Chen returns home for Stars on Ice in Anaheim
So let’s just get this out of the way right up front.
Nathan Chen doesn’t know. Hasn’t even really thought about it.
“It,” of course, is the question of whether Chen will defend his Olympic men’s figure skating title at the 2026 Winter Games in Milano Cortina?
“Honestly,” Chen said, “I’m not sure yet.”
It’s not like Chen, 23, hasn’t been busy lately.
Chen is on the final stretch of the Stars On Ice tour that began in Fort Myers, Florida on April 14 and stops at Honda Center on Saturday before finishing in Portland on May 29.
A Chen attempt at becoming the only the second man to successfully defend the Olympic skating gold medal since 1952 would be the perfect antidote/distraction, take your pick, for a sport mired in yet another embarrassing scandal — the doping controversy surrounding Russia’s Kamila Valieva, the 15-year-old gold medal favorite in Beijing, who was allowed to compete in the Olympic Games despite testing positive for an endurance-boosting drug.
Chen gave lift off to men’s skating, revolutionizing it with his athleticism.
He was the first skater to land five quadruple jumps in a free skate, and the first to record eight quads in a single competition. Chen, a threetime World champion, holds the world scoring records for total program (335.30 points), free skate (224.92) and short program (113.92) and owns five of the seven highest total program scores of all time. He won a sixth consecutive U.S. title in January, a feat last accomplished by twotime Olympic champion Dick Button, 71 years ago.
“He’s truly a once-in-a-generation athlete,” said Jason Brown, Chen’s U.S. Olympic teammate.
That Chen won the Olympic gold medal in his family’s ancestral home country while navigating a global pandemic made his envelope-pushing story all that more compelling and transcendent.
“It’s extremely important,” Mariah Bell, the reigning U.S. women’s champion, said of Chen’s continued presence in the sport. “People want to get behind people you know you can support long term. He’s been at the top for a long time. It’s rare to have a skater so dominant for such a long time.”
The tour’s stop in Salt Lake City on Wednesday coincided with Gov. Spencer Cox declaring Nathan Chen Day in Utah. Chen’s path to Olympic gold began on Salt Lake City rinks built for the 2002 Winter Games. But he now refers to Orange County as “home.” Or least for the time being.
So Saturday’s performance is part homecoming and part thank you note from Chen to the people who kept him safe during the most important months of his career.
Great Park Ice in Irvine was Chen’s training base leading up to the Beijing Games and he credits the rink’s management and staff with keeping him healthy through the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rink staff arranged for sessions when Chen could train alone and took extra cleaning steps to further reduce his possible exposure to the coronavirus in the months and weeks leading up to the Olympics.
“That was really stressful through that period of time,” Chen said. “Without (the Great Park Ice staff), I don’t know how I would have navigated that period without their help.”
After the current tour, Chen will perform a series of shows in Japan and then later this summer
he will return to Yale after a twoyear absence where he will be a junior majoring in statistics and data science. Chen said he will continue “as much as I can to do shows” next year but his primary focus will be on academics.
“I really enjoy school, really enjoy the challenge of school,” he said.
That challenge, Chen said, could include medical school.
In between class and trips to the Sterling Memorial Library, the campus’ towering Gothic centerpiece, Chen could also occasionally be spotted in the next two years at another Yale landmark — the David S. Ingalls Rink, the ice facility known to locals as The Whale because of its shape.
“You might see me there from time to time,” Chen said with a laugh.