WinForPooh

... Wow that's a lot of work, and very interesting! Did you by any chance work with the possibility of Yuzu doing a 4S-3T in either his SP or his free skate? If he doesn't bring the 4T-3A sequence back, he might go back to his LGC/H&L layout, the latter adapted to seven jumping passes, of course. 4Lo 4S 4T 4S-3T 3A-eu-3S 3A-2T 3F (not in that order) isn't out of the question for him. Maybe not for the SP because Otonal is really approaching perfection but he did sacrifice a little of his vision to move the combo to bonus so it's not impossible. If 4Lo is back and behaving well enough to make it worth it, of course. I lean towards Otonal staying as it is because his GOEs and PCS on it are excellent and it's more reliable, but he's been chopping and changing Origin all season.

So both Vincent and his coach have just straight up called them 'bad calls', huh? Well that's nice, good to see they're getting the right takeaways from all this. ETA: Also an excellent example of how a lot of US media just basically does PR. If the headline is an indication of what the report is supposed to be about, talking to a skater and his coaches shouldn't be the primary part. It should have comments from multiple judges, tech panel, and at least a record of attempting to get a comment from an ISU representative. Even if they won't comment, putting it out there repeatedly that ISU did not respond despite requests for comment is part of how you put pressure on them to step up their tech assistance for judges and tech panel. Here, there's a comment from one US judge in the second half of the article and that's it, the primary narrative comes from Vincent and his coach. It's sloppy journalism but then I don't think actually delving into the issue was the intention here anyway. Also, hilarious how it was not a problem at all when their skaters got away with dodgy 3As and 4Los within the 90 degrees were called.

I'm really rooting for Gabby after reading all that. I hope she has skates that make her happy.

I guess there are some things to just be grateful for, even if we cannot understand how.

Happy New Year, everybody! I have so many wishes for everybody that I'm gonna have to make a list of them sometime. But health, wealth and most importantly happiness to all of us. And most of all to Yuzu.

Merry Christmas, satellites! May there be good wishes and actual presents under your trees and at the foot of your beds!

Holy shit Olga Kozhemyakina does not like Mai!

His spins are soooo much better! Wow, I could hardly believe my eyes. I'm so happy, I really really like this kid.

Lots of people were saying that's why he was doing 3Lz in training. Just in case. Though really that was probably an optimistic Plan C because Yuzu popping his quads into triples happens about once in a... yeah.

That he does, I mean, what about the 4CC H&L? He winged the entire second half of his layout, changed it while skating that extremely complex programme! And didn't Zayak! Seriously though who else would even try to land a 1eu-3S from a 1A? Even with two healthy ankles. He could've managed at least 2T there if he'd been able to do even one rt to get it in his head properly. Amazing boy.

During the FS at CoR? I think the 4T-1lo-3S was his new planned combo, he did it during the 6-minute warmup, didn't he? I think he did because I remember realizing in that moment that the sequence was definitely not going to be there. I think his muscle memory kinda confused him a little after that when he popped his 3A into 1A. Right after he landed the popped 1A he tried to do something else that I think was him trying to go for -1lo-3S or whatever he could make of it with the momentum from a single axel but realised what he was doing and stopped. He had a sheepish smile on his face.

Sure, we can agree to disagree. Moving on. Is it confirmed that Yuzu is in Japan? I wonder if he's having all the protein again. It was therapeutic, last time, imagining him power-eating protein with the murder stare on.

True, I mean, even the newspapers and websites that I really like have screwed up here and there, and have to eat some humble pie once in a while. It's kind of inevitable in a big organisation made of many people with editorial decisions made by many different people at very different levels. Like, especially social media fluff clickbait things don't usually go that high up the chain before getting approval. Yuzu is prime clickbait in his sport. Maybe in winter sports in general, outside of ice hockey. Though I don't know enough about popularity of winter sports to say for sure lol I'm going by the Olympic Channel.

Then perhaps you could direct your criticisms of these criticisms to the non-English-speaking fans where such criticisms are made? Unless your criticism of these non-English speakers were directed to those who are here, I fail to see the point of a post directly addressed to the posters here? If it's not meant for us, we don't need to be told to stop doing it, and if it is, then it is patronising. Apologies for implying it's only patronising to Asian non-native speakers of English, it's actually patronising to all non-native speakers of English. Where are the non-English-speaking Hanyu fans who made unfair accusations about CBC as a whole because of this video (in English), by the way? Since you brought that up and gave an impassioned defence of the video and the organisation, perhaps it's only fair to ask you to tell us exactly what comments you did deem unfair to CBC.

I agree with that sentiment completely. Also, we don't need to be grateful to any English media house or broadcasting company for making any media about Yuzu. No matter what the reputation of the organisation is, they choose certain topics based on readers' interest. They make the videos because they think they'll get clicks, and this is especially true of kind of fluff pieces like this. There's plenty of reporting that lots of organisations do that we should be grateful for, but this kind of journalism is as much for their own benefit as anybody else's! Yuzu doesn't need that exposure, we don't need that exposure, we don't need fluff pieces without any news in them, not unless they are well-researched and accurate. Yuzuru Hanyu is not at a point where he has to take what coverage he gets for exposure. His fans are not starved for fluff pieces about him, we have enough fan-made videos for that. And no matter how good an organisation's reputation might be, any video or opinion piece or news piece they publish can and should be held to high standards of accuracy, not just in what they say but also in what they choose to include and omit. (ETA: One video or one bad opinion piece or whatever is not reflective of an entire organisation, and pointing out what's not done fairly in one piece doesn't mean an organisation is being attacked. All media organisations eff up at some point.) And it is quite patronising to imply that criticisms of CBC (or NBC or whatever else) are from Asian non-native speakers of English who just don't understand the nuances. We understand nuances just fine. Disagreeing with us is one thing, saying we say what we say because we don't understand the language is another thing altogether. I also don't actually care whether a news organisation's videos are made maliciously. I care about what they actually say and what impact and effect they have.

Time to channel Yuzu and his absolute refusal to be distracted or give up. You can do it! Fanyus must always strive to be as like their Overlord as possible. Should we boot you off the planet if we see you? So you don't spend time here?

Yeah, the words he says and what those words mean to him and what they mean to most people can be quite different. That's why I've been quite certain all along that he has landed the 4A normally - outside of programme, without transitions, and without harness - before the Olys season.

lol Pity thyself! Yuzu's achievements are for naught. Since alas! He doth not pointeth his toes pointily welle. Seriously, lack of pointy toes is the most concrete Yuzu-related complaint I've heard from them and it feels like they've been going on about it since the beginning of time, so I say it in fake ye olde Englishe now.

Well that would be ideal! But I can also see how athletes have such a limited shelf life, how certain kinds of improvement will take a lot of time and effort during which time their performances will dip and scores will go lower, and federations can be ruthless when you're not winning, and reputation judging is a thing, and... I mean, none of that is ideal and I wish it weren't so, but all of those things put together make me appreciate the skaters who do take that risk to grow a whole lot more. And blame those who don't do it a little bit less. In the long run, I'm glad Yuzu's lip was called often , and his noodliness was called out all over the place. I'm sure he would've worked on all that anyway but this way, his work was rewarded with actual points as he got better. And when he did get the advantage of reputation scoring after his breakthrough in senior, he worked hard to deserve it. There was never a big mismatch between what you saw and what he got, it should be like that for everybody.

Well, I don't connect the GOE with the crossovers, but if you just saw the TR score, you'd expect a lot more. There's a lot about Shoma's skating to enjoy, he is fast and smooth and precise with his blades and his 3A is quite lovely. If the judging could reflect what we see, we would probably end up seeing more, he'd become better, and the whole process of watching figure skating wouldn't be so infuriating. Goes for a lot of people. Even Yuzu's Origin tbh. Knowing from media day footage what a lot of it was supposed to be, I would've given him lower TR for not executing his transitions well enough, too. (ETA: By that I mean I would hold GPF Seimei and Helsinki H&L as the gold standard for 10s in components. Everybody, including Yuzu, should get judged to that standard according to their performance on the day.)

Shoma's edge work is excellent. It's smooth and his knees are soft and you can actually see what he's doing during his stsq. But then... that just annoys me extra because he obviously could do a lot more than crossovers between elements. Of course there's no point doing more and wasting energy because it's not like he'll get anything more for doing more, he's already getting just about everything, so... It makes sense that his team designs his programmes to get the most out of them according to what judges have already shown they will reward. It's still frustrating. Maybe Yuzu just raised the bar too high.

I have a funny toe like that, and my mum has a crooked toe and a crooked finger. After the first couple of days when the swelling starts subsiding and the pain goes down and you get used to it, it's far too easy to just adapt instead of going to the doctor and then waiting for them to send you for an X-ray and then going for an X-ray and then being told not to do all the things that need to be done because apparently even toes and fingers need rest, and... Well I mean Yuzu should definitely have gone to the doctor but I completely understand the temptation to think 'it's a pinky, I mean it's not hanging by a thread or anything, it can't be that broken if it only hurts that much, anyway, it's just a pinky, is it even absolutely necessary.'

Stop attacking me like this!!

Wow, thank you, that's... a LOT of work!

No, I get all of that, logically. I understand the circumstances and reasons why. I'm just still a little bemused that it is a fact. If somebody had told me that after the first GP, Nathan would have attempted fewer quads but had higher TES on GOE, and Yuzu would've won the first GP without falling or popping but being a bit messy, I would've told them that their predictive skills need a lot of work.