.
“I’m glad I was able to show myself and everyone else I can bounce back from a bad performance,” he said.
“Obviously I am human, I make mistakes. Unfortunately it happened at a really bad time. But I’m really happy with what I did here, and like yesterday was, tomorrow is a new day and take it day by day here.”
Good for him.
Tara Sullivan is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at tara.sullivan@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @Globe_Tara.