BEIJING — After it was over, after he had scored a world-record-shattering 113.97 points to take a commanding lead in the men’s figure skating event on Tuesday, after he had erased the disappointment of a disastrous 2018 performance, after he released a weight he has carried for nearly 20% of his life, Nathan Chen thought about what had just happened.
Did he really do that?
Not the skate. The fist-pump with which he punctuated the skate.
“I almost never do stuff like that,” the stoic Chen, 22, said afterward. “But, I mean, I guess it's indicative of how I felt in that moment.