Here a skier zooms backward to ascend like a bird here a snowboarder clonks onto the half-pipe, face sliding down the cold curves. For us, the frazzled, the pleasures and perils of Olympics-watching have felt intensified: happy reunions with old friends (Chen, Chloe Kim, Mikaela Shiffrin, Shaun “All Grown Up” White), dazzling spins, and terrifying tumbles. (Some lurking right there onscreen, pretending to fall asleep.) The hero-athletes, as if they don’t have enough to deal with, carry with them the emotions of a frazzled and exhausted nation. (I know, I know, it’s an abandoned steel mill.) Amazing sporting feats abound, often serving as temporary distractions from some lurking menace. In Beijing, mid-Omicron, amid looming authoritarianism, there’s been a cloud of ambient tension hanging over the Olympic derring-do in the Bird’s Nest, the Ice Cube, and the ski jumps in the Nuclear Reactor Forest.

Not only did nothing bad happen but lots of good happened. When he flew into the air, spinning in those exacting lutzes, loops, and Salchows, he landed with stunning grace, beaming, with a fist pump or two. Chen, known as the Quad King-quadruple jumps galore-did this to an Elton John medley, rocket-manning around in an outfit that evoked the cosmos and the sweetly nerdy exuberance of childhood. from China in their twenties, skated with confidence, precision, and joy in Beijing, where his mother grew up.

But last night Chen, whose parents immigrated to the U.S.

His performance wasn’t the kind of wild triumph that athletes and viewers hope for: he fell during the short program, and finished seventeenth. “Which Olympics are we going to see you in?” the reporter asked him. Nationals Gala, to “Peter and the Wolf.” He was nearly four and a half feet tall. What we’re wearing, and how we present ourselves, makes for the total package-and it makes a lasting impact on the audience and the judges.In 2010, Nathan Chen of Salt Lake City, then a ten-year-old skating prodigy, talked to NBC Sports after competing at the U.S. Brown adds, “You’re always playing a different character. “Costumes are an important part of skating and can oftentimes express what the movement and choreography can’t,” says Chen, who is one of three American male figure skaters who will compete at the Olympics in Beijing this week, along with Vincent Zhou and Jason Brown. Style plays a crucial role in the world of skating, perhaps more than any other sport at the Winter Olympics. “I wanted him to feel like he was on fire.” “We discussed the firepower it takes to shoot rockets up in outer space,” says Wang of the graphic design. His galaxy-print costume, designed by Vera Wang, was equally mesmerizing to watch. During his free-skate portion, performed to Elton John’s “Rocket Man,” Chen cut through the ice with complete elegance-pulling off impressive quadruple jumps and fusing them with sprightly hops and hip-hop movements. Figure Skating Championships last month, American figure skater Nathan Chen broke records when he won the title for the sixth straight time.

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