KANSAS CITY, Mo. — For all its beauty, figure skating can be a brutal sport. It rewards the young, then often sends them to the discard pile before they graduate from high school.
And the old? As in the 20-somethings? If they succeed in persevering that long, if their doubts don’t get to them, the next little jumping bean usually will.
This brings us to Saturday night’s women’s long program at the 2017 U.S. national championships. Youth was served in the surprising but well-deserved victory of 17-year-old Karen Chen, who followed her short program win Thursday night with another flawless performance to capture her first national title, setting up the possibility that the two individual events here will be won by one skater named Chen after another.