GANGNEUNG, South Korea (AP) — Nathan Chen was nearly at a loss for words trying to explain where his Olympic short program went awry, leaving the American medal contender fortunate just to qualify for the free skate.
In fact, Chen was at a loss for what to do next.
"I've never been in this spot before," he said Friday. "I mean, I thought I did everything right in terms of my general approach going into this. Things just didn't click together."
After crowd-pleasing performances from teammates Adam Rippon and Vincent Zhou, the 18-year-old Chen failed to cleanly land a single jump in his high-flying short program.