Fresh off an Olympic gold medal and having May 18 dubbed after him in the Beehive State, Utah native Nathan Chen has been named to the Time 100 list, which attempts to name the 100 “most influential” people of 2022.
“From being a tiny prodigy who was a novice national champion, to junior, senior, and now Olympic champion, Nathan Chen has proved his relentless commitment to figure skating,” former USA figure skater Michelle Kwan wrote in Time. “That perseverance never wavered, even after his first Olympics didn’t go as he’d hoped. He trained for another four years and showed the world just how fierce a competitor he is.”
Chen has dominated figure skating over the last four years, performing never-before-seen jumps en route to winning 17 competitions since the 2018 Winter Olympics.
“Nathan is an inspiration in his own right. He has forever changed men’s figure skating, setting new standards with his quadruple jumps,” Kwan wrote. “It won’t be long before we hear athletes say they looked up to Nathan Chen. He’ll inspire generations of skaters to come who will hear his Olympic story and learn that nothing is impossible.”
Utah Jazz part owner Mike Cannon-Brookes was also on the list for his efforts on “a groundbreaking project that will allow Australia to not only harness its potential for solar power, but also export it.” Cannon-Brookes’ team is building “a 2,600-mile undersea cable (approximately the length of a cross-country drive from Boston to Phoenix) (that) will connect a massive new solar farm and energy-storage site in northern Australia to Singapore, producing around-the-clock power.”
Becky Sauerbrunn, who played for the NWSL’s Utah Royals, and fellow United States Women’s National Team members Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan were named to the list for their part in “securing a $24 million settlement and the acknowledgment of discrimination” between the United States men’s and women’s national soccer teams.