micaelis

I have to agree there. The trouble with lists like this is that they are very much apples and oranges type comparisons. The situation here is that there's no real way to factor in the status of an athlete in his/her sport. Yuzu, for all practical purposes, owns figure-skating right now. His stature within the sport is not challenged by any of those in ladies, pairs or dance. I know there are some here who would say I'm exaggerating but really when you compare his stature with any others skating today there's little outside of wins and losses to challenge him. Yuzu owns the men's record book. In terms of the major competitions (Worlds, Olympics, GPF) he is clearly the leader over the last several seasons combined (Medvedeva might rival him here). He has one of the most passionate fanbases of any athlete in any sport. He has a stature within Japan that is on a level that few athletes possess in their sport (the only athletes who might rival Yuzu in terms of prominence within their countries are almost certainly found in soccer/football), particularly in the way that Yuzu has become for many in Japan a symbol for overcoming adversity after the earthquake. In terms of what might be called 'iconicity' Yuzu in Japan rivals the reputations within Canada of Wayne Gretzky and within the US of Michael Jordan. All of these are factors that cannot be incorporated into a survey like ESPN's here. In looking at Yuzu's reputation in Japan the link he has with the earthquake, I am discovering as I explore his past, is quite crucial to understanding his position there. We have to remember that he battled his way to the top in the years immediately after the earthquake but particularly important here is the symbolism of his Sochi gold medal. Within Japan it's safe to assume that virtually everybody knew how he was skating on the ice when the earthquake occurred and how he almost quit skating but was finally able to find a temporary training venue and also was able to find skating time by skating with ice shows. That was a narrative that most Japanese knew. Then comes 2013/2014, his breakout season, when he possesses simultaneously the GPF, Olympic gold medal and World Championship gold, the first man to do that in over a decade. His Olympic gold is most important here, not only because it is a competition that occurs only once in four years but also, for Japan I'm sure this was very important, Yuzu was the only Japanese in Sochi to win a gold medal in any sport. He was Japan's sole gold medal that year. That focused the Japanese on his achievement and I really think, coming after the earthquake, that is what made Yuzu not only a skating hero, but a Japanese hero, a position he continues to occupy. It is Yuzu's connection with the earthquake that makes his particular reputation so unique in Japan and in terms of an athlete's relationship to his home country unique world-wide. Add to that his physical beauty and his engaging personality you find in Yuzu then a Japanese version of the 'boy next door' (an American folk-icon, the boy you'd like your sons to be best-friends with or your daughters to marry). So getting back to ESPN's survey, there is no way that ESPN could have come up with a set of criteria that could have done justice to Yuzu (or actually almost any athlete), since the factors that would be necessary to create a truly meaningful result are too multifarious. In fact it's more than an apples/oranges comparison, it's an entire fruit-basket. Yuzu, however, remains the most delicious and nutritious fruit to be found in that basket.

Two things here - Yuzu is the only Japanese on the list. Yuzu is the only figure skater on the list. Beyond that - No Comment.

The amazing thing about Yuzu is that he can be so many of these in the space of a few minutes.

I'm just sort of wondering - With what we know of Yuzu's musicality and also how he partially choreographs his programs these days, adding to that his ability to get into so many types of music, if Yuzu might put that to use upon retirement and start doing choreography for others. It would give him the opportunity to put his stamp on the sport in the way he's been wanting, that is, to increase the artistic level, particularly to bring into better balance the PCS and TES aspects. He's never mentioned that possibility, as far as I know, but it would certainly be a possibility. That highlights what I think is really mind-boggling when we see how many valid choices Yuzu would have post-retirement - producing ice shows, coaching, commentating (for Japanese media), choreographing, even becoming part of the hierarchy that governs figure-skating. He has the intelligence, the personality, and the talent to be successful in any of those choices.

I hate to put myself forward like this but in answer to the question of knowing somebody who has a particular sensibility I can point to myself. When I first became involved with classical music right when I was entering my teens it did not take long for me to begin perceiving certain patterns in music that led me to identify a piece as being by a particular composer as opposed to another one. But in my case it was not just music, but pretty much across the board where I could recognize art works as being by one painter over another and literary works also. Those abilities were not instantaneous but were what evolved as I became more immersed over the years in the fine arts. My ability to identify the style of painters was inestimable in my A'cing every art history course I took in my undergraduate years. It also helped me in developing my writing style as a result of something I developed on my own, rather than in a class, as on my own I would read closely the works of a particular writer and then endeavor to write in his or her style. The point I want to make here is this - I did not learn this in any class nor did I (except in those writing exercises) even develop it deliberately. It just came to me as I listened to more or looked at more or read more and even now if you asked me to describe why a Beethoven piece sounds like his rather than Schubert's I couldn't put it into words. I just sense the things that make Beethoven sound like Beethoven and not like somebody else. It's an inborn talent and if what I read today about him is accurate, Yuzu appears to have the same talent, a talent which allows him to get into a piece of music much more deeply than most other skaters. I think Shoma has the talent but not in a major way. He seems to be sensitive only to classical music (the same for me but partly that's because I've never gotten into non-classical music). Boyang is showing the same sensitivity although it's still in early days for him. Nathan strikes me as almost tone deaf. I think that as Yuzu seems to be the one now who chooses his music and even edits it for his programs that Yuzu's musicality is probably exponentially greater than most other skaters. In his early years, while I think Nanami was probably the guiding hand as far as his musical choices are concerned, she probably might have sensed that musicality he had and allowed him to have a freer hand in choosing his music, an approach more liberal than most coaches do for skaters early in their careers. That, though, is purely speculative, but Yuzu's early years have a breadth of musical styles that show either he demanded or she allowed or even encouraged Yuzu to explore the various styles of music out there. In any case Yuzu has shown over the years an ability to skate to styles of music that are extremely different from each other, even in the context of a single season. Witness the two very different styles, LGC and HL in 2016-17. The breadth of Yuzu's music sensitivity is one that we all should recognize as we speculate on what music he might pick for the upcoming season. I've stated earlier that I really don't think he's going to recycle an older program. His ice show seems to me to have been his way of ending a chapter in his life as a skater and now he's moving forward. I wouldn't be surprised if during those many weeks when he was forbidden to even set foot on the ice he might already have been searching for new music for his future programs. Yuzu has shown an immense talent over the years to move forward on his own, unprompted by others. I await the coming season with bated breath, knowing only that Yuzu will probably not conform to the common wisdom in his choices. He's anything but common. You have his word on that.

I wonder how often he practices in his full costume. After all, all those rocks weigh something and I can't see how that additional weight would not factor into his performance, particularly the jumps. Perhaps he use a weight belt or something along those lines. Could any of you who know such things illuminate the rest of us or am I making too much over what is essentially a trivial issue?

I wasn't comparing Yuzu to Epke. As you pointed out Epke is mainly flash. My point was that Yuzu doing those three jump combinations was showing how jumping can involve more than just counting how many times you rotate, it can be how many jumps you get into a combination and showing how just like the number of quads in a program you can take things to an extreme. If I were trying to compare Yuzu to a gymnast in terms of quality, as you said a comparison is to be found in Japan itself, Kohei Uchimura. The two of them both share the title of Living Legend.

Seeing him do those triple-jump combinations really shows how much a master of aerial acrobatics he is. Makes me think of Epke Zonderland, the gymnast who took the gold in horizontal bar at the 2012 London Olympics. In the horizontal bar there's a move comparable to a skater's jump, called a release, where the athlete in swinging around the bar releases his hold on it entirely and then grabs it again doing some kind of movement when completely airborne. Epke wowed the judges and the crowd by doing three releases in a row and garnering maximum points in the process. There's a short video of him just fooling around during a training session doing twenty-four of them in a row. It's quite impressive. I wonder how many jumps Yuzu could do in a row. I doubt twenty-four but it could be five or six. Perhaps if they were to give points for each additional jump (not counting loops) in a jumping pass you'd see quadmania eclipsed by a competition for number of jumps in a pass. PS - Is it possible to have an initial jump with the arms above the head rather than crossed over the torso?

Yuzu's in good position as far as his GP assignments go, since he didn't participate in the WC this year and only skated one GP event last season, which, as far as I can tell, means that he can go to any of the GP events since the assignments keep top skaters from the previous season from facing each other. As for Skate America not wanting him to compete because they want to protect Nathan, I doubt that would be their attitude. In fact, they probably would want him there since a Yuzu/Nathan duel would guarantee a sold-out house. The same would go for any other competitions, even China. When thinking of where Yuzu might go we should remember that there is one thing that trumps the instinct by various competitions who might be tempted to keep Yuzu out in order to protect the local stars and that is money. Yuzu's presence in any competition means there won't be an empty seat in the arena for the individual men's event. Don't forget that Yuzu is the biggest box-office draw in figure-skating right now and event organizers love it when they have a sold-out house because that means money, and no matter what the sport, money always has its say.

What about clogged arteries?

I don't think he is that low-functioning outside of skating. After all, he's taking university classes in a very demanding field. He's evidently also involved with video-gaming as a major form of recreation. I have a feeling that he is dividing his activities between rink and home to deliberately keep his life as simple as possible. We have to remember that for Javi the difference between Spain and Canada is primarily the difference between Spanish and English (both of which languages are from the same language family - Indo-European), and differences of climate. Javi didn't have to learn a new alphabet and fundamentally different grammar, and also learn a totally different cuisine (food that uses spoons, knives and forks instead of food that uses chopsticks). If, as Brian has commented, Yuzu is more introverted than Javi, then Yuzu's situation now is quite understandable. I think he has weighed his options and decided that for the purposes of practicality not knowing some of those basic things that normal people know is not that important because, as Yuzu would be the first to humbly acknowledge, Yuzu is not normal people.

I have to agree here but I'll also add something. I think Zhenya chose TCC because its three greatest successes (Yuna, Javi and Yuzu) have all been non-Canadians. That indicates that Brian is obviously doing something right for his athletes no matter where they are from. Questions everyone will be asking about Yuzu and Zhenya, I know, will be legion and I think both of them will be very wary about that relationship. I think we can expect that both will avoid appearing off the ice together, knowing how the rumor mill will explode. Yuzu will have the advantage here, not simply because he's been at the top longer than Zhenya but also because he's had far more exposure to the media than she has had, given the environment in Russia. The Japanese tabloid culture is in the same class as the tabloid culture in North America and Western Europe and Yuzu has become an old hand at dealing with it, aided also by the media experts at TCC. They know how to run a tight ship, as witnessed by the total control of information about Yuzu leading up to PC. I have a feeling that that might also be a reason Zhenya chose TCC. In any case Yuzu finally has a training mate of the same quality as Javi and I think both he and Zhenya will establish the same sort of symbiotic relationship that Yuzu and Javi had, with the one difference being that they will not be competing against each other. I am wondering if Zhenya will be on her own in Toronto or will some family member accompany her here, as seen in Yuzu's mother coming over to Canada with him (I do not mean she will be living alone but will she be boarding with someone or a family member). There is one difference between Zhenya's coming to TCC and Yuzu's though, and that is she is definitely one of the elite in FS already. Yuzu was showing promise as a future member of that club when he came to Toronto but Brian still had a relatively blank slate to work with. That isn't the case with Zhenya and the challenges to Brian will be markedly different than they were with Yuzu. If everything works out well with Zhenya and she does move on to success after success Brian's reputation can only be enhanced since it shows he has the ability to deal with skaters who are already pretty well finished products and is able to move them to a higher level. A final comment - Zhenya's moving to Toronto might be just what is needed to prod Boyang to make the move also if he is unhappy with his current coaching situation as rumor has it. I definitely would like to see such a development come to pass because unlike Shoma or Nathan I think Boyang would really bloom with Brian at the helm. It's been obvious for some time that Boyang is earnestly working on his skating skills and seeking to put his 'jumping-jack' days behind him and also he's shown some stylistic versatility in his programs for both competitions and exhibitions. He would also be a good training competitor for Yuzu as I think Yuzu has seen Boyang as a future number one foe, even more than Shoma or Nathan, precisely because of Boyang's developing versatility. I do not think that Boyang coming to TCC would spread things too thin for Brian and company but it would mean that he'd have to be doing a lot more traveling with so many skaters in his stable. He'll probably be looking for some secret formula to deal with jet lag.

He might not be singing out loud but just mouthing the words. In any case I distinctly saw his mouth moving when there were vocals when he was skating.

Quite possible, since POTO is my favorite of Yuzu's programs and I've watched the 2014 GPF gazillions of times. Thanks for the info.

New programs? I think it might be taken for granted he'll enter this new phase of his competitive biography with new SP and FS. He finished his looking-back at CiONTU. Now he's looking to the future. My guess is that he'll have a pretty jazzy SP, along the lines of PW and LGC. He's been coasting on Chopin for too long, IMO, and he needs a change of pace, even though LGC was the season before last, Chopin had been the two seasons before it and the season after it. For an ex I wonder. He might decide to use an older program for the summer shows and craft a new one for the galas next season. I wonder if he'll use something with a vocal rather than purely instrumental. I don't know if my eyes were playing tricks on me but I thought Yuzu might have been singing along with the vocal as he skated one time, since his mouth was moving. Can't remember exactly which performance. Has anyone else noticed? If the judges needed any proof of how deeply Yuzu gets into the music, that would certainly be conclusive.

I stand corrected. Thank you (this is not meant sarcastically).

This thread is moving forward so fast I've given up trying to keep up with it, since I have other writing chores I'm dealing with. What I've been able to gather right now is that if developments continue the way they seem to be, Brian might find himself with an embarrassment of riches. He already has the arguably greatest skater of all time training under him but has another up-and-coming one and a potential future superstar. That much I'm sure of. But I don't know if the question relating to Boyang's coming to TCC is resolved, and now with Medvedeva maybe coming to Toronto, well, things are beginning to become a bit too much. As to why this is happening, it can all be credited to Yuzu and Javi. The fact that both were training together, and that Brian was able to devote full attention to both together indicates that Brian knows how to train elite talent at the same time, getting the best results from all. Has there ever been a case where the same coach has had two of his skaters on the very same Olympic podium before? That is testimony to the fact that Brian does not play favorites with his athletes and is a clear reason why some other skaters are potentially looking towards TCC as a desirable step. Yuzu and Javi together on the podium tell the world that Brian offers ALL of his athletes the same high level of coaching.

I think that is one (not the main) reason Yuzu's continuing to train in Toronto (the main one is the quality of life and training environment with Brian, Tracy and company). In Toronto he is relatively anonymous, partly because of the size of the city (many times the size of Sendai) which automatically gives anonymity, and the Japanese media aren't there on a 24/7 basis. As far as the question of whether he's lurking on the Planet, I wouldn't be surprised if he is. The way others here have spoken of how the Planet compares in civility and such issues to other forums, I think if Yuzu would lurk anywhere here is exactly where it would be. Another reason, though, I think he would be interested here to strengthen his English, having access to many media resources here which are in English-subtitled Japanese. Since they deal with topics that are familiar to him the English he encounters here has the relevance that formal English courses lack. The question of whether he should come out of hiding or remain as is, I would certainly strongly ask he remain out of sight. If the word got out that he was actively watching this forum the Planet would be inundated with new members, many of which would be the kind of negative elements this forum has managed so far to keep out. I don't think we need those kinds of members and those kinds of problems. A final slightly off-topic for this post - Should Yuzu continue training in Toronto? Well, outside of the continuing work under his coaching team, which argues strongly that if it's not broke (it obviously isn't broke) don't fix it, there is the added element of proximity to other world-class skaters. Javi is gone (more or less) but Cha is there and I think under TCC guidance will be moving up the ranks on the world scene fairly rapidly. He isn't in Javi's class and may never be. On the other hand Stephen Gogolev is there and he looks very likely (barring permanent problems due to expected physical growth) to become part of the performing elite in some future date. In contrast to other junior-level skaters in Canada he is so much the superior that in Canadian-only competitions he is already skating on the senior level, despite the fact he turned just 13 last December. He begins junior level competition this upcoming season. I think because of that Brian will probably now have Stephen training with the big boys. I think Stephen's presence there, along with Cha's, will do much to replace Javi's absence. We have to remember that both Javi and Yuzu have said their mutual presence strengthened both of them over the years. I don't think we should underestimate Stephen Gogolev, despite his lack of the skills that are so much a part of the PCS. Those will come. The thing is that he is very much a part of Brian's program in ways that none of the other mega-talented skaters Brian has now and has had in the past. Stephen's been with Brian since age seven, arriving with his family from Russia at approximately the same time Yuzu did. Basically Stephen has been with Brian since the infancy of his training. He's 100% a Brian Orser product. Yuzu is a brand name for TCC, Inc, as was Javi. They both came from other coaches to TCC. I don't know anything about Javi's previous coaching but I think Nanami was just what Yuzu needed at the time, a talented coach in Japan. She was his coach at the time of the earthquake and would obviously have been on the scene to nurse him through that trauma. I wouldn't be surprised if she saw Yuzu's move to TCC as something he needed to get past the quake's psychological effects on Yuzu, a means of putting distance between him and home, although that wouldn't have been the sole reason. She'd been on the scene when he was almost ready to give up skating, feeling he had to become involved in the reconstruction in a more physical manner. I don't know how instrumental she was in getting him to remain in skating but we do know from several different interviews that Yuzu almost left skating then, partly because of the initial difficulty in finding a training facility, but also wishing to help more substantively in the recovery from the quake and for Sendai much more significantly, the tsunami. I don't know how many of you have visited YouTube and looked at the utter devastation wreaked on the northern Japanese coast, not only the aftermath, but seeing the destruction as it was occurring (the earthquake and tsunami are the most closely visually documented disaster in human history) but you would be appalled at what you are watching. However it came about, Yuzu did move to Toronto and the rest, as they say, is history. As for the initial reason for the post, I will address this to a possibly lurking Yuzu - Please keep hiding. We give you a means of knowing the best of your fans and thus an insight into what is behind the Poohvalanches you witness every time you finish performing at a competition. You are arguably the most fanatically-loved skater in figure-skating history with those fanatics of the better sort here. With you possibly lurking we can continue to give you insight as to what makes us tick and hopefully because of that, because of knowing there are those like us out there we can be part of the incentive for you to continue skating, to letting us see the incredible skater and the incredible human being you are. Don't spoil it for us and don't spoil it for yourself by coming out of the shadows.

Another thought on Yuzu's number 3 ranking - I'm sure the followers of the other skaters are crowing about Yuzu's loss of supremacy but you can be sure none of the skaters themselves are doing so. Yuzu remains the one to beat and they will be preparing with that in mind. For them the Olympics are a stark example of how well Yuzu kept his act together following the injury and the evidence of how rapidly he got himself into competition-ready form once back on the ice. They know they will be facing a Yuzu fully restored come this autumn and no amount of the jeers their fans cast in Yuzu's direction will diminish one whit that unless they are ready to skate against a fully operational Yuzuru Hanyu they are doomed (they probably are in any case).

Thinking about world rankings. I wouldn't worry too much about Yuzu being third. Nobody takes that seriously. They know his loss of first place is simply due to his missing most of the last season. For those above him there's an asterisk by their name, just as there is with Shoma's name as the Japanese champion for the last two seasons and Nathan's as the GPF champion - they're there because Yuzu wasn't there.

I don't think it's casual. It's part of his strategy to discourage his opponents. He might not be exactly duplicating what the other skater is attempting, but this is, I think, a subtle way of saying to the other skater that Yuzu's domination on skating skills is categorical, that at the drop of a hat he can match them, improvising to their own music. He's saying that nobody is going to be able to match him as far as PCS is concerned (now that Patrick is no longer around). By making other skaters nervous about their own command of skating skills he is managing to weaken them there. He's also showing that he knows their programs almost as well as his own. All in all he's saying that his position at the top of men's figure skating is not accidental. He's there because he simply is better than everybody else.

I don't think they toss Pooh's for gala shows. I think there are bins you can deposit your gift into instead. Actually they don't. The Poohs and flowers only get tossed when Yuzu is competing. Galas and ice shows don't have anything tossed on the ice for any skater. The main point I was trying to get across is that Yuzu's stature is such that any producers of ice shows or competitions can be assured of a sold-out house. I don't know if any skater in history has had as potent a following as Yuzu has. I might almost be tempted to call it a 'cult' but since I'm part of it I'll settle for calling it a fandom that is unmatched in skating history for its sheer intensity.

They didn't even bother to show any of the other skaters They didn't need to. They knew that once word got out that Yuzu would be appearing any leftover tickets would be gone within hours, if not minutes. They know that Yuzuru Hanyu is by far the biggest draw in figure skating. His name connected with any competition or show is a guaranteed sellout and any local stores, if they know Yuzu is coming they'll stock up on Pooh stuff. PS - Plus if it is a competition they need to enlist a whole brigade of flower boys and girls to handle the Poohvalanches.

Happy First Birthday and a very heartfelt thanks to all. When I first became aware of the Planet I lurked for a while but finally I joined up. I want to thank the Planet for all the helpful information I've found here. When I first came to awareness of Yuzu I was basically unaware of where figure skating has gone since those days in the '80s when I basically lost track of the sport. As I said in a much earlier post I became aware of Yuzu quite by accident when I was searching for bicycle road racing competitions on YouTube and decided to take a look at this one vid, one of his 2017 WC long program. Quite simply it blew me away. I've been a ballet fan for over half a century and I couldn't help but feel here was a skater doing in skating terms what a world class premier danseur would be doing. I became almost instantly a Yuzu addict. Since then I've roamed all over the web seeking out things Yuzu and the greatest resource I found was this place here. I've learned so much here, learned so much about Yuzu, learned so much about figure skating, learned so much about his fandom. So to all of you on the Planet I want to say Happy Birthday and a very heartfelt arigatou gozaimasu.

I think right now his priorities are new SP and FS programs, because with the OG and the ice show Yuzu has clearly indicated he's closing a chapter on his life and means to move forward. I think he'll go with a 'dumbed-down' version of one of his competition programs, probably something energetic (PW or LGC?) as a contrast to the Notte we've been seeing forever, as beautiful as it is. It would be interesting if he revived one of the programs from his junior years, updating it of course, although the program I'd like to see again is POTO, which is my favorite of all of his programs. I am encouraged by one thing, though, and that is his actually choosing to do a show this off-season. If nothing else it indicates his rehabilitation is proceeding nicely, maybe even more rapidly than was initially envisaged. I think, however, he is not going to take any risks with what he does. Reinjury or a new injury is not something he or we desire.