Team USA's Best Figure Skater Just Went Down
Nathan Chen, Team USA's 18-year-old figure skating phenom who is favored for individual gold, made history during Friday morning's short program figure skating team event. He also fell.
Chen - who is the only figure skater to come to the Olympics undefeated this season - is famous for his incredible quadruple flips, which he normally executes with perfect precision, but today, after a shaky quadruple flip and a double quad, he fell on a triple axel, which can be seen around :20 in the video below.
According to PEOPLE, Tara Lipinski called it “first-ever quad flip [a kind of quad jump] in the Olympic Games,” despite the fact Chen did not execute it perfectly. Johnny Weir called it "the worst short program I have ever seen from Nathan Chen ... [a] disaster.”
The fact that Chen even attempted such a jump gave Team USA enough points to boost them to fourth place. Pairs competed this morning as well, after which USA moved up to second place.
“Obviously not what I wanted to do on my first Olympic run,” Chen told the New York Times, adding he was disappointed he'd let him teammates down. “All I can do is try to analyze what I did wrong and just let it go and move on.”
He'll compete next at the men's individual event next Friday.
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