micaelis

World Championships for 2024 are done and Ilia Malinin has taken gold. When is the last time a skater in his 2nd season skating senior level has taken gold in the Grand Prix Final and in the World Championships? I think it should be evident now that Ilia Malinin is the real thing, a figure skating in the making. I'm anxious to watch the dynamics of his rise to fame and the means by which he has achieved it thus far. Don't get me wrong. He is not a threat to Yuzuru Hanyu. Yuzu is that GOAT and Ilia will have to do a lot over these next few years to overshadow him but that is not the issue for me. For me the issue is how a skater very different from Yuzu forms the foundation of being a living legend. Ilia is not yet a living legend but he has put together a record now that makes him a valid candidate for such an exalted position. And Yuzu is the one who started it all for Ilia, who credits Yuzu as being the initial inspiration for his going into figure skating and also the direct inspiration for his seeking and attaining the 4A. In any case I go to bed this night happy with seeing Ilia Malinin as the newly-crowned World Champion. I miss having Yuzu in competition so I've been looking around for a current contender. Ilia is the one I chose partly because he's American and partly because he has a presence which none since Yuzu has had as far as I'm concerned. So I sign off this night with the exclamation - HE DID IT!!!!

On one YouTube video I saw evidence of significant damage near the epicenter although it was spotty. Sendai is quite distant since it is on the east coast and the quake was on the west coast. I feel for the citizenry of Japan since New Years Day is the biggest holiday of the year, lasting for three days. To use an American expression, 'this really sucks'. For Yuzu personally, since he has become the poster boy for earthquakes in Japan, he's probably already preparing himself for some involvement. I would not be surprised if he is flown to the area to give support to those suffering. It would be pure Yuzu if it happens. I think he suffers with the victims every time Japan has an earthquake, and this is the biggest since 3/11. My prayers go for all those suffering for the quake and also for Yuzu who probably revisits his experiences of 3/11 every time there is a quake like this. His ability to empathize is one of the major reasons I so admire him.

A frozen lake under moonlight. Could there ever be a more perfect setting for "Notte stellata"?

I've been meaning to point this out for some time. Could one of the reasons Yuzu is so popular, in additiona to his mastery of skating and his ready empathy with others, be that the shape and quality of his face matches the vast majority of manga and anime heroes. That the gracefully pointed chin, the shape of his face like an upside-down triangle, the lack of beard shadow, all these contribute to an image that, when connected to the actual figure doing those marvelously graceful and powerful things on a pair of narrow blades moving across the icy surface. It makes the notion of Yuzu as some kind of heavenly being, more than a living legend, but rather a living myth. It wouldn't take much to depict Yuzu in comics or on screen as a superhero. In the eyes of many fanyus he already is. But the fact that Yuzu exudes this aura of godlike grace and majesty makes him an idol to his fans and so frustrates the anti-Yuzu cult. Try as they might they can't tear him down, and the reason is simple. Yuzu is the real thing.

An insight into Yuzu has just come to me, probably facilitated by the title of his latest show - Re-Pray - which I think really puts much of Yuzu's mystique in perspective. You see, when he's out on the ice he isn't skating. He's praying. I think it comes from the Zen element so prominent in Japanese society. But I have noticed also when comparing the Yuzu ten years ago at Sochi to the Yuzu we see today, that Yuzu's physical beauty has actually improved with age. In Sochi he was still physically and mentally a teenager. Today the gangly teenager is history and we have a face and manner that might best be characterized as 'serene'. There is a calmness and reflectiveness in the Yuzu of today that I think is probably a product of his last seasons competing where it seemed that the skating authorities were stacking the deck (they were) and he developed a stoic attitude that allowed his to soldier on and which ultimately brought about his decision to leave competitive skating and pursue the vision of skating that had been with him all along but which now allowed him to see that he didn't need to be competing to progress in his skating. The various productions we've seen in the months since that 'retirement' (it wasn't a retirement but a clarification of what he had to do to accomplish in his pursuit of perfect expressiveness) has shown him at the peak of his powers. We see, for instance, that while it still remains a goal to achieve a 4A, with Ilia's doing it, it no longer is a priority. What is a priority is his quest to make skating a pursuit of beauty rather than simply techinical achievement. Yuzu's entered a world of skating where the pursuit of points is pointless.

OK, here it is. I wanted to wait until Skate America was over before posting again about the new and (very much) improved Ilia Malinin. He's worked closely with Shae-Lyn and the results are plain to see. He took the Autumn Classic by 44 points, and took Skate America by 30 points, collecting a SP score over 100, a free skate program over 200 and total score over 300. But those numbers really don't tell the whole story. The program qualities do the job. His short program is impressive but his free skate is so densely packed with detail you might think yourself watching Yuzu turned blond. There's hardly a second when Ilia is not involved with doing something. And he packed four quads into the mix, but what really strikes me is watching the details in the non-jumping part. There's such a wealth to see and some of it is new to the sport. Ilia's evidently looking at gymnasts and divers and seeing what they do and thinking if possible of adapting them to action on the ice. Such is, for instance, his raspberry twist (I erroneously called it a twizzle in an earlier post). I was wondering where the 'raspberry' came from and evidently 'malinin' means 'raspberry' in Russian, a single-rotation jump done where the body is horizontal. There are other quasi-jumps and such done during the choreographic sequence and along the way even when not doing one of the elements called for by the rules. All of this prompted the commentator to say Ilia was from another planet (where have we heard that before but in connection with Yuzu) and also 'a superstar in the making'. Which brings me to my main point and that is to distinguish between a superstar and a legend. Yuzu became a superstar in the 2013-2014 season, taking gold at the GPF, Olympics and Worlds. He was the dominant skater then and basically ruled the roost in the years following to the year of his retirement. Even despite the fact that Nathan was the one taking the gold during those last years of Yuzu's competitive career, Yuzu was still the reference point. It was Yuzu, not Nathan, who could fill all the seats in an arena and the ice show promoters knew it and acted accordingly. Yuzu after retirement brought in Yuzu the professional and it can be said that the year following his retirement saw a massive statement about what an ice show could be, turning it from an entertainment into an experience. What we've seen with Yuzu as he moved through his competition years was Yuzu building the foundations of Yuzu the legend, a legend which consisted of awesome skates, awesome audience response (those Poohvalanches or Poohbursts) which brought a new dimension to the notion of audience involvement in figure skating competitions. And then there was Yuzu off the ice, Yuzu in Toronto basically living at TCC or at home. No night life for him. He was too involved with critiquing his skating and getting through his classes at Waseda University, where he ultimately earned a degree in cognitive science. And back home in Japan, when he was there, we also saw him in all his efforts toward reconstruction after the earthquake, an event in which he had very personal and life-altering memories. All of this made Yuzu in Japan a living icon, one of the most popular and respected individuals in that nation. But there is also Yuzu's international fan-following, a phenomenon which those on this forum know well since they are a major part of it. When we look at all of this we can easily see that Yuzu has already become a living legend. And he will remain so. Others may come along who also become legendary, but once a legend, always a legend. What is a legend? A legend is a person who is a cultural or historical reference point. And that is exactly what Yuzu is. A reference point and as a skater the Greatest of All Time. Now we get to Ilia. Ilia, to begin with, is young, very young although he entered senior level competing at a later age than Yuzu did. Ilia's first season was that saw him medal at every event taking gold in all except the GPF and Worlds (bronzes there). I don't know skating history in any great detail but is there any other skater in their rooky year at senior level who medaled in everything. If there is please point him out. Then there is the quad-axel, the Holy Grail of jumps. Yuzu did all he could to make it happen and failed making the podium in Beijing in pursuit of it. In Ilia's initial competition in the 22/23 season did it and proceeded to do it several times more to prove it wasn't a fluke. On the strength of his full palette of jumps he coasted through the season but he had a lot of criticism about the quality of his skating. His PC scores were lamentable. In more than one interview he readily admitted so but indicated he would be putting major effort towards correcting that situation. In his first competition of this season he showed he was quite serious about that and his PC scores, while not of Yuzu level were nevertheless quite respectable. He took the competition by better than 40 points. Then down in Texas this weekend at Skate America, competition he won last year (the youngest ever) he showed that the Canadian experience was not an outlier. His margin in Texas was more than 30 points. As a skater he's the genuine article. I would think it very likely Ilia will be the poster-child of this Olympic cycle. He IS a superstar in the making but what really makes a superstar goes far beyond the mastery of one's sport. It needs charisma, something which Yuzu has in abundance and which Ilia also does. It's different from Yuzu. Ilia's not Japanese. He's an American teenager whose great passion when not on the ice is skateboarding. That is somebody people can readily identify with. Also Ilia doesn't have an earthquake in his biography. That gave Yuzu a major motive when pursuing his skating career. He was proving to himself and to others that there is life after the quake. Ilia's charisma is there, though, the sign being that there were a number of plush animals raining on the ice after Ilia's free skate performance. Nothing on the scale of the avalanches of Poohs after Yuzu skated. But it's early going. The thing is that Ilia is quite good looking and that makes it easier to becoming a superstar. But what really tells the tale is the smile on Ilia's face after a successful performance. His smile is absolutely radiant, one of the best I've ever seen. Interviews are another matter. Ilia is not made for interviews. He will come out with some pious platitudes but it is evident he doesn't have the depth of vision Yuzu has (again, no earthquake). Yuzu has stared death in the face and has had to deal with the reality of thousands of deaths where he could have been one of them. Eastern Virginia (Ilia's home turf) is not noted for earthquakes but if, for instance, an F5 tornado had torn through his home town and killed dozens and his home was spared while people just two blocks away had theirs blown apart and possibly their lives also, we might be seeing some sensitivity in Ilia's awareness. In summary on Ilia, I think, unless a major meltdown occurs, that we are entering the Age of Malinin. That's a superstar designation. Being a legend involves much more than success in one's sport, though. One has to be an admirable human being at the same time. The jury's out on Ilia right now. Except for that one faux statement a while back we've got no reason to view Ilia negatively. But a lack of negatives do not make a legend. It is impossible to view Yuzu negatively (unless you're one of those who are determined to see him thus), but Yuzu's pluses are almost too numerous to list, though they boil down to his innate friendliness and courtesy (remember the Japanese can give the world lessons on courtesy), his willingness to help others and his intense interest in the phenomenon of figure skating. Yuzu, it must be said, is a man on a mission, a mission to somehow reform figure skating and make it as pure and honest as possible. He left figure skating in order to continue that campaign. But he's dealing from a position of strength. He is, after all, a living legend. Only time will tell whether Ilia ever reaches those exalted heights.

Just a short note regarding Ilia's horizontal jumping. He calls it a raspberry twizzle. He does it again in the Japan Open from last weekend. It's still not fully developed but he's made it a bit cleaner. The thing is he's going into territory not seen before in figure skating by making at least elementary jumps horizontally part of his technical vocabulary. This bares watching.

A postscript to my earlier post about Ilia and Autumn Classic. I overlooked this in earlier viewings of his free program but finally it registered and in order to make certain I was not hallucinating I ran this particular element several times using YouTube's .25 speed. Yes, my eyes had not deceived me. There it was, not very elegant and so probably early in development, but here he was in a jump doing a single rotation. What's so great about a single rotation? Not much if you are talking about skating jumps as they are usually done. But here it was, a single rotation, made extraordinary because in this jump Ilia's body was HORIZONTAL. Has any other skater done the same thing? I highly doubt it, but Ilya doing it makes sense to me because there have been moves he's made, not just in jumping, which have a certain 'gymnastics' aura to them. This is what makes me view Ilia's future development as something very much to be watched. The kid is very much able to think outside the box and one wonders what wonders he might produce in coming years.

Well, the new season has started and Autumn Classic International is now history. In the men's division one Ilia Malinin is the clear winner, taking the gold by 44 points. How did this happen. He didn't even have his trademark 4A in his performance. What he did have was a lightyear's improvement in his PC scores. Seeing him now he's hardly the same skater we were seeing last year. He said he was going to work on his skating skills and performance components and he kept his word. He's not in the Yuzuru Hanyu class (nobody is and it is likely nobody ever will be), but what he is marketing this season is a skater who now has a completeness almost totally lacking last season. There is ruin for improvement, of course, but right now looking at who will take the GPF and World's this year, I would now say that Ilia Malinin is the one to beat, not Shomo Uno. If Ilia continues through the season as he has begun he might very well end the season with gold from everything. It's been a long time since we've seen that. If you doubt me, go to YouTube and look up the videos from Autumn Classic. You'll see what I mean. It doesn't seem to be the same skater we saw last season. I'll give five stars to Ilia for keeping the promise he more or less made last season in saying he was going to work on his skating skills and his program components. The 44 point margin he had in taking gold at this year's Autumn Classic indicated he's kept his promise. Another thing, I think Ilia has the makings of the men's next superstar because in addition to his talent he also has really marvelous charisma. It's not Yuzuru Hanyu charisma. It's totally different. Ilia's an American teenager. He radiates that quality. His personality is boisterous, brash at at times, and sometimes arrogant, but he does have personality. Right now there are no other male skaters who have a similar wealth of personality. I think this Olympic quadrennial might well turn out to be the Ilia Malinin show. He has the skills and magnetism to make it so.

I just watched that interview of Max where he calls Gift the greatest event in figure-skating history. It was during that discussion that there came to me a thought as to why Gift, as well as all the other shows he's done - Continues with Wings, Prologue, and Notte Stellata - his real achievement has been in redefining what an ice show should be. Right now the prevailing definition is that an ice show should entertain, either as a collection of skaters mostly doing their gala programs or an ice show that is organized as a story-telling spectacle - Disney on Ice, for instance. What Yuzu has done is recast the ice show as a work of art in its entirety. Yuzu intend his shows not be works of entertainment but rather works of enlightenment. In so doing the skating must also aim for that, must aim to express the ideas that make the show a work of art. In so doing that skating must harness the athletic elements to serve the aesthetic demands of the show. In so doing the skater must avoid engaging in moves that are simply athletic stunts. In competition we would see this in skaters who skated only to seek across the board 10s in the program component score and where the technical element is subjected to gaining those 10s. In an ice show that would be the overwhelming mandate. As far as as jumping and such goes, that old Bauhaus motto - Less is more - would be the operating standard. Part of all the problems we are seeing now is that figure skating is a relatively new activity. It does not have the several centuries of development we see in ballet or that we see in opera. It's history is comparatively brief. It's still trying to find a way to bring about a successful merging of the athletic and the aesthetic such as in competitions, for instance, there would be no technical score but the entire judging would be on the program components. In essence it would be going back to the old 1-6 judging system but one with a greater sophistication, one which would retain the elements that are now the program components but would weight them so that some of those elements would have greater weight, perhaps by making what is now the technical element one of those elements, an important element but not one which completely overshadows the others. I'm not quite sure of exactly how those program elements might be ranked but I think you should be able to see that the effect would be that the skaters would be skating a program and not a succession of technical elements. I think that it would be that competition programs would be essentially what exhibition programs are now. That would be an ideal world.

The first of this month was the centennial of the 1923 Tokyo earthquake and I'm wondering if Yuzu took part in any commemorations of the event, due to his actions dealing with the 2011 earthquake in northern Honshu. Much of Tokyo was leveled by the quake and there were over a hundred thousand dead. It prompted the rebuilding of almost all of the city. A quarter century later Tokyo would have to rebuild again, this time the city leveled by the thousands of bombs rained down on it. I've seen pictures of Tokyo in the 1930s and I've taken innumerable walking tours on YouTube of present day Tokyo. I think they did a better job this time around.

In Shakespeare's time they were performed by adolescent boys.

In following all the angst and extasy over Yuzu's marriage I think one thing should not be forgotten when speculating how this might affect his skating. that being that while figure-skating is for some skaters a sport (primarily the jumpers like Nathan and Ilia) for others it is an art (Jason the prime example here), figure-skating for Yuzu is a religion, an absolute that requires a total commitment. As such I see Yuzu's marriage as something he needs to fulfill his mission. Coming from a close-knit family and aware of how the shared love of his sister and parents is a reality that illuminates his skating he sees now with his parents getting older (they're hardly ancient right now but those times are coming) Yuzu has decided he needs to create his own family to replace what inevitably will occur particularly if his sister should marry and his parents retire and look forward to their final years. Indeed, they will still be a vital part of his life but Yuzu is looking down the years when the situation will be different. He needs to create his own family in order to continue his skating mission. It's the insights he's gained over the years from his experiences with his family that have so enriched Yuzu's humanity during these many years of his being married to the ice. That marriage can only be continued by having a family of his own making to replace that which while viable now will become dated as his parents age and his sister makes her own independent life. I think nothing will strengthen Yuzu more than his becoming a father. Being a father as well a husband will enrich his skating even more because he will now have a living and loving investment in the future by creating a new generation of Hanyus

Thank you for the correction. I was only going by what I was able to find on the net. I do stand by my opinion that Yuzu should not marry another skater. One skater in the family is enough, particularly when that particular skater is a living legend.

I don't know how accurate this is but I just learned from a video on YouTube that the mysterious other in the Hanyu marriage is Mayu Watanabe, a former actress and singer who retired in early 2020. From what I learned by doing further online research she is heavily into otaku culture, so she would be right at home in Akihabara in Tokyo. I've had a feeling for some time that otaku culture is no strange land for Yuzuru Hanyu. His headphone fascination and video gaming are straight out of the otaku playbook. I think if Mayu is the lucky lady it's significant that she retired from the entertainment business in early 2020, so she's not giving up a career to be Yuzu's wife, although the suspicion haunts me that that might have been because she finalized her engagement with Yuzu at that time. I don't know. I do know, however, that the little background on her I've so far unearthed would make her an ideal mate for Yuzu. They inhabit much the same world. In any case I'm glad he did not marry someone else in skating. I don't think any other skater would have made a good wife for Yuzu. He needs someone who is not a skater to allow him to focus entirely on HIS skating. I don't know whether this young lady is the mysterious other but if she is I think Yuzu has probably made a good choice. That's all for now.