It took Nathan Chen little more than 80 seconds to vanquish the ghosts of Pyeongchang.

Less than 90 seconds for Chen to emphatically answer the questions that hounded him for four years, through World Championships-winning seasons, to the moment he took the ice for the Olympic Games short program on Tuesday morning (Monday night PT).

Chen continued to separate himself from the rest of the world’s premier men’s skaters, rising above the heartbreak of the 2018 Games and Japan’s Yuzura Hanyu, the two-time defending Olympic champion, with a world record-setting program at the Capital Indoor Stadium.

Chen, skating to LaBoheme, was flawless in sailing and soaring through the most difficult short program in history to earn a score of 113.97.

“I’d say it’s pretty close to my best,” said Chen, who trains at Great Park Ice in Irvine.

The competition held in a largely empty arena because of COVID-19 restrictions, revealed that if Chen is to have any challenge for the gold medal it will likely not come from Hanyu but his countrymen, teenager Yuma Kagiyama, the 2021 world championships runner-up, and Shoma Uno, the 2018 Olympic silver medalist.

“Nathan Chen had a perfect performance,” Uno said. “For any athlete will be difficult, if not impossible, to beat him.”

Chen’s performance was in marked contrast to the 2018 Games where, after a sloppy performance in the team competition, he was eliminated from medal contention just moments into his short program, finishing 17th. He won the free skate but it wasn’t enough to reach the medal podium, placing fifth.

“It definitely means a lot to be able to come back to an Olympics,” Chen said “and to have another opportunity to do two short programs and have both short programs go as well as I could hope.”

He marked his return to Olympic ice by winning the men’s short program segment of the team competition, posting a 111.71 mark, the highest men’s short score ever recorded at the Games.

Chen on Tuesday wasted little time in skating out of the shadow of Pyeongchang.

He opened with a quad flip, then nailed a triple Axel and was just as emphatic in landing a quad lutz/triple loop combination about 83 seconds into the routine. He punctuated the performance with a fist pump in a rare display of emotion after finishing a routine that broke Hanyu’s world record (111.82) by two points.

“I kind of broke character there a little bit,” Chen said. “There was a whole spectrum of emotions you can feel in one moment: happy, relief.

“I was elated. The last two Olympic short programs didn’t go the way I wanted. I finally skated a short program the way I want it.”

Kagiyama, 18, skating before Chen, took the lead, however briefly, with a 108.12 mark.

Hanyu’s bid to become the first man in 94 years to win three consecutive Olympic figure skating titles struggled to lift off. Any chance at a third gold medal could very well have disappeared just seven seconds into his short program when he bailed out of his opening jump, a Quad salchow, leaving him with zero points for the element.

“I didn’t feel anything bad until takeoff,” Hanyu said. “When I took off, I was under some hole, maybe (caused by) some other skater’s toe (loop) or flip or something.”

The rest of his program was solid, leaving Hanyu, 27, with an eighth-place score of 95.76 and a sizable – if not impossible – hole to dig out of in the free skate Thursday morning (Wednesday night PT)

Uno, 24, arrived in Beijing only on Feb. 5 after earlier testing positive for COVID-19. He showed no signs of illness skating after Hanyu with a performance that earned a score of 105.90 and third place.

Team USA’s Jason Brown is sixth at 97.24.

It was a rough night for Michal Brezina of the Czech Republic and Chen’s training partner. Brezina, skating in his fourth Olympics, slipped on an early jump and later fell, slipping to 25th with a score of 75.19 and failing to advance to the free skate by one place.

The competition started without Team USA’s Vincent Zhou, the 2019 world championships bronze medalist, who tested positive for COVID-19 after helping the U.S. secure the silver medal in the team competition on Feb. 6.

“I have tested positive for COVID-19, and unfortunately I will have to withdraw from the individual event starting tomorrow,” Zhou said in an emotional video posted on his Instagram account. “It seems pretty unreal that of all people it would happen to myself. Not just because I am still processing this turn of events, but because I have been doing everything in my power to stay free of COVID since the start of the pandemic.

“I am more than just another positive COVID test. I am more than just another face in the crowd.”

The positive test was especially heartbreaking for Zhou, who has described Beijing as almost a second home. His parents left Beijing in the 1990s to resettle in the Silicon Valley and he still has grandparents living in the Olympic host city.

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Zhou, who trained in Riverside for much of his career before relocating to Colorado Springs following the 2018 Games, tested positive during a daily PCR test required of all athletes. A second test taken later confirmed the initial result. Under Beijing 2022’s Playbook, a series of COVID protocols and guidelines implemented by Chinese officials and the local organizing committee, athletes testing positive are immediately moved into an isolation facility if they don’t have symptoms. Athletes with symptoms are admitted to a local hospital. Zhou appeared to be in a hotel room as he recorded the Instagram video.

“It definitely brings people to edge, and I’m really, really upset for him,” Chen said. “He definitely deserves to be here. He worked so incredibly hard.

“We’ve been through so much together as competitors since we were very young, so to see that happen right before the short program is so tough.”

Athletes cannot leave isolation until they have two negative tests 24 hours apart.

“I have taken all the precautions I can,” Zhou said in the video. “I’ve isolated myself so much that the loneliness I felt in the last month or two has been crushing at times. The enormity of the situation – just the pain of it all is pretty insane.”

What does THAT Short Program mean to Nathan Chen?

His reaction says it all. #WinterOlympics pic.twitter.com/WWopO7p9Nx

— NBC Sports (@NBCSports) February 8, 2022