Rivals Nathan Chen and Yuzuru Hanyu will meet again in the men’s short program.

This is the moment that Nathan Chen has been waiting for.

At the 2018 Pyeongchang Games, he was the gold medal favorite on the cusp of becoming the next great American Olympian. But after a disastrous short program, he fell to 17th in the standings, with barely any hope of winning a medal. In a comeback that stunned everyone except him, Chen rebounded for the free skate to perform a knockout program, landing a monstrous six quadruple jumps when he had planned five.

“I knew at that point that I had literally nothing to lose, so I decided just to try it,” he said afterward.

Now, Chen, 22, is back and set to skate in the men’s short program on Tuesday. The event takes on new urgency for the Americans after his teammate Vincent Zhou, 21, withdrew from the men’s singles competition on Monday, a day after testing positive for the coronavirus.

For Chen, it will be an exercise in redemption.

He is partly there, after a nearly flawless short program in the team event last week. But there is a hitch: His Olympic rival, Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan, is back, too.

Chen is a three-time world champion who has lost only once in three and a half years. Hanyu is a two-time defending Olympic champion who has been working on a quadruple axel, the hardest of the quad jumps and one that has yet to be successfully landed in competition.

If Hanyu wins, it will be the first time a man has won three consecutive gold medals in the men’s single skating event in nearly 100 years. If Chen wins, he would do what he was expected to four years ago.

The short program on Tuesday will provide a hint to the outcome. On Thursday, after the men’s free skate, we will know the result for sure.