Nathan Chen Fan Thread #2

jenny12

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8,239
Definitely. Figure skating is not gay enough.

True. Some people have the assumption that things with an element of artistry like figure skating or ballet are automatically gay friendly. If only that were true. Unfortunately we still value the traditionally masculine as the standard. I remember in ballet classes I took in my childhood teachers always scolding the few boys that were there if they moved in an “effeminate” way. And again this isn’t to bash Nathan for what he said but to just suggest the need to question these assumptions.

Anyway, credit to Nathan for the apology as unnecessary as it was. I think that in itself shows that he’s a thoughtful guy and I don’t believe he ever meant to hurt anyone.
 

starrynight

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Messages
3,234
Meanwhile, Tatiana Navka has been deliberately stoking prejudice in situations where she is backed up and protected by laws that are truly damaging and oppressive.

I think Twitter (what a cesspit) choosing instead to try to cancel Nathan over a clumsy verbal stumble brings to mind the saying 'don't let perfect be the enemy of good'.
 

Theatregirl1122

Needs a nap
Messages
30,012
Nathan gave a not super great answer with a couple of bad word choices and some less than great implications. It wasn’t an international incident but it was a clumsy answer. He did the right thing, listened to how he could have made that a better answer, and apologized. Good for him. There’s nothing wrong with learning from missteps even if some people think they are small.
 

CaliSteve

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1,114
Nathan is a talented athlete, and a very good student. I think he has led a very sheltered life.
His mother rented an apartment in New Haven while Nathan studied at Yale. He lived in the dormitory. She also drove him to the rink, and watched from the stands. She has controlled his every move for the majority of his life. While I really bristle at what he said, I don’t think he’s ever been given an opportunity to experience life, learn through experience (other than on the ice), and truly think for himself.
His mother belongs on the dreaded “Skating Mothers” list.

Are you sure you are not mixing Nathan's and Vince's mom.
 

mtnskater

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3,201
I’ve followed Nathan since he was an amazing 10 year old novice champion. I can’t think of a more classy, humble, non-controversial athlete than Nathan. He is a stellar human being. With all the important things in the world to be outraged about, his choice of words in that one conversation is not one of them. I’m a screaming liberal, but this hyper sensitivity from so many these days is really out of control. Focus your energies on solving climate change, or hunger or access to healthcare or something of greater impact and importance to the world.
 

Lutzlvr

Active Member
Messages
90
Nathan is a talented athlete, and a very good student. I think he has led a very sheltered life.
His mother rented an apartment in New Haven while Nathan studied at Yale. He lived in the dormitory. She also drove him to the rink, and watched from the stands. She has controlled his every move for the majority of his life. While I really bristle at what he said, I don’t think he’s ever been given an opportunity to experience life, learn through experience (other than on the ice), and truly think for himself.
His mother belongs on the dreaded “Skating Mothers” list.
Hmmmm I wonder if Nathan would describe his life as sheltered or his mom as having controlled his every move? It is almost impossible to compete at this level without a trusted someone (often a parent) who helps to manage the logistics of the skater’s life- whether it be driving, equipment/costume repairs, scheduling (press, interviews, sponsorship obligations, shows, travel, etc)…most professional athletes have a team of hired supporters to handle the day-to-day mundane but necessary stuff. Skaters generally don’t bring in the kind of lucrative endorsement $$$ and often rely on a family member for this type of daily support. Having been to several competitions with Nathan where he was accompanied by his mom, I have always seen her as steady source of support, but someone always in the background. She is indeed a skating parent; but perhaps that moniker should be a positive one: proud and supportive skating parent. As for Nathan being sheltered, he is probably one of the nicest, most down-to-earth skaters around.
 

Jammers

Well-Known Member
Messages
7,558
People need to just stop apologizing to these lunatics on social media because once you start apologizing it's over because these SJW's don't want that what they want is to destroy your career as well as you personally. Social media is a cancer because it's given voice to losers who in the past before the internet no one gave a shit about or listened to. Just do what comedians like Bill Burr and Dave Chapelle do and don't even acknowledge these morons and they will go away.
 

Rukia

A Southern, hot-blooded temperamental individual
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21,724
Nathan was right to apologize, especially if he had people who came to him who were sincerely hurt by this. Just because it doesn't bother you doesn't mean it wasn't problematic. I'm sure he had people who were genuine in their hurt and in their wanting him to do better. There's nothing wrong with that, and obviously Nathan agrees because he listened and said what he felt he needed to say.

Let's not confuse that with the myriad of Yuzu icon bearing accounts who clearly only wanted to try and turn everyone against him. This apology wasn't for them. It was for his friends and fans and people who were completely within their rights to be upset.
 

VGThuy

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41,020
Nathan was right to apologize, especially if he had people who came to him who were sincerely hurt by this. Just because it doesn't bother you doesn't mean it wasn't problematic. I'm sure he had people who were genuine in their hurt and in their wanting him to do better. There's nothing wrong with that, and obviously Nathan agrees because he listened and said what he felt he needed to say.

Let's not confuse that with the myriad of Yuzu icon bearing accounts who clearly only wanted to try and turn everyone against him. This apology wasn't for them. It was for his friends and fans and people who were completely within their rights to be upset.
Well-put.
 

WOULDACOULDARETURNS

Active Member
Messages
71
Meanwhile, Tatiana Navka has been deliberately stoking prejudice in situations where she is backed up and protected by laws that are truly damaging and oppressive.

I think Twitter (what a cesspit) choosing instead to try to cancel Nathan over a clumsy verbal stumble brings to mind the saying 'don't let perfect be the enemy of good'.
Yeah, Navka is dead to me.
 

starrynight

Well-Known Member
Messages
3,234
what they want is to destroy your career as well as you personally. Social media is a cancer because it's given voice to losers who in the past before the internet no one gave a shit about or listened to.
This times one thousand.

Basically there are lots of accounts that do nothing except for jump from one pile on to another. The topic is not even relevant.

A lot of these accounts aren’t even real people. It truly is a tactic to create large amounts of bot accounts to swamp a dialogue. Political causes use it all the time. Then for some reason sloppy journalists quote faceless ransoms in media articles.

I think to protect themselves young athletes should never have a Twitter account or even look on it. I deleted mine last year and it was a such a great thing to not see that garbage any more.
 

WOULDACOULDARETURNS

Active Member
Messages
71
Hmmmm I wonder if Nathan would describe his life as sheltered or his mom as having controlled his every move? It is almost impossible to compete at this level without a trusted someone (often a parent) who helps to manage the logistics of the skater’s life- whether it be driving, equipment/costume repairs, scheduling (press, interviews, sponsorship obligations, shows, travel, etc)…most professional athletes have a team of hired supporters to handle the day-to-day mundane but necessary stuff. Skaters generally don’t bring in the kind of lucrative endorsement $$$ and often rely on a family member for this type of daily support. Having been to several competitions with Nathan where he was accompanied by his mom, I have always seen her as steady source of support, but someone always in the background. She is indeed a skating parent; but perhaps that moniker should be a positive one: proud and supportive skating parent. As for Nathan being sheltered, he is probably one of the nicest, most down-to-earth skaters around.
I agree that Nathan is a very nice. Arg. Just lost the rest of my comment. I blame the pop-up ads! I also agree that a strong support system is needed for young athletes. I just wouldn’t want my mom coming to college with me.
 

VGThuy

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41,020
I agree that Nathan is a very nice. Arg. Just lost the rest of my comment. I blame the pop-up ads! I also agree that a strong support system is needed for young athletes. I just wouldn’t want my mom coming to college with me.
A great number of college students do live at home or near enough their parents who still provide help and support. It’s a lot more common than the idea that college students go off to college and become totally cut off from home. That’s the traditional moving away to college life that many students still experience but there’s a huge proportion of students that don’t do that. Anyway, you may not want your mom going to college with you but if your mom acted as your schedule manager, has spent most of your life helping you sort of the logistics of your life so you could concentrate on excelling academically and winning highly intensive and time consuming Olympic-level sporting competitions with a rising level of publicity commitments and engagements, you may think differently. Nathan chose to go to a university that isn’t accommodating to being “flexible” with his skating schedule nor did he push back his college career until after retirement, so I’m sure that explains a lot about his decision to have his mom close by. She serves as his personal assistant/manager and probably makes sure he continues to stay on an optimal schedule to do everything he wants to do (even basic things like eat the right things at the right time…take care of household things…etc.).
 

Alexa

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Messages
125
Nathan is a talented athlete, and a very good student. I think he has led a very sheltered life.
His mother rented an apartment in New Haven while Nathan studied at Yale. He lived in the dormitory. She also drove him to the rink, and watched from the stands. She has controlled his every move for the majority of his life. While I really bristle at what he said, I don’t think he’s ever been given an opportunity to experience life, learn through experience (other than on the ice), and truly think for himself.
His mother belongs on the dreaded “Skating Mothers” list.
I don’t think it was the case for his freshman year. His mom only went to help him out around competition time. His mom talked to some concerned Japanese fans at usnats 2019, about her wanting to offer him more help like driving him to rinks and things like that, but I guess Nathan didn’t want that. She told the Japanese fans she would be leaving after nationals.

Nathan was plagued with sickness in 18/19 season. He had a very bad infection from cold or flu several weeks after he went to Yale fall of 2018, which he never seemed to fully recovered from. He has respiratory issues like coughing even before IdF 2018. Then He got a bad flu right after us nationals, and got another flu 2 weeks right before the worlds, which he talked about during his media call.He was sick and in very bad shape on the day of WTT skate, which he had to cancel several interview. He didn’t even go the banquet.

He still suffered respiratory issues during SOI tour. Another very concerned Japanese asked his mom about his health, mom said she always told him to pay attention not to get sick, but he always ended up with being sick. His sister git married that May, there were pictures mom was seeing her wedding dress in Nathan’s Socal apartment. So I don’t think she was always staying in New Haven.

I am not sure about his sophomore year. But I could understand if mom wanted to move there to help him out given what happened the first year. The course load was much harder than first year, Which Nathan admitted in a Russian interview that he sometime asked himself why he chose such a difficult life. Nathan doesn’t like to talk about it, but it seemed that he doesn’t have a strong immune system. He was sick on the day of 2019 SkAm FS. Per Raf, he was sick before 2019 GPF, which impacted his training. Then again, he had a really bad flu in the winter break, which Raf was so concerned about that he was much more involved with Nathan’s training after he went back school.

But I do agree that Nathan lived a somewhat sheltered life until probably the second semester of freshman year if not the sophomore year at Yale. In one of his interviews with Japanese media at the end of 2018,he mentioned something like his life was like between rinks, classrooms. He said that although he lived in a dorm, but he seldom got chance to talk to his peers at school.
 
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tony

Throwing the (rule)book at them
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17,679
Watching the clip in question and then seeing what he had to say afterwards, I certainly don't think Nathan had malicious intent, I don't think he really mis-spoke at all, and I think there's validity to what he says.

What has baffled me since I was a pre-teen watching this sport is how there are so many LGBTQ athletes and fans drawn to the sport, but until very recently, Federations, the ISU, the judges, etc. wanted a very conservative approach in pretty much all aspects on and off the ice by even the most out and proud athletes. Within maybe the last 2 years, that's somewhat changed as far as ISU and USFS social media being more 'inclusive'-- but that's just social media and maybe catering to address more of the social issues to look good.

But there's just always been a disconnect: the officials want everything to be tame, the general population in the United States probably says 'that's gay' in regards to the sport more often than not, and the athletes are lost somewhere in-between from the stereotypes and expectancies coming from both sides. The kids who ultimately are straight males probably get teased constantly about being in a 'gay' sport, and the kids who are gay feel (or maybe felt) like they had to pretend to be someone else or hold back in order to appease the important people.
 

SkateFanBerlin

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Messages
1,603
I’ve followed Nathan since he was an amazing 10 year old novice champion. I can’t think of a more classy, humble, non-controversial athlete than Nathan. He is a stellar human being. With all the important things in the world to be outraged about, his choice of words in that one conversation is not one of them. I’m a screaming liberal, but this hyper sensitivity from so many these days is really out of control. Focus your energies on solving climate change, or hunger or access to healthcare or something of greater impact and importance to the world.
I'm a gay screaming liberal but have to agree. There was a British gay humorist, Quentin Crisp, who said in the 70's "I'm sick of hearing about gay and I think everyone else is too. The whole subject has become a total bore".
 

sk9tingfan

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7,657
In another vein, I reached out to Nathan about Matt Amodio, the current Jeopardy Champion. I asked Nathan if he was following Matt because he is a PhD candidate in computer science/artificial intelligence at Yale. I also asked Amodio if he was aware of Nathan and his undefeated status. Amodio immediately responded and said he knew who the real champion was. What a nice guy!
 
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Sylvia

TBD
Messages
79,990
Thoughts and prayers for this Nathan Chen Fan thread in this Olympic season.
I think we should have a new fan thread with an apt subtitle for the Olympic season - feel free to post your suggestions here. :)

ETA:

Since 2018 he’s won every skating championship he’s entered. Now, with about six months until the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, Chen says he’s going in with a different frame of mind. One that allows him to be human and to have fun.

“Ultimately, when I’m happy and positive things end up going a lot better and more in my favor,” he told me, “So that’s sort of my attitude going into these games. And I’m really looking forward to it. It’s such an interesting experience.”
 
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shine

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4,889
Word on the street/Twitter is that Nathan’s FS will be a combination of Mozart’s Requiem and this remix:
 

sk9tingfan

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7,657
Word on the street/Twitter is that Nathan’s FS will be a combination of Mozart’s Requiem and this remix:
Boy, is that going to need some careful selection and splicing.
 

sheetz

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Messages
880
Word on the street/Twitter is that Nathan’s FS will be a combination of Mozart’s Requiem and this remix:
That could work as music for the final chsq. I know some people didn't like hip hop Rocketman but I thought the formula worked really well.
 

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