The men’s event is still fresh in my mind. And now a few days removed, I wanted to close out the event with some parting thoughts. If you missed my look at Nathan Chen’s Olympic triumph and his road to getting there, go have a look.
So, so close
We didn’t see a clean short from Yuzuru Hanyu, but it was always going to be that quad axel that would get all of the attention in the free skate. And boy, was it close! In what was the best attempt he - or anyone else - has ever put down in front of an audience, Hanyu was just over a quarter-turn short and fell on his quad axel in the free skate. It was stunning to watch, and it’s a testament to Hanyu as a legend and as a competitor.
Hanyu dared to reach for the stars, and in doing so, almost landed there.
Brown getting the scores he deserves
There’s been so much talk about how Jason Brown can stay relevant - and as much as he’s tried to incorporate a quad into his repertoire, he’s been on and off on the consistency, and just hasn’t been able to put a quad down in program.
But what we haven’t talked as much about - and really, what we’ve taken so much for granted - is that while Brown was working on that quad, he was also working on maximizing his already phenomenal foundational skating. And the years of work on that skating really, and finally, got its due in Beijing, where an all-triples Brown finished in the top 6 and scored higher than multiple guys who landed quads in their programs. This is where the quality of his elements and the extreme amazing goodness of his skating were rewarded to the utmost.
Had he not doubled his triple salchow in the free skate, he would have finished fourth and right off the podium. But that’s not the point. The judges finally opened their eyes and saw the beauty through the noise.
A high level of competition
When the 21st-place skater in a competition scores 220 points, you know there was a lot of special skating in the event. The podium gave us some tremendous moments - Yuma Kagiyama skating fearlessly at his first Olympics and taking silver, and Shoma Uno becoming a three-time Olympic medalist just a couple years after seriously contemplating retirement. Daniel Grassl had the free skate of his life to finish fourth in the free and seventh overall, solidifying him as one of the greatest Italian men’s singles skaters ever.
Joining late as the first alternate, Evgeni Semenenko delivered the best result for the ROC and a top 8 at the Olympics, towering over an exhausted Mark Kondratiuk and an inconsistent Andrei Mozalev. With a 12th-place finish, Kevin Aymoz salvaged his season after injury over the summer forced him to think about hanging up his skates. Brendan Kerry and Nikolaj Majorov both had the competitions of their career and making themselves and their fans proud. It was an event full of moments that we will remember for decades to come.
Who stays?
Now that the men’s event is over and the Olympic cycle comes to and end for many of them, the question turns to retirements. Maybe it is or maybe it isn’t, but Hanyu will be holding a press conference tomorrow afternoon. Brown and Chen both said that they needed to do some serious thinking. Boyang Jin, after a couple years of struggle since PyeongChang, delivered brilliantly in front of the home crowd - and you have to think retirement is on his mind. A bunch of other guys have been through two-plus Olympics, and perhaps Beijing was the last hurrah.
Nothing is definitive yet, and we will all be sad if and when these retirement announcements happen. But let’s all give thanks to the great years that these skaters have given us.