Nearly a year after Olympic figure skater Nathan Chen performed a Gold medal-winning routine to a medley of Elton John‘s hits, he’s using his extraordinary talent to breathe new life into Sir Elton’s “Hold Me Closer.”
Sir Elton released an acoustic version of his and Britney Spears‘ collab and tapped the 23-year-old skater to star in its brand new music video.
The video starts with Chen, a self-professed lifelong fan of Elton, lacing up and hitting the ice to perform a beautiful routine he choreographed specifically for the piano-heavy ballad. Chen effortlessly flips, spins and performs a series of Olympic-Gold-worthy moves before staring proudly into the camera at the song’s finale.
Chen won the gold medal in the men’s singles competition at the 2022 Winter Games. Just like the routine he performed in the new music video, Chen choreographed a thrilling free skate program to cover versions of Elton’s “Rocket Man,” “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” and “Bennie and the Jets.”
Sir Elton lauded Chen’s win on social media, writing, “Congratulations Nathan Chen for winning Gold skating to ‘Rocket Man’ in the free skate finals in Beijing.”
It should be noted the new video was filmed at Yale University’s Ingalls Ice Rink, affectionately called the Yale Whale, where Chen trained for the 2022 Olympic Games. He majored in statistics and data science at the university.
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