On February 10, Nathan Chen, born in 1999, won the men's singles championship in figure skating at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Chen Wei is a Chinese-American born in Salt Lake City, Utah, to a mother from Beijing. At the 2018 Winter Olympics, Chen Wei missed the gold medal, saying that he "recognized that there are more important things in life than skating", making him a better skater.
1.
Once again, when becoming a popular candidate for the men's gold medal in Olympic figure skating, Chen Wei both wants to forget the 2018 Winter Olympics and needs to remember it.
Standing in front of reporters before the Beijing Winter Olympics figure skating competition began, he was asked if he was upset about his performance at the last Winter Olympics. At the time, he performed poorly on short shows and lost his chances of winning medals.
"My memory is poor," he said, making it clear that a few days later it would be his second Winter Olympics and he didn't want to talk about it.
Chen Wei, 22, is more willing to reflect about the week or so before he leaves for the Winter Olympics. In an hour-long video interview, he described that finishing 17th on a short show in Pyeongchang, South Korea, was the worst moment of his young life. But in many ways, it's also the best.
As a favorite to win the Winter Olympics, he may not have been able to not regard the gold medal as his all, but Chen Wei found that when his obsession with victory became what he called "his death", he paid a terrible price. At the last Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, he "always felt nervous" and worried that he would not be able to meet expectations, but this time he tried to cherish the experience – win or lose.
He said Evan Lysacek, the 2010 Winter Olympics champion, helped him find a new approach. Chen Wei appreciated the suggestion because he knew Lesacek would understand him: Lesacek himself finished fourth at the 2006 Winter Olympics and won the gold medal four years later.
"He said, whether you win or lose, you have to go home and continue the life you once had," Chen Wei said. "To be honest, it really breathes a sigh of relief because I sometimes zoom in on things like, 'Oh my God, if things don't go well, it's the end of the world.'" But in reality, the earth is still spinning, and things will return to normal.
At Yale, Chen Wei found a life outside of skating.
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Chen Wei said that having this perspective has helped him become who he is today – for the past three years, he has been one of the most dominant skaters in the world, and in the just-concluded free skating competition, he completed a series of difficult jumps to become the Winter Olympic champion.
"At some point between the short show and the free skate four years ago, this idea gave me an epiphany and I began to realize what was really important," he said.
At the Beijing Olympics, Chen Wei's short program score reached a record 113.97 points.
Four years ago, Chen Wei was attracted and marketed by the Olympic machine. He's an 18-year-old rising star, considered the next great American Olympian, and sponsors have drawn him in, and pressure is about to crush him.
His head appeared on cornflakes boxes of Cornlakes. The billboard in Times Square has a picture of him. The U.S. team and the world are looking to him to win an Olympic gold medal. The problem is that these expectations quickly become demands, and he internalizes them.
He believed: It was either gold or it was finished.
This pressure led him to make mistakes again and again in the short-term team event, and the same mistakes in the men's singles event. That night, he finished 17th in the short program competition and was destined to miss out on the gold medal. He called his sister Alice for support.
Alice is now an employee at Apple. Last month, she said in an interview that Chen Wei was the oldest of the five children of the Chen family, and he was not the kind of person who would show too much of his emotions, so he spent most of his time listening to her. She cried as she spoke.
At the 2018 Winter Olympics, Chen Wei was pressured to fail to win the gold medal.
"I don't want you to think that this game determines what kind of person you are or what you bring to the sport," she recalls telling him at the time. But most of the conversation was about skating; she wanted to distract him from disappointment.
"It's the most exciting time I've ever been in my life," she says. She explained that when Chen Wei did not show the best level, the whole family was sad. They knew the sacrifice he had made to reach the pinnacle of the sport.
Chen Wei's sisters learned figure skating first, and he followed them into the ice rink. He began learning to skate at the age of 3 and has been a fan favorite from the beginning. Alice Chen remembers wearing a blue velvet suit and taking only a small step when he first competed. The whole family came to watch the game. The crowd went crazy.
Her parents came to the United States from China in the late 1980s, and paying For Chen's tuition was not easy for them. Sometimes, their mother, Wang He, would drive him for 10 hours or 12 hours to take him to the race because flying was too expensive. Sometimes they sleep in the car because they can't afford to stay in a hotel. Those experiences helped shape Ms. Chen, she said, but the family never made him feel like he owed them anything.
She said they just wanted to see him happy, and at the 2018 Winter Olympics, he wasn't happy.
"I wish I could help him decompress," Alice Chen said of her late-night phone conversation with Ms. Chen. "When he woke up the next morning, he was completely different."
3.
The new Chen Wei came to the top in a way never before in the Olympic figure skating world, and in the free skating competition, he completed six four-week jumps to win the championship and rise to fifth place in the overall score. He had four years to digest everything he had gone through.
In the months following the 2018 Winter Olympics, he toured with stars on ice before moving into Yale, where he either skated alone at the campus ice rink or trained at another rink 20 minutes away. He met other Yale athletes, made friends on the ice hockey team, learned how to learn, and worked hard to catch up with classmates who were "masters in their fields." In short, he discovered life outside of skating.
Chen Wei either trains alone on the university ice rink or goes to another ice rink 20 minutes away.
Now, during his suspension, Chen Wei trains with coach Rafael Arutyunyan and a group of other top skaters, including Michal Brezina of the Czech Republic and national champion Mariah Bell. Both will compete in Beijing.
Adam Rippon, the 2018 Winter Olympics player who helped Coach Bell, noticed a big change in Chen Wei.
"I think that focusing on learning, using every part of his brain, which made him finally realize that skating is not a matter of life or death, has alleviated some of the stress," Ripon said. I could see him step into his own light. He is now more confident and has complete confidence in himself. ”
During the pandemic, Chen Wei, Bregina and Bell set up a little training "bubble" and got along with each other outside the ice rink, playing card games on weekend nights and having dinner with their two-year-old daughter, Danielle, who is also a former skater, at Bregina's house and his wife Danielle.
Bell smiled and said, "Chen Wei is always the first to enter the ice rink and the last to leave, and he is also the winner of all our card nights." But we still love him. ”
Chen Wei's performance at the U.S. Championship.
The Bregina couple began to get to know Chen Wei during the epidemic. They'll see him watching school's online classes at three times the speed on his iPad because he's just going to process information that fast. They would also see him holding a children's guitar and piano to teach their daughter to play an instrument, and of course, as a perfectionist, he had to tune first.
"It's really interesting to know his way of thinking," said Bregner, who has participated in the Winter Olympics four times. "He's good at everything."
Bregina said that since 2018, Chen Wei has matured a lot and is no longer so obsessed with winning.
"I think when you learn how to handle things that go beyond expectations, it helps you mature," Bregina said. "It tells you that you are human."
Chen Wei was already aware of this. He looked invincible now, but he knew it could change in an instant. He had no problem with that either.
"Ultimately, I think what I've learned in my career is that you learn the most from failure, and there's nothing better than failure to help you grow," he said. At the end of the day, my goal is to be able to look back on my career and say, 'Hey, I'm really great.' ’”
Source: New York Chinese Information Network
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