Figure skating: After injury despair, Hanyu confident of defending gold

I’ve skated after Yuzu actually a handful of times. Chen’s teammate Adam Rippon, who does not perform some of the more hard jumps that Chen does, wasn’t considered a true threat for a medal in the olympic skating men’s event, but managed to endear himself to the world with his exuberant – and clean – skate. “People might say I’m bragging, but I’m an Olympic champion”. “I thought I did everything right in my general approach and it just didn’t work out the way it was supposed to”.

Chen left the athlete village this week to train in Chuncheon, about 60 miles inland from where he will compete in Gangneung.

Figure skating will take a break after the men’s competition and will resume on Sunday, February 18, as the ice dance competition kicks off with the short dance event.

Such is Hanyu’s presence that Chen was faced with questions from reporters about whether being drawn to perform after him would have any impact on his own routine. “I’m not really sure exactly what to do but just recover and try to prepare myself best for the free”. “However, sometimes when I really put an emphasis on what the others are doing, I feel like I’m a football field away”. He can do five different types of quads and beat Hanyu twice a year ago. The skater essentially dismissed that idea Thursday. (Canadians believe that their male singles skaters are cursed to win only silver medals at the Olympics.) He wants a gold medal this time (individually; he earned one last weekend as part of Team Canada) but will probably need all the Chanflation he can get. Mikaela Shiffrin goes for back-to-back gold medals in Alpine Skiing, and Nathan Chen begins his pursuit of Gold in the Men’s Short Program. “The crowd is always super hyped after him, so I will use it to my advantage as well”. While he was less-than-perfect with a follow-up quadruple lutz and triple axel he still got rewarded.

“I’m still in the adjustment stage and there are a lot of jumps and elements I haven’t done, but I’m moving little by little”, he said. “The ones that I wore in the team event are not the same ones”. They have broken in sufficiently. So he’s thinking, where am I practicing today. Crazy! They’ve been killing it. “I’m so proud”, Rippon added.

Watching Nathan Chen compete, you’d never think about Cleveland Cavaliers star LeBron James or reigning-NBA MVP Russell Westbrook.

Hanyu is a fan of the animated character Winnie the Pooh, and fans showered the Gangneung Ice Arena rink with stuffed Pooh bears of various sizes after his record-setting performance, Deadspin.com reported.

“There were two months where I couldn’t skate at all and that was tough”.