Read the complete write-up of Nathan Chen net worth, age, wife, children, height, family, parents, brother, olympics as well as other information you need to know.
Introduction
Nathan Chen is an American figure skater. He is a three-time World champion (2018, 2019, 2021), a 2018 Olympic bronze medalist in the team event, the 2017 Four Continents champion, a three-time Grand Prix Final champion (2017, 2018, 2019), and a six-time U.S. national champion (2017–22). At the junior level, Chen is the 2015–16 Junior Grand Prix Final champion, 2013–14 Junior Grand Prix Final bronze medalist, and 2014 World Junior bronze medalist.
Chen is the first skater to have landed five types of quadruple jumps in competition – toe loop, Salchow, loop, flip, and Lutz – as well as eight quadruple jumps across a single competition (2018 World Championships). Since placing fifth at the 2018 Winter Olympics, he had been undefeated in every competition he had entered until October 2021, both domestic and international. As of 2021, Chen is the world record holder for the free skate and the combined score.
Early life
| Name | Nathan Chen |
| Net Worth | $5 million |
| Occupation | Figure Skater |
| Height | 1.68m |
| Age | 22 years |
| Wife | Single |
Nathan Wei Chen was born on May 5, 1999 (age 22 years) in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. He is the son of Chinese parents, Zhidong Chen and Hetty Wang. He has four older siblings – Colin, Alice, Janice, and Tony. Chen’s father is a research scientist and his mother is a medical translator. Chen attended West High School in Salt Lake City and Rim of the World High School in Lake Arrowhead, California, and graduated from California Connections Academy. In addition to figure skating, he trained in ballet with Ballet West Academy and competed in gymnastics at the state and regional levels for seven years.
Chen was enrolled at Yale University in the fall of 2018, majoring in Statistics and Data Science. He is on a leave of absence to prepare for the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.
Career
Nathan Chen started figure skating at age three in a pair of his sister’s white skates. He entered his first skating competition in 2003. From 2007 to 2009, he qualified to compete in the U.S. Junior Nationals at the juvenile and intermediate levels. He placed 10th and 3rd in juveniles at the 2007 and 2008 Junior Nationals. At the 2009 Junior Nationals, he won the intermediate men’s silver medal.
Chen advanced to the novice level in the 2009–10 season. He became the youngest novice champion in the history of U.S. Figure Skating at age 10, winning the national novice title at the 2010 U.S. Championships in Spokane, Washington. Due to his young age, he opted to remain at the novice level for the 2010–2011 season and defended his novice title at the 2011 U.S. Championships in Greensboro, North Carolina.
In the 2011–2012 season, Chen moved up to the junior level. He was coached by Genia Chernyshova and also traveled to Lake Arrowhead, California, to work with jump specialist Rafael Arutyunyan. Arutyunyan became his main coach in mid-December 2011. Chen won the junior men’s title at the 2012 U.S. Championships in San Jose, California on January 24, 2012. Making his first international appearance, he won the novice men’s event at the 2012 Gardena Spring Trophy in Selva Val Gardena, Italy.
Junior career
Nathan Chen became age-eligible (13 years old) to compete in the ISU Junior Grand Prix (JGP) series. His first assignment was JGP Austria in Linz from September 12–16, 2012. He won the gold medal with the highest score (222.00 points) ever awarded at the time in the JGP series. He withdrew from the 2012 JGP final after sustaining a lower leg injury. Staying at the junior level, he won the junior men’s bronze medal at the 2013 U.S. Championships in Omaha, Nebraska, on January 22, 2013. Nathan Chen began his season by winning gold both at the ISU Junior Grand Prix in Mexico, in September 2013, and JGP in Belarus. He qualified for the Junior Grand Prix Final in Fukuoka, Japan and won the bronze medal.
On January 9, 2014, Chen broke the six-year U.S. junior men’s record of 213.76 at the 2014 U.S. Championships in Boston, Massachusetts and won his second U.S. junior title. His final combination spin in the short program received 4.86 points, the highest among active male skaters in the world. He was awarded the bronze medal at the 2014 World Junior Championships in Sofia, Bulgaria in March 2014. The results of Chen and his teammates, Jordan Moeller and Shotaro Omori, gained three entries for the United States to the 2015 World Junior Championships.
Senior national debut
Nathan Chen debuted at the senior level in 2014. At the Pacific Sectional Championships in November 2014, he landed a clean quadruple toe loop and double toe loop combination (4T+2T) in his free skate, winning the senior men’s division, and advanced to the 2015 U.S. Championships in Greensboro, North Carolina. He developed a growth-related heel injury a week before the national championships and competed with modified versions of his short and long programs. He placed eighth overall in his senior national championship debut in January 2015.
After the competition, Chen was named to the U.S. team for the 2015 World Junior Championships. He finished 4th at the event in Tallinn, Estonia, on March 8, 2015. In the 2015–16 ISU Junior Grand Prix series, Chen won gold in both Colorado Springs, Colorado and in Logroño, Spain. In December 2015, he stood atop the podium at the JGP Final in Barcelona.
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In January 2016, at the U.S. Championships Chen became the first American man to land two quadruple jumps in the short program. On January 24, he became the first male single’s skater to land four quadruple jumps in a long program. He finished third overall behind Adam Rippon and Max Aaron, the former not attempting any quads and the latter landing two. This event reignited the long-standing debate within the figure skating community over whether artistry should trump athleticism. While attempting a jump during exhibitions on the same day, Chen sustained an avulsion injury to his left hip, leading to surgery on January 27.
He withdrew from the 2016 World Junior Championships in Debrecen, Hungary, and the 2016 World Championships in Boston. Chen underwent a month of rehabilitation at the U.S. Olympic Training Center (OTC) in Chula Vista, California, and by May was training off-ice at OTC in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He resumed training around July.
Senior career
Ahead of the 2016–2017 season, Chen traveled to Canton, Michigan, to have his programs choreographed by Marina Zueva. “I spent a week there, and we hit it off really well. We talked it over and thought it’d be a good idea to go to Michigan and work on PCS a little bit.” By September 2016, six months after his hip surgery, Zueva and Oleg Epstein were coaching him in Canton. In preparation for his international senior debut, he began training the 4Lz and 4F.
Chen began his 2016–2017 season with a gold medal at the 2016 CS Finlandia Trophy, 7.71 points ahead of the silver medalist Patrick Chan of Canada. He then competed at two Grand Prix events. For his Grand Prix series debut at the 2016 Trophée de France in Paris, he cleanly landed a quadruple lutz and triple toe combination jump and a quadruple flip in both his short and long programs. His short program scored 92.85, breaking the American short program record of 90.30 held by Olympic champion Evan Lysacek since the 2010 Winter Olympics. After finishing fourth in France, he returned to Arutyunyan in California. At the 2016 NHK Trophy in Sapporo, Chen placed second behind the reigning Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu, qualifying him for the Grand Prix Final (GPF) in Marseille, France.
In December at the GPF, Chen placed 5th in the short program but won the free skate with a performance that included four quadruple jumps. Earning a total score of 282.85 points, he won the silver medal, behind Yuzuru Hanyu, and became the second-youngest male skater (age 17) to medal at the GPF after Evgeni Plushenko, who won his first GPF medal at age 16 in 1999. He spent two weeks later that month working in Canton, Michigan, modifying the element order and choreography of his programs.
At the 2017 U.S. Championships in Kansas City, Missouri, Chen performed two quadruple jumps (4Lz+3T and 4F) in the short program and five in the free skate (4Lz+3T, 4F, 4T+2T+2Lo, 4T and 4S), the first skater to do so. He won the U.S. title with the highest scores in U.S. Figure Skating history (106.39 in the short program, 212.08 in the free skate, 318.47 overall). Following the event, he and teammate Jason Brown were named to the 2017 World team by U.S. Figure Skating.
In February, Chen won the 2017 Four Continents, becoming the third person to score over 100 points in a short program and over 300 points in an International Skating Union competition. In April, at the World Championships in Helsinki, the boots that he had begun using after Four Continents were on the verge of falling apart; however, he decided to continue using them, using duct tape and hockey laces, because he felt that the back-up boots were too new.
He attempted a record total of eight quadruple jumps, two in the short program and six in the long program, but fell on two quadruple jumps in his long program, and placed sixth overall at the competition. He and teammate Jason Brown, who placed seventh, secured three places for the United States in the men’s event at the 2018 Winter Olympics. Chen rounded off the season with a 3rd place team and 2nd place personal finish at the 2017 World Team Trophy in Tokyo.
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Nathan Chen started the 2017–2018 season by winning the 2017 CS U.S. International Figure Skating Classic in September, debuting his short program “Nemesis” choreographed by Shae-Lynn Bourne and free skate “Mao’s Last Dancer” choreographed by Lori Nichol. Chen landed his first quad loop in the free skate and became the first skater to land five different quads (4T, 4S, 4Lo, 4F, and 4Lz) in competition. He was selected to represent Team USA alongside Jeremy Abbott, Karen Chen, and Mirai Nagasu at the Japan Open. There, his free program earned second place behind Javier Fernandez.
He won his first Grand Prix title at the 2017 Rostelecom Cup in Moscow. After placing first in the short program and second in the free skate, he defeated the reigning World and Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan. In 2017 Skate America, Chen won his second Grand Prix title, finishing ahead of teammate Adam Rippon. Chen skated the short program, which earned him a new personal best score, with a left blade that had a nick in the outside edge. He replaced the blade for the free skate but stated afterward, “I think that was a bad call. It was a little too sharp on the inside edge, and every time I pressed into it for sal(chow), toe, and even flip, it would catch into the ice way harder than I was used to.” With two victories, Chen earned the top qualifying spot for the Grand Prix Final.
At the Final in Nagoya, Chen took the lead in the short program and placed first overall, over Shoma Uno of Japan and Mikhail Kolyada of Russia. He became the third American in history to win the Final, the first since Evan Lysacek in 2009. At the 2018 U.S. Championships in San Jose, California, Chen performed a total of seven clean quadruple jumps (two in the short program and five in the free skate) and scored 315.23 to win his second consecutive national title. Following the event, Chen, Adam Rippon, and Vincent Zhou were nominated by U.S. Figure Skating to compete at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea as part of the U.S. Olympic Figure Skating Team.
At the 2018 Winter Olympics, Chen placed fourth in the men’s short program of the team event, and became the first skater to land a quad flip at the Olympics. Chen won a bronze medal in the team event alongside teammates Mirai Nagasu, Bradie Tennell, Adam Rippon, Alexa Scimeca Knierim, Chris Knierim, Maia Shibutani, and Alex Shibutani, became one of the youngest male figure skating Olympic medalists. Due to nerves in the individual men’s event, Chen performed poorly in the short program and placed seventeenth.
In the free skate, he made Olympic history by becoming the first man to attempt six quads and land five cleanly. He placed first in the free skate with a score of 215.08, the highest in Olympic history, earning a total score of 297.35 and moved up twelve places to finish in fifth place overall. Chen was invited to perform in the exhibition gala, but withdrew after contracting the flu and left PyeongChang early to avoid infecting any of his American teammates. His commercial sponsors for the Olympics included Coca-Cola, United Airlines, Kellogg’s, and Bridgestone.
In March at the 2018 World Figure Skating Championships in Milan, Chen placed first in both the short (101.94) and free (219.46) programs. He again attempted and landed six quads in the free program, winning the 2018 world champion title with a total score of 321.40 points and became the second skater to break 320 points after Yuzuru Hanyu.
Chen became the first U.S. men’s world champion since Evan Lysacek in 2009 and the tenth in history. He was the youngest (18 years 10 months 19 days) men’s world champion since Evgeni Plushenko (18 years 4 months 19 days) in 2001. Chen’s victory and teammate Max Aaron’s eleventh-place finish ensured Team USA three men’s places at the next year’s World Figure Skating Championships in Japan. His margin of victory over silver medalist Shoma Uno was one of the largest in history at 47.63 points.
Nathan Chen started college at Yale this season. In an in-depth Olympic Channel Facebook Live interview with 2014 Olympic Champion Meryl Davis, Chen expanded on his school, skating, future plans, life, and other interesting topics. Chen: “I love skating. I love competing. I love training. I love to be around all my fellow skaters. But at the end of the day I am not going to be skating for all the rest of my life. There will be a moment I’ll have to take a step away from skating and focus on something else. I think right now I am attempting to do both just so I can bridge that gap, so when I am deciding my time in skating is up I can start the second half of my life…”
Chen’s assignments for the 2018-19 Grand Prix series were Skate America and Internationaux de France. Fortunately for Chen, Skate America took place during the Yale October recess and Internationaux de France fell during the Thanksgiving recess. The 2018–19 Grand Prix Final begins the day before Yale’s pre-finals reading period starts. And the 2019 World Championships, in Japan, were during Yale’s spring break.
At Skate America in Everett, Washington in October, Chen skated to the music of “Caravan” (choreographed by Shae-Lynn Bourne) in the short program and “Land of All” (choreographed by Samuel Chouinard and Marie-France Dubreuil) in the free skate. He won both segments of the competition and defended his title as the men’s Skate America champion.
In an interview with ISU about his programs, Chen said: “The short program (Caravan) is a lot of fun.” “She (Bourne) wants me to dance to the music so that other people are excited to dance as well.” “I originally chose the piece (Land of All) for the long because I needed something that contrasted the short,” Chen noted. “The music is the soundtrack to a movie called “Desierto” and it is about immigration into the US. Obviously, I don’t want to make my programs about this or anything political but, at the same time, just because it has that deep and darker meaning requires me to add another layer to my skating,” he explained.
At Internationaux de France in Grenoble in November, Chen fell on his quad flip in the short program and placed third behind Jason Brown and Alexander Samarin entering the free skate. Chen landed three quadruple jumps (4F, 4T, and 4T+3T) in the free skate and won the competition with a total score of 271.58. He had now won five consecutive Grand Prix gold medals. By winning both Skate America and Internationaux de France Chen qualified to compete in the 2018–19 Grand Prix Final in Vancouver, Canada.
At the 2018–19 Grand Prix Final in early December, Chen competed with the other five qualifiers, Shoma Uno, Michal Březina, Sergei Voronov, Cha Jun-hwan, and Keegan Messing (Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu qualified but withdrew due to injury). Chen had mistakes in both his short and long programs – a missed combination jump in the short program and a fall in the long program but won both segments of the competition to collect his second GPF title.
The gold medal marks Chen the fourth man after Evgeni Plushenko, Patrick Chan, and Yuzuru Hanyu to win consecutive Grand Prix Finals since the event’s debut in 1995, and the second man after Evgeni Plushenko to win every one of his Grand Prix competitions in two consecutive seasons.
At the 2019 U.S. Championships in Detroit, Chen gave a strong performance scoring 113.42 for a two-quad short program (official NBC Sports and 228.80 for a four-quad free skate totaling 342.22 points. Chen became the first man to win three straight national titles since Johnny Weir in 2004–2006. He said “I’m happy with what I did, and hopefully I can do that in other competitions, The first few jumps are a little like a checklist, and once I get done with that, I can focus on the music and the audience. Nationals is no joke. You can’t discount any of these other skaters who are here. I’m really proud of myself for all of the work I put in, and it’s an honor to be up here with these two guys. I don’t mind the training atmosphere I am in, and I am so thankful Yale has given me the ice time to pursue my dreams outside of school. I feel like I am improving competition to competition. This gives me a lot of confidence going into the future.”.
Competing at the 2019 World Championships in Saitama, Japan in March, Chen successfully defended his world champion title, and broke the world record for both the free skate and total score, with 216.02 and 323.42 points respectively. The gold in Saitama was Chen’s 11th victory out of 12 individual competitions over the past two seasons. He became the first U.S. man to win back-to-back world titles since Scott Hamilton won four in a row from 1981 to 1984. With teammate Vincent Zhou winning the bronze medal, two Americans stood on the men’s podium at Worlds for the first time since 1996, when Todd Eldredge won gold and Rudy Galindo took the bronze in Edmonton, Canada. Chen concluded the season at another event in Japan, the 2019 World Team Trophy, where Team USA won the gold medal.
Nathan Chen opened his season with a free skate at the Japan Open, placing first in the men’s event, and contributed to Team North America’s bronze medal finish. In the 2019-202 Grand Prix, Chen defended his title at Skate America in Las Vegas, with his third consecutive win. This was the first time anyone had won Skate America three times consecutively since Todd Eldredge won four from 1994 to 1997.
The 44-point margin of victory was the largest ever at Skate America. He then won his second straight Internationaux de France title in Grenoble and became the first singles skater since Evgeni Plushenko nearly two decades earlier to win eight straight Grand Prix events. In winning two Grand Prix events, Chen qualified for the Grand Prix Final.
At the Grand Prix Final, Chen was widely perceived as the co-favorite for the title alongside Japan’s Yuzuru Hanyu. Chen skated cleanly in the short program, setting a new personal best score of 110.38, 0.15 short of Hanyu’s short program world record at the time which had been set at the 2018 Rostelecom Cup. Hanyu failed to complete his combination jump, resulting in Chen leading by almost thirteen points going into the free skate. Chen skated cleanly in the free skate and set a new world record for the free skate (224.92 points) and the total score (335.30 points), beating Hanyu for the second time since the Olympics. Chen’s win made him the first singles skater to win all Grand Prix events in three consecutive seasons.
Suffering from the flu, Chen was only able to fully resume training less than two weeks before the 2020 U.S. Championships. Competing in Greensboro, North Carolina, Chen won his fourth national title and became the first man to win four consecutive U.S. men’s titles since Olympic champion Brian Boitano in 1988. He was assigned to compete at the World Championships in Montreal, but these were canceled as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
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With the pandemic still raging, the ISU assigned the Grand Prix series based largely on geographic location, with Chen again set to attend Skate America, and was considered the favorite. He won both the short program and the free skate, with a total score of 299.15, despite popping two planned jumps in the free. After the competition, Chen revealed to Olympic Channel that he is taking a break from school to focus on skating and the next Olympics. “(The Olympics) are the end goal,” Chen said. “It’s the driving force behind a lot of what we do and a lot of the decisions that we make.”
Chen made history at the 2021 U.S. Championships, winning his fifth consecutive National title. He became the first man to win five consecutive National titles since Dick Button, who won seven straight from 1946 to 1952. Chen cited Butt on as inspiration. “It’s incredible to try to follow in his footsteps,” Chen said of Button. “It means the world. Dick is a true skating icon, and it just feels incredible to be trying to chase something that someone like that has done. I’m nowhere near the level he was at, but it’s just cool to be able to be even mentioned in his sort of realm of legends.” During his free performance, Chen attempted five quads, landing four of them cleanly.
At the 2021 World Championships in Stockholm, Sweden, Chen placed third after the short program with a score of 98.85, after a fall on the quadruple Lutz. In the free, he placed first with a score of 222.03, with a clean program landing five quads, and won his third world title with a total score of 320.88. Chen became the first man since Patrick Chan (2011–13) and the first American (male or female) since Scott Hamilton (1982–84) to win three World titles in a row.
In a post-competition interview, Chen said he felt he had grown since the 2018 Olympics when he was seventeenth heading into the free skate: “I think having had that experience now going into this competition, it definitely helps me retain some resiliency, I think. And I think that definitely, you know, thankfully came into play today.”
Chen competed as part of the American team at the 2021 World Team Trophy, where he placed first ahead of Yuzuru Hanyu with his combined scores, after also placing first in the short program. His result helped Team USA win the silver medal.
Beijing Olympics
Nathan Chen began the Olympic season at the 2021 Skate America, where he placed fourth in the short program. He fell on his first quadruple jump. A poor landing on the second quadruple jump meant he was unable to execute the required two-jump combination. He placed second in the free skate despite doubling on two of his six planned quads, finishing in third place overall behind Vincent Zhou and Shoma Uno.
Speaking afterward about the end of his winning streak since the 2018 World Championships, Chen said “it’s not devastating. It was inevitably going to end as a winning streak at some point in time, and I am really proud of these guys up here.” Competing the next week at the 2021 Skate Canada International, Chen rebounded to win both segments of the competition and take the gold medal, with a 48-point margin over silver medalist Jason Brown. Chen’s results qualified him to the Grand Prix Final, but it was subsequently canceled due to restrictions prompted by the Omicron variant.
At the 2022 U.S. Championships in Nashville, Chen won his sixth consecutive men’s title, a feat last achieved by the legendary Dick Button 71 years earlier. Chen scored 115.39, a new national record, in the short program and 212.62 in the free skate for a total of 328.01 points. After the competition, Chen was named to the American Olympic team along with Zhou and Brown.
Wife
Nathan Chen is single and not married. His wife or girlfriend is unknown to the general public. However, he is the first and currently the only skater to have landed five types of quadruple jumps in competition: the toe loop, Salchow, loop, flip and Lutz. He is also the first skater to land five quads in a free skate program and seven quads in ratified competition at the 2017 Four Continents Figure Skating Championships. He remains the only skater who has landed seven clean (positive grade of execution) quads in one competition, two in the short program, and five in the free skate, which he achieved at the 2019 Grand Prix Final.
Under the new ISU Judging System implemented since the 2018–19 season, Chen holds the highest scores for the following quadruple jumps: 4Lz (16.26), 4F (15.40), 4S (14.83), 4F+3T (20.23) and the second-highest scores for the following quadruple jumps: 4T (13.71), 4T+3T (18.46), 4T+1Eu+3S (17.01), 4T+1Eu+3F (19.14).
Nathan Chen net worth
How much is Nathan Chen worth? Nathan Chen net worth is estimated at around $5 million. His main source of income is from his career as an American figure skater. Chen successful career has earned him some luxurious lifestyles and some fancy cars trips. He is one of the richest and influential figure skaters in the United States. However, Chen holds the highest and a perfect ChSq1 score of 5.50 and the highest StSq4 score of 5.73 among male and female singles skaters under the new ISU Judging System.