Fresca

It's not just you. The organizational culture and power structures behind-the-scenes that enabled the judging fixing during the 2002 Salt Lake Games are still there. ISU may have changed the scoring system but they way the judges (and therefore whoever is behind the judges) use the scoring system to get the outcomes they want hasn't changed. You only need to take a look at the lack of changes in ISU leadership or structure. Ottavio Cinquanta was President from 1994-2016. Nobody from the top lost their job despite the scandal and change comes from the top. If you saw a scandal like that happen at any other company, the Board would demand an immediate resignation from the CEO. However, there isn't that accountability present in the ISU. The rot is still there. "He is an athlete who always does his very best, pushing himself to the limit with no room to spare, to the point of being cruel to himself." Great comment by Chen Lu on Yuzu and very true I've found, as a fan, if you choose to follow Yuzu, you have to make peace with this. At least this is how I've survived the last few years with his injuries. This is how a kid who knows no English and has never lived outside Sendai chooses to move to Canada. Why at the ripe old skating age of 25 with 2 OGM, he still challenges the 4A. His willingness to take risks is a big part of his climb to GOAT though there's a side of recklessness that comes when you have b@lls that size. I hate to admit it, but if he were saner, he would have r****** in 2018 like any other skater. "I think what Hanyu lacks is (romantic) love." Really, Coach Tsuzuki? Please tell us more!! So cute and random for his former coach when he was a smol boy to make that comment! More than any interest in Yuzu's love life as that's his business, I'm curious why Coach Tsuzuki brought that up in the interview and what the context for that comment was. Does it have anything to do with skating?? Or maybe he wants to pass on some life wisdom to his former student?? EDIT: @Henni147 My condolences to you and your family as well.

This is why social media engagement is so important. This is how FS fans can take action to not let biased media/organizations like NBC and ISU with their own agenda write the narrative. The Olympics Channel may not care whether the comments and engagement they get are positive or negative but newcomers and casual viewers do. If they found that article via twitter which is how a lot of people get their news nowadays, the top comments are all saying the awards and article are rubbish. Complete with receipts. I take heart when I see fans on social media posting and commenting and liking the right posts to correct such trashy articles. I am a lurker on twitter. I don't post but I do take the time to like well-written articles and to like posts roasting unsavory articles and tweets. Trying to do my bit so more truth comes to light. Don't let them write the narrative. One more point, but the ISU is as dumb as a dodo to do Yuzu dirty like this. In today's world run by social media, it's possible to bring what was once niche into the mainstream with good social media marketing. Look at kpop, pet celebrities, dance practices, etc, etc. Yuzu is already a great ambassador for FS - phenomenally successful, gifted, classy, well-spoken, intelligent, philanthropic and an all-around lovely guy. He's also built for social media marketing. IMO, he is the most instagrammable, memeable, giffable, twitter/tumbler/YT-friendly star the ISU could possible ask for on a plate. Blessedly photogenic face so he looks good in close-ups (#nofilter). Wears beautiful costumes and tight fitting UA gear that highlights his lines. Unashamedly extra in practice (2s-1lo-4t anyone?). Does everything 120% so even warm up and cool down is beautiful. Has very distinctive habits and an interesting off-ice personality. Has a cuddly mascot. How many times has Yuzu gone randomly viral on twitter or weibo without even owning any social media account? If the ISU had a smarter and better social media manager, maybe they would treat Yuzu like the treasure he is instead of the fossil they want him to be. Edit: BTW, thanks again to the mods for arranging the Yuzu Skating Party! Had such a great time and it felt good to do my part to boycott that sham of an awards show!

I saw that tumblr post and I laughed. They have no idea what's coming. Yuzu was probably at home watching Nathan's WC FS, raging at his ankle injury and chomping at the bit to get back on the ice to practice. Boy has "Don't touch my world record" syndrome. If his Olympic gold whetted his competitive fires, Nathan's WC win probably started them back up again. Thank you Nathan for waking a sleeping dragon I need to find that interview where Yuzu said "it's no fun winning over weak opponents". I can see him already salivating about landing the 4A in competition and grabbing his title back in Saitama. He prioritised his Olympic title defense over his World title defense but as Yulia Lipnitskaya said, Yuzu doesn't like giving things away easily.

Wow...on Art Basel's twitter feed and hanging in Gladstone NYC. That's a big deal. Art Basel is extremely prestigious and runs the world's top annual art fairs in Basel, Miami and HK. They attract the wealthiest, most influential art collectors and curators. Galleries therefore make it a point to save their best works for Art Basel and Gladstone Gallery is a power player in the contemporary art market. I wonder if that means "Yuzuru" might be making an appearance at Art Basel later this year... More than her work depicting Yuzu (not some of her best in my opinion but I don't think you can make an honest judgement of art until you see it in person), I'm much more interested in why she chose him as a subject instead of the hundreds of other famous celebrities or atheletes she could have chosen. She says here that the kind of people that attract her attention as subjects are "artists and musicians—people who touch me, people who help me feel my feelings, that describe my feelings in a way" and she says across her body of work that "all of the paintings are about individuals—very extreme individuals with a vision for making something." I hope there's eventually an interview or article where she explains more about why she was inspired by Yuzu and what her paintings of him are trying to convey.

Yes, it does! I try to give it as much love as possible like here! It's so misunderstood!!! @WinForPooh in the video I link to above in this post, I think you can see the choreography at the end even better. What could have been indeed...

I'm sure I've seen her work before in a museum collection or in an exhibition. Maybe at the Royal Academy? Her name is so familiar. If you look at her other works and their subject matter, it's not surprising that she was inspired by Yuzu. More specifically, by Yuzu at practice in his UA gear rather than in costume at competition. It's based on the below image from here. I don't think she quite got the shape of his face (too heart shaped with a long, pointy chin) or his hair (too wavy) but she got his lips, nose and eyes.

Yes it's unfair to compare Yuzu in 2014 to Nathan in 2018. Yuzu chose to chase Patrick by chasing Patrick's skating skills and upping his PCS. He chose to work on where he was weak and Patrick was stronger to challenge Patrick at what he did best rather than focusing on jumps where he had the competitive advantage. That takes guts and a lot of ambition. Nathan went the completely opposite direction. He chose to focus more on his tech where he was strong already rather than chasing after Yuzu's greatest strength- his completeness. On RnJ 2, to compare it to Nathan empty quad-filled 2018 FS does it a disservice. I hope Yulena ends up doing her analysis of RnJ 2 because like you said, it is so underappreciated. As in dance, when watching an FS program, I try not only to evaluate the total package but also to separate the choreography (the "intention" of the program if you will) from the execution of it. While RnJ 1 was Romeo the fighter, RnJ 2 was Romeo the lover. RnJ1 had a wildness and aggression that showed Romeo as the brash youth struggling against his circumstances - him against the world fighting for doomed love. In contrast, the RnJ 2 choreography was softer, sweeter, more elegant. DW borrowed heavily from the grand sweeping gestures of mime in ballet love stories in order to establish Yuzu as the romantic hero first portraying the lightness of being in love and towards the end, realizing the pain it can also bring. DW put together a program with complex footwork, balletic gestures, flowing circular movement, a variety of interesting positions that made use of Yuzu's extension, use of levels for drama, and the necessary FS elements and was able to combine them in such a way that was musical and told the story. It's just too bad Yuzu didn't have the stamina to perform it well and had a costume I hated for this program. If you watch Yuzu's RnJ2 practices where he is wearing UA and he doesn't get tired because he skips parts, you can see how beautiful the choreography is. To give you a specific example, look how DW contrasts the euphoria vs the pain of love by using 2 sections with similar musical phrasing (3:10-3:21 and 4:10-4:21) and a very distinct movement where he bends forward with both arms outstretched buried in a circular choreographic sequence where one is the "light" version (3:17) and one is the "heavy" version (4:20).

Yuzu adds many elements into his programs that are high risk that don't get rewarded appropriately by the judges like his difficult entrances into and out of jumps (spread eagle sandwich anyone?) and packing transitions throughout (who else does Ina Bauer into a triple lutz at the end of an LP?). He doesn't need this additional difficulty to get the GOEs but he does them anyway. Why? Because he believes in complete programs, he has the balls to challenge himself to skate such programs and IMO because if he didn't add this difficulty, he'd get bored of his programs right away practicing them day in and day out. As Max Ambesi says, Yuzu's ideal of skating is folly. With his mindset, even if quad-quad combos don't make sense from a risk/reward perspective, he's the type who'd do them anyway if he thought they would elevate his skating and he wanted to challenge himself to do them.

If Yuzu does tango, I would love for it to be to this music - Tanguera from Luis Bravo's Forever Tango. It's different from the warhorses. It starts very rhythmic and fun like a sleek spy movie a la Thomas Crowne Affair and then transitions into a classic tango that manages to stay interesting because of the melodic/tempo variations. Here is my favorite Argentinian Tango couple dancing to it. If you want to see more of their insane footwork in better lighting and can stand to hear La Cumparsita one more time, here they are again.

Line in dance refers not only to the silhouette or outline that the body creates (lines of the body) but also to the way the silhouette or outline of the body consumes the space around it (lines of movement). It is both the shape created by an extended limb and the way the limb consumes space as it extends outward. This is an excellent post with dance gifs that explains what line means in dance. It should be noted that "good line" can mean different things in different forms of dance when referring to the lines of the body in space and this depends on the aesthetics of each dance form. In ballet, the legs must be turned out, the back straight, the arms and fingers extended as in port de bras, the head, neck and shoulders placed according to epaulement (example). Contemporary or modern dance allows the body to extend whichever and whatever way it can to create any shape it wants. Turnout is not required and the torso is not a frame but a tool for expression and can be stretched, twisted or curved (example; another example). In ballroom, line refers to the shape the couple creates together, not only to the individuals, so it includes the frame and the position of their bodies and limbs relative to one another (example). However, I've found that no matter the form of dance, "good line" when referring to the lines of movement means consuming as much space as you can. It means movement starts from the center and then continues all the way outward to each of the extremities - from the neck to the top of the head, from the arms to the tips of the fingers, from the legs to the feet to the toes. So when people say Yuzu has beautiful lines, it is not only because he has good extension in his head, torso and limbs but also because he finishes his movements from the top of his head to the tips of his fingers.

Yuzu does his 1/2 loop very prettily. He transitions in and out of it smoothly and has good body position throughout in his torso and arms as well as his legs. When he does it, it looks like a small barrel jump in jazz so his 1/2 loop combos look like a series of dance jumps across the ice. He can if he stays healthy and if the +5/-5 GOE scoring changes work as they should to reward quality, then I think he can win again in Beijing with just his 4S, 4T and 3A for a couple of reasons. 1) Yuzu's jumps are not being rewarded enough with the current +3/-3 GOE scoring range because of the quality of his jumps, his transitions in and out and his ability to execute jumps so they are part of the program/choreography. And yet, even if his 4S, 4T, 3A are not being rewarded enough with +3/-3 GOE scoring, nobody has managed to score higher than his SP or FS at NHK 2015 or GPF 2015 despite having more quads with more BV. With +5/-5 GOE scoring, the GOE gap between all the elements in his programs (not just the jumps; point 2 below expands on this) vs others should increase. 2) The philosophy of TCC has always been that good jumps start with good skating skills. They work on skating skills to be able to perform jumps better (edges, speed, landings, etc) and more efficiently. Because of this, Yuzu's 4S, 4T and 3A are in Plushenko's words "easy-peasy for him". He does them so efficiently that he can do them with high quality at 70% of the effort it takes others. It takes less energy for him to do the jumps which leaves more energy for him to perform the other elements in the program with high quality (spins, transition, step sequences, etc). The efficiency also lessens the probability of injury for him significantly. His good technique and good alignment in jumping minimizes the impact of the quads on his body and his efficiency means he can train these jumps without getting too tired which also minimizes injury. Training while tired/sick/fatigued is when injuries usually happen as your body is not capable of executing the jumps properly. If he continues working on 4S, 4T, and 3A with the TCC coaches, he could probably get them even more efficient which means he can work on more difficult transitions and combos with those 3 jumps to keep him entertained (4-4, 4-1-4, 3A-4??? ) 3) Artistry develops with age. If he decides to continue to Beijing, with his mastery of 4S, 4T, and 3A, he can use them to build even more artistically complex programs. The more life experiences you have and the more you understand yourself, then the more characters you can play, the more pieces of you music you can connect to, and the more you are able to express difficult human themes or emotions because you have lived them in some way. Yuzu has already lived a lot of life. He has lived even more these last few months with his injury, winning the Olympics and now focusing on rehabilitation. I'm excited to see what new dimensions of himself he will bring to his skating next season and beyond.

Responding to a few posts a long way back...

Google image search "Yuzuru Hanyu suit". You will see that every suit he has ever worn (ANA, JSF, galas, commercials, etc) has been too big for him. There is only 1 suit I know of that ever fit him (from a Xylitol White commercial) and I was so happy when I found it, I made a post on this forum. You can see it below. His next best fitting suit is probably the Team Japan one from Pyeongchang with the cropped sleeves because the rest of the jacket and his trousers looked like they fit decently. That tells you something about the other suits he has...

He said he was more satisfied with his Olympics FS than anything else he has ever done, any other competition he has ever skated in, any world record he has made (NHK 2015 and GPF 2015 where he skated badly injured too or his perfect Worlds 2017 FS). That's a powerful statement. I distinctly remember he said that he couldn't have landed those 2 jumps he stepped out on, that that was the absolute limits of his ankle at the time- hence why he has no regrets. I agree and disagree...I don't think he's explicitly pursuing becoming the GOAT but should he fulfill his skating ideals and goals, he will become the undeniable GOAT. I can't think of an example where someone who became the GOAT did so with the goal of becoming the GOAT. It just happens. When an individual has the talent, drive, commitment and competitiveness to challenge what people believe is possible in a sport, then it happens. Michael Jordan didn't think about his stats or his legacy. He wanted to win. As many games as possible, as many titles as possible and in doing so, he challenged the possibilities of how to get a basketball into a hoop. In a league dominated by big men, he changed the status quo, the belief that only centers could dominate scoring in basketball. Kohei Uchimura did it with his goal of robotic perfection. Perform any routine on any apparatus perfectly, so perfect that even in slow motion, every toe is pointed properly and every position held perfectly. Yuzuru will do it by wanting to push the boundaries of what is technically possible in figure skating and in doing so push what is artistically possible with his philosophy that technique is for the sake of art.

What I read from this chart: the only thing as beautiful to the judges as Yuzu's 3A is Patrick's step sequence I wonder how many of Yuzu's GOE 3 step sequences were downgraded from level 4 to 3? Etude deserves a repeat. I love that program and he'd do it so much better now with 50% of the energy it took before. But I'm shallow...I want most of all to see his pretty fingers with the dramatic arm movements. His fingers became so much prettier since DW. Yuzu has the slim build of Fred Astaire too! They'd know how to cut his coat for his body type! Doesn't he have quite a few celebrity fans as well? Or it could be a rich little old Japanese lady who collects all things Yuzu