Nathan Chen finally arrived at the 2018 Winter Olympics. It was a day late, costing him an Olympic medal, but after flopping in Thursday night's men's short program, Chen did a complete about-face in Friday night's free skate, ripping of a record six quad jumps to score 215.08 points for a combined score of 297.35.

He held first place before the final group of skaters took the ice, and wound up fifth behind Japan's Yuzuru Hanyu (317.85) and Shoma Uno (306.90) and Spain's Javier Fernandez (305.24), who held on for the bronze. No skater topped Chen's free skate score of 215.08, but his medal chances were done in by his uncharacteristic 82.27 score in the short program the night before.  

The United States' Vincent Zhou (276.69), who pulled out his own quads, finished sixth while Adam Rippon (259.36), again skating flawlessly but with no quads his routine, finished 10th.  

Chen fell on one his quads, but still made history as the first man to cleanly land five quad jumps. He also skated with a fearlessness that had eluded him in poor showings in the team competition earlier in the week and Thursday night's short program after entering these Olympic games with so much hype. 

"It was definitely about redemption," Chen said on NBC's live broadcast after his performance. "I wanted to leave here satisfied with what I'd done, and I am."

When asked about going for broke with the six quad jumps, which included four different variations, he said: "I've been working on it for a while. I've never really pulled it off. I figured I might as well go out and throw everything down."

Did he ever. Twitter couldn't get enough of the redemptive narrative after watching Chen struggle so badly on Thursday night when he missed on all of his jumps and looked tentative, finishing 17th. 

The upside? Chen is just 18, and he's got plenty more Olympics ahead of him to make up for his stumbles in Pyeongchang. 

Hanyu, the gold medalist from Sochi who returned from a serious ankle injury just a month ago, picked up another gold with two flawless nights of skating that sent Pooh bears raining from the stands onto the ice each night. He also graciously gave Chen a hug after Chen found himself off the podium.

Medal Tracker
PyeongChang 2018
Country
Gold
Silver
Bronze
TOTAL
NOR
NOR 		14 14 11 39
GER
GER 		14 10 7 31
CAN
CAN 		11 8 10 29
USA
USA 		9 8 6 23
NED
NED 		8 6 6 20
SWE
SWE 		7 6 1 14
KOR
KOR 		5 8 4 17
SUI
SUI 		5 6 4 15
FRA
FRA 		5 4 6 15
AUT
AUT 		5 3 6 14
JPN
JPN 		4 5 4 13
ITA
ITA 		3 2 5 10
OAR
OAR 		2 6 9 17
CZE
CZE 		2 2 3 7
BLR
BLR 		2 1 0 3
CHN
CHN 		1 6 2 9
SVK
SVK 		1 2 0 3
FIN
FIN 		1 1 4 6
GBR
GBR 		1 0 4 5
POL
POL 		1 0 1 2
HUN
HUN 		1 0 0 1
UKR
UKR 		1 0 0 1
AUS
AUS 		0 2 1 3
SLO
SLO 		0 1 1 2
BEL
BEL 		0 1 0 1
ESP
ESP 		0 0 2 2
NZL
NZL 		0 0 2 2
KAZ
KAZ 		0 0 1 1
LAT
LAT 		0 0 1 1
LIE
LIE 		0 0 1 1
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