Nathan Chen grabbed his third straight Skate America Grand Prix title on Saturday, delivering three quadruple jumps in a crowd-pleasing free skate to seal the gold. The 20-year-old American, winner of the last two World titles, took a lead of more than six points into the closing free skate, where his programme to Elton John's "Rocket Man" - with a dash of dazzling footwork to "Bennie and the Jets" to close - came off without a hitch at Orleans Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
"I'm really happy with that," said Chen, whose 196.38 points for the free skate gave him a total of 299.09 in the first event of the International Skating Union's Grand Prix series. "That's a good starting score," he said. "Hopefully I can continue to build off of that. "Of course I made a couple of errors, so I need to clean those up," added Chen, but it was hard to find fault with a programme that opened with a triple Lutz-triple toe combination and included an impressive quadruple flip as well as two more quadruple jumps.
He led a US one-two, 44 points ahead of compatriot Jason Brown (255.09). Brown, fourth after the short programme, finished second in the free skate to climb the standings while Russian Dmitri Aliev, second after the short, settled for bronze after a free skate that saw him double a planned opening quadruple lutz and single a late triple Axel.
Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2019
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