Nathan Chen’s “watered down” free skate was more than enough to give the reigning world champion an emphatic victory Saturday at Skate America, first event of the 2018-19 Figure Skating Grand Prix.
Chen, learning to juggle training with classes in his freshman year at Yale University, went easy on the quadruple jumps at the Grand Prix event in Everett, Washington.
But the American executed the scaled back program beautifully to score 189.99 points.
That gave the 19-year-old a total of 280.57 and a victory over Czech veteran Michal Brezina (239.51) by a whopping 41.06 points.
“It’s a great start for me,” said Chen, who bounced back from a disappointing fifth place at the Pyeongchang Olympics last year with a blockbuster win at the World Championships in Milan — where he completed six quadruple jumps.
“I definitely had sort of lower expectations coming into this event because I’m in a totally new situation in life,” said Chen, who had three quadruple jumps in his free skate.
