by Karen Chen
I want to be a national champion.
For a moment, I grew tense. Stiff. I was thinking too much.
Oh no, it’s the short. You’re going to screw this up. You always mess this up.
I breathed. I listened. I heard the birds. They didn’t fear the ground, because they were looking at the sky.
Skate that way, Karen. You don’t have to be afraid. Time to spread your wings and fly.
Finally, the warm-up was over. The visualization had ended. I left the stairwell and rejoined the intensity and noise of the arena.
Very quickly, the moment for competition arrived. My name was announced, and I took one loop around the ice, just like I’d done hundreds, probably thousands, of times before. My icy white dress rippled in the cold air, and the beading was intricate, ornate, and spectacular. Even my mom had been satisfied with it.
I circled into my mark, took one more deep breath, and then there was no more time to think. My music began, but I didn’t. I waited for a couple of seconds, letting the music move me until I was ready to pour all my emotion onto the ice.
My first jump was the moneymaker: it was a combination, so the landing foot of the first jump was the takeoff for the second. This triple-lutz, triple-toe loop has forever given me fits, and I often rush the landing into the next takeoff. Not this time, though. This time I remembered my breathing, remembered to use my knees, and let myself go for it. I nailed it.
I had two more jumps left. The last one was a double axel, which was considered really easy for me. But that middle jump, the triple loop, is past the halfway point, and sometimes when I overthink or doubt myself, it won’t happen. Then I started to smile, and I landed the triple loop. All my longing for this moment, and it was about to happen.
Keep going. You got this.
Stay calm.
Spin and hit the ending pose.
And I did it. I skated the way I envisioned.
It was one of the best feelings I’ve ever experienced. I’ve always had that mental block with the short program; I feared it, and to be able to skate clean, without slips or missteps, when it counted the most—I felt redeemed. I felt proud. All skaters live for that moment where we realize everything came together, all the hard work paid off, all those hours of training were worth it.
Then my score was announced: 72.82, the highest short-program mark on record at the national championships.
I was the leader after the short program. My body was shocked and full of energy. That night I had trouble falling asleep. What else could I possibly dream? I had just skated the program of my dreams.
Thankfully, we had a day in between the short and long programs, and Tammy and I were careful with my preparation to reset my mind and focus. It was certainly no time to be smug and rest on my laurels, but skating such a solid short program definitely gave me a confidence boost.
And this long program had been my favorite thing to skate all season. I’d practiced it a lot, over and over. The music, “Jealousy Tango,” had a different feeling than my skates from the previous year. I chose it specifically so I wouldn’t get lost thinking on the ice, dwelling on slow, depressing music.
I gave myself plenty of time to warm up because, as the leader, I had certain obligations. NBC needed to prerecord footage of me getting ready for the broadcast, so I did some jumps and spins in front of the camera, then tiptoed back up the staircase for my quiet preparation and a mini pep talk.
Clear my mind, that’s what I needed to do. Sometimes I think all these thoughts, and they can be positive thoughts, but I hear them over and over in my head. I can do this. I can do this. You can do it, you can do it, You got this. It’s frantic.
When I have good skates, my mind is clear. And I just skate.
I was the third-to-last skater on the last night of competition. Tammy urged me one final time, “Stay hungry. Push through,” before I was called to take the ice.
“In first place after the short program, joining us from the Peninsula Skating Club in San Jose, California, please welcome Karen Chen!”
What are people expecting out of me this time? What are they thinking and saying? I honestly didn’t know, nor did I care. I knew what I’d come to do. I’d come to win a championship.
My focus was locked in before the bow hit the strings.
Right off the top, that first combination, the testy triple-lutz, triple-toe loop told me I was ready. I heard it as my right blade cut that happily-ever-after edge on the landing. I remained fast and sure, hitting six triple jumps and filling out the ice with spins, spirals, and glides.
When the music stopped, and I released out of the closing Biellmann spin, my hands went to my knees. The long was only a little more than four minutes, but I should have been exhausted if I’d left everything out there. And I was. I had nothing to regret.
The judges awarded me with the third-highest free skate score in competition history, and my two-program total was 214.22. Two skaters remained, but I was happy. I knew that no matter what, I had earned a medal. I had skated with my soul. I had skated my story.
Back home in California, my mom’s sister watched the television broadcast while FaceTiming my grandparents in Taiwan. Thanks to the internet and two screens, they watched me skate like a peacock, like a leader, and like a winner. My family watched my dreams come true.
I want to be a champion.
That year, I finished as the national champion.
CHAPTER 16
LISTENING TO MY VOICE
I COULD HARDLY SEE. REALLY, I COULDN’T SEE AT all. The funny thing is, not seeing was helping me focus. Since I couldn’t see the crowd, read the signs around the rink in Helsinki, Finland, or make out any of the judges’ faces, all I could see was what I was doing.
This was my first World Championships.
I wear nighttime contact lenses and have worn them for what feels like most of my life. In second grade, I was struggling to see the board from my desk in the classroom, and I’ve needed glasses or contacts ever since. People don’t really wear hard contacts like mine anymore; it’s considered old technology, and not necessarily completely reliable, but I’ve been wearing them a long time, so I just continue with it. With nighttime lenses, you put them in right before bed and during the night, like magic, your vision is being corrected. So, I go to sleep and the next morning, I take them out and I can see fine throughout the day.
With hard contacts, you’re supposed to replace them every year, but sometimes I waited a little too long. I finally got new contact lenses right before the World Championships, which were in late March 2017, a couple of months after my win at nationals. For some reason, the new lenses weren’t working for me. I slept in them a few nights, but my vision didn’t seem any better during the day. I figured, Your eyesight isn’t perfect: just deal with it. You can still skate. It will be fine.
When I got to Helsinki and started the official practice sessions, not only could I not see well, I also had pain in my eyes. They were really uncomfortable. I had a backup pair of soft contact lenses, so I decided to try them during the next practice session. I mean, this was my senior worlds debut! I wanted to see the arena, the walls, everything! So I put in my backup contacts and was instantly overwhelmed. Finally I could see everything, including all the faces sitting in the stands, watching my practice, not to mention all the cameras aimed at me.
Everything was so bright, shifting in and out of focus. I got dizzy. And I skated horribly.
Off the ice, I nearly had a breakdown. What was happening? I was the national champion, and I was crumbling again.
Worlds were no small amount of pressure, because the scores of the top two finishers for US skaters had to add up to no more than thirteen to guarantee our country three Olympic bids for the coming year.
In the end, I would basically have to skate blind; I would have to skate without anything to correct my terrible vision. Instead, I would skate on feel and instinct, the best way to skate. Or, as my mentor Kristi Yamaguchi told me
before the competition, “Skate dumb.” What she meant was: stop thinking so much. And I’m kind of thankful, actually, that I had such a hard time with my contacts, because it forced me to block everything out and put all my focus and intention toward performing and competing—exactly what Team USA needed me to do.
After the short program, I was fifth and my United States teammate Ashley Wagner was seventh. At most competitions, I didn’t allow myself to watch my competitors or even know how they skated and scored. It was better if I focused on myself. In reality, that wasn’t always possible. That day, before I started my long program, I did happen to see the jumbotron, and I knew that Ashley hadn’t skated as well as she’d wanted or as well as I knew she was capable of. Getting those three spots at the Olympics would be challenging, and it all depended on how I skated that day.
Now, what most people don’t know, what I’ve never told anyone before, is that I suffer from a chronic, and at times debilitating, back condition. My whole life, I’d been able to stretch and I was very flexible, especially in my back, which helped me execute spins and spirals from a very young age. Then, a few years ago, sometime after I broke my foot that day in Riverside, this back injury flared up. I’ve seen many doctors for it, and I’ve gotten different opinions. Some say I was born with the problem, others say I must have had an accident when I was younger that triggered it. Basically, my lower vertebrae sometimes slip forward and backward because the bones are slightly cracked. When I arch my back in certain ways, bone pushes against nerve, and pain shoots down my legs and back. I’ve had doctors tell me not to arch my back, but I have to arch my back in order to compete and execute certain moves. So you can see my dilemma.
When I was initially diagnosed, I was so worried about my spine and so nervous about the pain that I was tense all the time. And that tension made everything worse. I was tight and my muscles were constantly seizing, which only intensified the sharp pain radiating from my back down through to my legs.
I decided I needed to be careful and play it safe, not pushing it so far that even normal activities would hurt my back. In training, when I’d run through my programs, I only performed basic movements. For example, if it was a spiral, I wouldn’t lift my legs as high. I toned everything way down.
As you know, I managed to win bronze at nationals in 2015. But my performances grew more and more inconsistent. How could I expect myself to hit positions in competition if I never did them in practice? That’s not how athletes train. Training halfway is not the proper way to train. I’m being lazy.
Finally I had to have a conversation with my doctor. “You have this problem,” he said, “but worrying about it won’t make it better. And arching your back isn’t going to make it any worse.”
Champions figure out a way to persist. And in order to help my back, I added more Pilates and core stability work to my off-ice training. All those core muscles help hold my vertebrae in position. If my core was strong, the vertebrae weren’t as likely to slip around and cause further problems.
Initially, my back pain was scary and I dealt with a lot of fear. But my only choice was to figure out a way to overcome the fear. I tried avoiding it—which didn’t work. It was only after I embraced it that I found a breakthrough. My back condition forced me to strengthen other areas of my body, which made me more powerful overall. In my weakness, I found strength.
So there I was, in cold and dreary Finland, in the best skating shape of my life, but blind as a bat, with the pressure of the world literally settling down on my shoulders for my long program. How would my back hold up?
Within thirty minutes, I told myself as I got psyched up for my long, we’ll know what’s going to happen.
And just like that, I was calm.
That day I skated dumb. I didn’t skate perfectly or even completely clean, but I skated the way I like to: fast and free. I did mess up a couple of jumps; my spins, however, were strong and gave me enough points to make up for the slips. I finished in fourth place for the United States and helped secure three roster spots for our country at the 2018 Winter Olympics!
In the greenroom, where the top-ranked skaters wait and see how the rest of the field scored, I took a seat next to Carolina Kostner. I didn’t know it at the time, but Tammy took a photo of me sitting with Carolina. Tammy surprised me after the competition, showing me that photo alongside the one I’d pleaded for her to take with Carolina more than three years ago, when I was barely a junior skater. “Oh my gosh, there you two are again,” Tammy said. “And now you’re competing against her.”
I was grateful Tammy used that moment to make me acknowledge how much I’d grown over the past few years. I’d grown as a skater and as a competitor, and I’d learned more about myself and who I was. And, perhaps most difficult of all, I’d learned what I could handle.
Sometimes it takes a while to process difficult situations. And it’s perfectly fine to be patient with yourself, so long as you commit to the process and figure out the next step.
I write myself notes to stay motivated. One time, I wrote, Two weeks from now, you’ll thank yourself. That time in my life was a difficult stretch of training, and I wasn’t getting anything right. But I knew if I just persisted, it would pay off.
Ultimately, my only successes in the first half of that 2017 season were at nationals and at worlds. Fortunately, if you’re going to do well at two competitions, those are two good ones to choose! Everything else, though, was me figuring my way up. I was tested constantly, and through skating I was learning how to confront different emotions, struggles, and obstacles and how to deal with them all.
It’s almost like trial and error. Sometimes, there are those days when I don’t feel it, when I don’t feel very motivated emotionally. Those are the days I need to push myself. But there are also days when my body actively doesn’t feel good, and mentally it’s a struggle to know how to work hard in the face of the pain.
I’m still learning and trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t.
CHAPTER 17
CONTINUING THE JOURNEY
I GUESS MY STORY DOESN’T REALLY HAVE AN ENDING. Certainly not yet.
No matter what, no matter what I achieve or how hard things get, no matter how many triple axels I land or edges I catch, I’m going to keep trying.
When I found skating, I discovered my joy. I couldn’t wait to get to the rink and go skate. It was pure fun. I never wanted to stop, and as I kept working at it, as I was competing more, I gradually noticed I was getting better. I started allowing myself to set goals.
I want to accomplish this, and this, and this.
I want to be able to do this jump soon, and so I’d work at it.
I’d do it over and over and over.
In a way, I say to myself, We’ll see how this goes. Because the training, the everyday skating, that’s what I really love: the process. Of course, I have good memories and bad memories, as well as ups and downs. I’ve learned all my life that I do hope and dream for all these things, but sometimes what I imagine as the road to accomplishment ends up being completely different than I expected.
I’ve learned to accept that sometimes you can’t always achieve your goal. So you move on and set new goals.
Sometimes, the struggle is necessary. Each day presents its own challenge. During those tough moments, we build up our strength and perseverance. We discover who we are, and what’s worth the fight.
Skating, above all, has made me a fighter. Skating teaches me to believe in myself.
When I watched Olympic champion Evan Lysacek skate to “El Tango de Roxanne” from the movie Moulin Rouge during the Smucker’s Skating Spectacular at the 2011 US Championships, I instantly fell in love with that music. Ever since then, I’ve always wanted to skate to it. In the back of my mind, though, I told myself that I couldn’t live up to the music’s intensity. I never brought it up. I never told anyone.
Fortunately, and unfortunately, it was a huge struggle for me to find the right music for my
short program for the 2017–2018 season, especially with 2018 being an Olympic year. I needed music that would provoke my emotion on the ice so I could develop a bold program. Or, as Tammy would say, something fierce. Out of desperation, I decided to put it out there, this idea of choosing “El Tango de Roxanne” for my music. Surprisingly, everyone loved the idea! And thus my short program for 2017–2018 was born.
My long program is to Carmen Suite after Bizet’s opera, by Rodion Shchedrin. Originally I was going to skate to Tosca. However, even after the program was choreographed, there was never a spark. I felt the need to find something better, something that motivated me. And that’s when I came across Carmen. At first I was skeptical, but I really felt that I could make this special and interpret it my way so that it would be my own version of Carmen.
I’m still learning. I’m still learning to trust my instincts and make the right decisions. I certainly don’t have all the answers. But if I could recommend just one thing, one little thing to strive for each day, I’d tell you to get lost in the moment. Be so consumed with what’s happening here, in the present, that the whispers of doubt are nothing but background noise. When I focus on the very next step, on what is directly in front of me, it releases me from worry. If I’m concentrating on what I’m doing—what I can control—then I’m not imagining worthless scenarios that may or may not happen.
What I remember the most from my art classes is there was no right or wrong answer, as long as we completed the work and had fun. The teacher gave us the materials and the topic, but we were free to do whatever we wanted. I focused on putting color on the canvas, creating whatever image I held in my heart. I felt safe to try anything because I knew the finished product wasn’t going to be judged. What mattered was the effort I put into making it.