Nathan Chen is the Golden State Warriors of men’s figure skating

Which is to say, he’s a seemingly unbeatable championship favorite and the old guard thinks he’s ruining the sport.

Allow us to introduce you to Nathan Chen. You’ll hear his name quite a bit in the coming weeks, on account of his being on the U.S. Olympic figure skating team and the country’s best hope for a gold medal.

He’s also the U.S. International Classic champion, the Cup of Russia champion, the Skate of America champion, the Grand Prix Final champion and the Four Continents champion — a title he won in Pyeongchang, on the same rink on which he’ll skate in February. He’s undefeated, meaning he’s won every competition he entered in the 2017-18 season, which he book-ended with back-to-back 2017 and 2018 national championship titles. When he won nationals in 2017, he became the youngest U.S. men’s champion since 1966. He then became the youngest U.S. male skater to win the Grand Prix as well. He’s 18.

When he was ten years old, after becoming the youngest novice U.S. champion with a delightful Peter and the Wolf routine, Chen called his own shot — estimating he would make his Olympic debut in 2018. You’ll probably see the clip in the Olympics marketing — NBC, Team USA, Kellogg Corn Flakes, Coca-Cola, Nike and so on — in which he features prominently.

Going into the 2018 U.S. nationals, Chen was the only lock in an American figure skating field that felt wide open and he’s widely regarded as Team USA’s best shot at a gold medal in figure skating, thanks in part to landing with five quad jumps (jumps with four rotations) in a free skate. It’s a feat that no one had ever done before and no one else has succeeded in doing. And it’s a feat that is ruffling a whole lot of feathers in the figure skating establishment.

Quadruple jumps — quads for short — are difficult, to say the least. Attempting (and landing) five even more so. One quadruple jump involves the skater rotating in the air four times, over the course of approximately one second. The momentum and power generated by the skater must propel him both up into the air vertically and in a rotation, to such a degree and in such a proportion that the skater makes it around four times before landing. Again, in less than one second. Oh, and when the skater lands, he lands with a force equivalent to seven times his own body weight. On one foot. On a blade. On ice.

This obviously requires a significant amount of energy, and so it stands to reason the more quads you perform, the more energy you expend so each additional quad is increasingly hard. To make matters more difficult and/or amazing, Chen performs five different quads, meaning he rotates four times around in five different techniques: the lutz, flip, salchow, toe loop and loop. (Figure skating jumps generally differ in four components, the direction the skater is moving, what direction they travel in the air, what leg they lift off on and which leg they land on — all of which can vary the jump’s difficulty.)

Oh, and Chen rarely performs his five quads in the same order, constantly mixing up his program and waiting to finalize the jump order until the last minute. Oh, and he started his run of quad-stuffed programs just one year off a serious avulsion hip injury that kept him out of competition in early 2016.

Anyways, all of this is to say Chen is accomplishing something that is extremely difficult and he currently skates in a class alone. In 2017, he was the first skater to land five quads in one program and seven in competition — typically, he likes to do two quads in his short program and five in his free skate — and no one has joined him since.

Chen and his “barrage of quads” are the routine to beat, and men’s figure skating will, of course, do its best to adapt, compete and catch-up. Namely, perfecting quads of their own and “pushing the envelope” to figure out what the next sport-shaking jump will be. But for now, Chen’s unbeatable and, well, let’s just say at nationals he dominated his closest competitor by 40 points in a sport that’s often decided after the decimal.

Quad jumps, and their current maestro, epitomize exactly what some of the old guard, most vocally 1948 and 1952 Olympic champion Dick Button, find so distressing about the contemporary figure skating scene.

Figure skating scoring is notoriously complex and the current system is constructed to make the sport more objective. Skaters receive two scores for each program, a technical score and the program component score. (Each program has certain jump or element requirements, which is a whole ‘nother beast.) The program component score is the addition of a 0 to 10 score for skating skills, choreography, performance, personal interpretation of the music and movement.

The technical score is far more complex. Each jump, spin or step sequence in a figure skater’s repertoire has a base value that reflects its difficulty. For example, a double Salchow has a base value of 1.3. A triple axel, which Chen’s 2018 Olympic teammate Mirai Nagasu uses as a decisive element in her routines, has an 8.5 value. The quads Chen performs have base values of 13.6 (quad Lutz), 12.3 (quad flip), 12 (quad loop), 10.5 (quad Salchow) and 10.3 (quad toe loop).

Technical scores also include a grade of execution ranging from -3 to +3 based on execution, body position, under rotation etc. Jumps also have a 10 percent higher value if completed in the second half of the program to account for added difficulty due to exhaustion.

The important, and controversial, thing to note with this system is that skaters can receive more points for falling on a jump of higher difficulty than completing one of a lower level. While the high value of jumps like quads is pushing figure skaters to new athletic heights, critics of this system say that it promotes a less aesthetically pleasing competition, marred by more falls and less artistry between jumps. They feel that athleticism is coming at the expense of art — the choreography, flair and showmanship that many consider an integral part of figure skating. Of course, athleticism and art have been at war for the soul of figure skating since its inception as a sport.

Figure skating is in a technically-focused athletic phase at the moment and plenty of skaters and former champions, like Kristi Yamaguchi, accept that and envision a future in which the pendulum swings back. The International Skating Union, for their part, is attempting to formalize better balance too, promising to revisit the scoring system after the 2018 Olympics.

As for Chen, he’s not the assault to artistry his love of jumps may suggest. After all, he and his team know very well that quads alone won’t win a gold medal. In his 2017 Skate America short program, when former Olympic champion and current NBC commentator Tara Lipinski remarked that Chen had added artistry to his program, her co-commentator and fellow Olympian Johnny Weir responded that, in reality, it had always been there. For nationals, Chen’s costumes received an upgrade, too, courtesy of Vera Wang. (He also got a haircut, much to the chagrin of his many curl-loving fans.) 

Chen will not be without major competition in Pyeongchang, it’s still the Olympics after all. Japanese star Yuzuru Hanyu is a favorite for the gold. (Hanyu did not compete at Grand Prix on account of an injury.) World silver medalist Shoma Uno, also of Japan, and Spain’s Javier Fernandez are expected to be in the medal mix as well.

The Olympics is, of course, the biggest possible stage. In addition to what a medal would mean for his own personal legacy and the fulfillment of a destiny eight years in the making, he commands the attention of American figure skating fans, maybe even the future of the sport.  Not to mention if he wins gold, he’ll be only the second Asian American Olympic champion in figure skating after Yamaguchi. (Chen is Chinese American, Yamaguchi is Japanese American.)

Next: The complete figure skating schedule for the 2018 Olympics

With seven quads in his program, that he consistently lands, and so much potential in the component department, Chen’s Olympic success may come down to an old figure skating cliche: his only competition is himself.