micaelis

I stand corrected on my feeling Yuzu would have entered the GPF as the highest qualifier. I didn't realize how the point system works. On the other hand what takes place there may have major implications later on for Yuzu. I think the situation might prompt certain of those competing in the GPF to peak too early. Why? Obviously the three major names - Shoma, Nathan and Boyang - are very aware of the fact that Yuzu's non-presence there opens up an opportunity I'm sure none of them were thinking about when this season began. Now the contest is not for number two, which might have seemed the case if Yuzu were competing. The other three beyond those I've mentioned, I have to admit might be in contention also but for the Big Three this is a stellar opportunity and a stellar temptation to throw all discipline to the winds and say 'to hell with waiting to peak, I want this right now'. Thus we could have a major expenditure of mental energy as they strive to fill the vacuum left by Yuzu's absence. This is potentially an ideal situation for Yuzu, seeing his major competition in PC exhausting themselves (not physically but psychologically) in their eagerness to grab the big prize. Of those three, I think Shoma will be the most motivated, simply because Yuzu is a countryman and the Final is in Japan. He wants to show proud for the home folk. Whether I'm right might be seen a couple weeks later at Nationals, if Yuzu competes there, which I'm almost certain he wants to, if nothing else to take Shoma's measure. If Shoma enters Nationals being on the mental descent from a Grand Prix victory, he might not do too well there. All this, of course, is simple speculation. With Yuzu, though, I'm sure his sights are primarily on PC. He might decide to skip Nationals. After all, as the current World and Olympic champion there is no way JSF will not send him. They would risk rioting in the streets were they not to. The advantage there might be to keep Shoma guessing as to how far Yuzu has recovered his skill after the NHK fall. Another factor is that Yuzu might be using the interim to retool his programs and maybe coming up with a move or two to take everyone by surprise. I don't know, but are there points on the board for a quad/quad combination? I'm certain Yuzu, with his legendary speed going into his jumps, could perform such. That would be a potent demoralizer for other skaters, getting them back to the frame of mind everyone had at the end of 2015 - Is there anything this guy can't do? These are just some thoughts I have but I have to say I am increasingly feeling that this enforced pause in Yuzu's season is actually a blessing in disguise. It's like summer has returned and he's back to training for a totally new season. Coming back refreshed from such a second summer, he might just find that he's more than ready to take on the best the world has to offer. My hope for PC? A repeat of GPF final 2015 - new records across the board. That would cement his position as greatest of his generation, even perhaps, greatest of all time - the Absolute Champion.

I don't know if anybody's checked out the final standings for the GPF but it's interesting. The final rankings are Chen, Uno, Kolyada, Voronov, Rippon and Jin. What's interesting is that even despite his missing the NHK totally Yuzu is still 14th in the rankings, well above Patrick Chan, who bowed out of the GP series also. He's in 18th. I think this indicates to me that if Yuzu had done his usual and won the NHK he would probably be entering the GPF this year as the highest-ranked qualifier. Some consolation for all of us who are missing our Yuzu at a GPF he should have been locking up as his fifth straight title there. Hopefully next year he'll begin a new streak, and begin it as the current Olympic and World Champions.

One should not make generalizations about those who have only come lately to join those who have been in awe of Yuzu since those early days when he wasn't even seen as 'the new kid on the block' yet. In my case I admit that I was not acquainted with figure skating and indeed was surfing YouTube for some full-show vids of men's bicycle road-racing and I stumbled onto a vid of Yuzu's free-skate at World's this year. I paused to watch it and was immediately grabbed by it. Now at that time I knew very little about figure-skating and even now I would readily defer to those many others on this forum who've been on the scene for years, but I have a strong interest in ballet, an interest ongoing since my very early teens more than 50 years ago. Watching Yuzu I saw somebody who obviously knew how to move, how to merge motion with music. Basically road-racing was dropped that day as I began searching out other vids of Yuzu and shortly thereafter I came across his SP at Sochi. Parisian Walkways was a revelation. I'd never thought figure-skating could do the sorts of things (and here I'm commenting on the choreography, the things that make for high PCS scores and not the jumps) that Yuzu was doing. Here was a program where the skater was not simply skating, he was role-playing on a very high level. That hooked me and after that I began searching out everything Yuzu. I knew even then he was more than just 'special', he was one of those who DEFINE what being special is. Eventually I came across this forum here and lurked for a short time before joining. Over the short time I've been here I've learned a lot from other members here and I have learned a lot from my own explorations into things Yuzu, and while it might seem I've not been around long enough to say some things I have said over time here it should be remembered that although my PhD is in English, which bears little resemblance to figure skating, I am a trained researcher. Graduate school involves not so much the acquisition of information in a particular field (although it does include some of that), it's more involved with teaching the skills necessary to making one self-reliant in the gathering of pertinent information. That's how I was able to acquire the knowledge I've been able to acquire in such a short time, which is still quite small compared to the knowledge of several of those here. The point I'm trying to make is that there might be a fair number of seeming newcomers to skating here, newcomers who literally stumbled onto Yuzu by chance. I got into the whole Yuzu thing by chance but the decades I've spent with my fascination with ballet let me know almost immediately that he was a 'kid' who really knows how to move for effect. I might not have known a great deal about figure skating but I do know how to discern real talent when it comes to controlled movement. That's what grabbed me when I first started watching Yuzu. He might not be a ballet dancer but in the field of figure skating he's on the same level as Nureyev and Baryshnikov are in ballet.

Will he go to Nationals? My betting is he will. I'm sure he wants to measure himself vis-a-vis Shoma before the showdown in PC. In France Shoma showed he was not invincible and Javi showed he was feeling like a two-time World Champion again, although he was saved from the seemingly invincible Shoma after a flawed FS by a SP that was skated better than clean. My current run-down of major threats to Yuzu at the Winter Games is Shoma still the biggest, with Javi now back in contention after his disaster in China, Boyang needs to raise his PCS up significantly or hope his quads pull maximum GOEs. We'll find out about Nathan this week at Skate America. Patrick Chan? I'm afraid he's by and large yesterday's news. He just doesn't have the jumps the others do. I'm not even seeing him as a major contender for a podium position. The joker in the deck is Mikhail Kolyada who showed in China he has the ability to gain the gold in a strong field. If Kolyada is at his best in PC he would probably gain a podium position, maybe even gold if everybody else is off their best. I think he's the Russian's main chance for recapturing some of the glory days of Plushenko, though Kolyada is not the skater Pushy was. The thing is that Kolyada has a certain boyish charisma that will get him a fan-base and when you have a good fan-base you have more incentive to compete well. Just ask Yuzu, who has probably set unofficial records for the largeness and intensity of his fan-base and who certainly holds probably unbreakable records as to the tonnage of stuff thrown onto the ice after his skates. Yuzu standing in wait to start at center-ice simply commands everyone in the stands to pay attention. Like one commentator said, Yuzu gets more attention on the ice when he's just standing still than most skaters have when they're skating at their max. As for Nationals, like I said above, Yuzu wants a chance to measure himself head to head against Shoma and probably also to regain the title he forfeited last year due to the flu bug. His ankle cost him his GPF streak. I don't think he is ready to contribute to a Shoma streak at Nationals.

Any word yet on when Yuzu is heading back to Toronto? I think it would be good for him to stay in Japan until after his birthday on December 7, giving his hometown folk a chance to wish him a happy birthday. Just think, he's about to turn 23. How much has happened to him since that day back ten years ago when he became a teenager? Ten years ago he was just finishing his last season competing on the Novice levels. 2008-2009 would mark his full entry into Junior level competition, which would last through the 2009-2010 season. Yuzu would be sixteen when he would win the Junior World title and then would come the beginnings of his incredible Senior career. I've only come to know Yuzu in the last few months. I envy those who have followed him over these last ten years, growing up with him, seeing the change from the boy being interviewed by Japanese TV telling how he was aiming to win Olympic gold in the future, referring particularly to 2014, when he'd be 'about twenty', a change from an unknown skater to a living legend. I still remember the remark of one commentator after his record-breaking SP at Sochi - "This is my first Olympics and I came to win". How true those words turned out to be. So now here are all of us waiting for any tidbits of information about his condition, about his intentions, about anything, actually. Right now he is offstage and the world seems somehow emptier because of that. Japanese Nationals can't come soon enough, although I hope they aren't too soon before his full recovery. In any case I'm sure Yuzu is happy tonight - Javi won in France, beating Shoma, and Misha Ge, one of the most likable skaters (personality-wise and skating-wise) had his first podium finish in a Grand Prix event. Perhaps these are omens of good fortune coming Yuzu's way once he's back out on the ice. Knock on wood, cross your fingers and do any other little ritual you have to bring good luck to the center of our solar system.

It almost boggles the mind. They'll have to have many many flower children to clear the ice or maybe follow the suggestion of a commentator a few years back and put a blade on a zamboni and plow the Poohs off the ice. I imagine also the Pooh toy-making industry will crash. But I agree with ICeleste and prefer to not think too hard about Yuzu's inevitable farewell. Let's deal with that when it comes. Right now I would imagine all our thoughts are on watching Yuzu's convalescence and waiting for PC. I feel almost like a kid waiting for Christmas.

I love the Pooh rains, although one rain is not quite like another. They have varying intensities. Sometimes they're just drizzles (although those are primarily confined to the distant past. But then there are those like we saw at Worlds in 2015 and this year in Moscow that are out and out cloudbursts. Those have no equals in the annals of figure skating. I have noticed something, though, and that is that some of the other skaters are starting to get stuffed animal toys, also, obviously inspired by the Yuzu menageries that descend every time he skates. I'm beginning to think, however, there might be another way to compare the Pooh rains, and that's how many flower girls and boys are required to clear the ice before the next skater. Alexander Plushenkos don't count, however, since he was more intent on hanging out with his idol than clearing the ice, which I think is clear testimony that his father's stated opinions of Yuzu are sincere. After all, like father, like son.

I fully agree. The fact is that Yuzu is the nearest thing figure skating has to a multi-platinum stadium-filling rock-star. Plus, even though Yuzu is not in the GPF he will be at Japan Nationals and you can be certain that not only the Japanese media but the international media will be playing up that rivalry. This time it's Shoma playing Yuzu against Yuzu's Patrick. If Shoma has solid wins in France this week and at the GPF the media will be on the story big-time. The media love such rivalries - they boost the ratings and sell the papers. For those who are old enough, remember the Battle of the Brians back at the '88 Olympics, American Brian Boitano against our own Brian Orser of Canada. The media played that rivalry to the limits, perhaps even beyond. There is, of course, a difference in that Shoma and Yuzu are from the same country, but it's the closeness that Shoma came to beating Yuzu at Worlds this year that make for the rivalry, a closeness so close that those covering the story don't need to exaggerate the difference even slightly. Had Yuzu not skated a better than perfect long program Shoma would be World Champion right now. That's what will fuel the depictions of the rivalry the press and media will be running with this Olympic year. Nationals will be saying a lot this December and if Yuzu wins the pressures will return. But as has been commented previously, Yuzu has a great deal more experience in dealing with the press than Shoma has, and way more experience in dealing with the adulation of the fans. Shoma does not get anything near the quantity of Toys-R-Us products pitched down to him than Yuzu does. In fact I surmise that Yuzu's 'gifts' are probably greater than all the others combined. And this has been going on for several years. Shoma is still the new kid on the block. Of course the entire scenario could be altered substantially if someone other than Shoma wins the GPF. That completely changes things and Yuzu would automatically become once again the clear front-runner, as none of those who might defeat Shoma at the GPF have anywhere near the kind of record Shoma's accumulated over the three seasons he's skated in the big leagues. So everything we've been speculating about could really alter if Shoma falters at the GPF or even if he has a bad weekend this week in France. Yuzu right now has the luxury of sitting on the sidelines and letting everybody else engage in their jockeying for position. But remember, everyone, that Yuzu's record over the last four seasons is one of the most commanding in the history of men's figure skating, despite the fact he silvered at two World Championships. Despite whatever spin the media might put on the current situation this one truth remains unaltered - Yuzu's the one to beat. I don't think any skater out there right now is framing his ambitions on defeating Shoma. Yuzu's the one to beat and that will be the situation all the way to the last men's free skate at Pyeongchang.

With all the talk about his psychological condition I think we have to go back many years to what I feel is the primary crisis of his life - the 2011 earthquake. If you were doing a bio-pic of Yuzu, no screenplay could come up with a better image of the event that shapes the future athlete's career than the image of a frightened Yuzuru Hanyu scrambling for his life off of a suddenly heaving and swaying ice rink, an event that did not have to be dreamed up by a screenwriter but merely recounted as an actual reality. Yuzu spoke many years ago about how he almost abandoned skating then because his rink was closed and he felt guilty about not helping directly with the recovery effort. I don't think any skater active today lived through such a nightmare as he did in March of 2011, not even Shoma, who almost certainly was in his hometown of Nagoya, three hundred miles distant from the epicenter, far more distant than Sendai, which was a mere eighty miles from the epicenter. Sendai was the largest city close to the epicenter and the seaside areas of the town were overrun by the tsunamis. Yuzu had to confront a devastation that had not been seen in Japan since the Kobe earthquake of 1995. The difference in 2011, though, was that the damage was far more widespread and the death count higher. I mentioned in an earlier post how the earthquake was a seminal moment in Yuzu's life, a moment when Yuzu was forced to confront the fact of his mortality. Few young people face something like that in their lives. At the age of sixteen death is a distant abstraction to most young people, even those who have had those near them die. It's just not something they see as a looming reality. Yuzu had his mortality made very real when he was scrambling off the ice, hoping he would make it out of the building before it collapsed (it didn't, but he had no way of knowing right then that it would remain standing). The subsequent experience of three nights spent in an emergency shelter reinforced that crisis for Yuzu. He did not even have the comfort of sleeping in his own bed the night following the quake. Rather it was the floor of a gymnasium that he slept on. Yuzu might very well have abandoned skating back then if he had not already started competing on the senior level and had a history of accomplishments on the junior level that had him by then a major upcoming skating talent in Japan. In the end I think he felt that he would be betraying the hopes of many around him, particularly his family and coaches and those who were already becoming die-hard Yuzu fans. I think Yuzu resolved then to justify as fully as possible the hopes of those many. He was not only not going to abandon his own dreams of future accomplishment but also the dreams of those many others who cheered him on at competitions and as his career progressed. I doubt there are many athletes out there who have had such a clarifying experience as Yuzu did, an experience that framed their careers in literally life or death terms. I doubt there are many of us who can fully understand what that experience was like (except for those of Yuzu's fans who lived similarly close to the center of that disaster). If you've ever watched those many videos on YouTube showing the tsunamis as they swept ashore that day, you wonder how any recovery was possible, seeing the totality of the devastation experienced. Almost certainly Yuzu saw them and unlike us, who are watching them distant in time and space from the events, Yuzu was there, perhaps not right on the higher ground actually observing them, but certainly seeing the resultant damage up close and personal. For me that event in Yuzu's life I have seen as the single factor that most shaped Yuzu's life thereafter. It's the event that I think enables him to achieve that almost zen-like state we see in him as he is standing mid-rink and about to start his performance. I always watch Yuzu's skating remembering his experience in the earthquake and how that experience gave him the insights that make his Seimei so meaningful, the program Yuzu wanted to express both 'the delicacy and the strength' of Japan (as Johnny Weir pointed out in one commentary). Seimei is what it is because Yuzu is not simply skating a program, he's skating his convictions. This program has its power because Yuzu fully means what he is skating. Yuzu's program is backed up by the reality of his own experience of that Japanese character and it's that personally-experienced reality that he is expressing out there on the ice.

Debating over how many quads? I think Yuzu should only do as many quads as he's comfortable doing absolutely perfectly. I remember when a discussion about Yuzu's quads was underway and Johnny Weir said that 'it's not just the quads, it's the quality of the quads'. How true. Yuzu has become the master by using difficult entries for his jumps and coming out of them with speed almost unimpared and going immediately into other moves. That's how he racks up the GOEs. On top of that his real competitive edge comes with the density of his choreography where he's not simply setting himself up for his next jump but instead is doing stuff before that next jump comes along. I really think Yuzu has to trust his program. It's loaded with enough elements that his TES score if done cleanly is automatically competitive. It's his PCS scores and GOEs that really make the difference when he's winning competitions and breaking records.

So now the speculation to Nat or not to Nat. He'll go to Nationals, just because he needs to psychologically. He needs to test himself against Shoma before PC and Japanese Nationals would be ideal since the contest there would be essentially a two-person event. Everything else would be irrelevant, not only to Yuzu but to virtually everyone else. It would be a showdown at sunrise, waiting for the main showdown at high noon come Pyeongchang. I think Brian would be of much the same mind. As to Shoma, he's in France this weekend and I will want to see how he does there. Back to Yuzu - I think Yuzu will go to Nationals and then his next event will be PC. He doesn't want to risk reinjury or the stress of dealing with a competition that is essentially meaningless in the long-range look of things, so there will be nothing in-between. Nationals is comparatively inconsequential except for the fact he needs to know how he does vis-a-vis Shoma. I know everybody else thinks there are several other skaters who threaten Yuzu at PC, but only if he skates poorly and they skate brilliantly. Shoma is the only one who this season can defeat Yuzu if the two of them are both skating in relatively the same physical and psychological condition. I remember something Shoma said in an interview in where he said the closeness of his score at Worlds this year made him realize that he could beat Yuzu, something he had figured impossible before then. I think Yuzu knows of that interview and he's taken that to heart. He knows who his competition is. I'm sure he's watched every one of Shoma's skates this season. The one thing we should remember is this - when Yuzu sees someone who skates close to his level (remember how Boyang's quads back when made Yuzu double down on his own) he uses that as his motivation to reach yet another level that the world has not seen before, both from him and from anybody else. I think much the same happened at Sochi where his defeat of Patrick at the GPF made him aware that Patrick could be beaten. I'm beginning to think that Yuzu needs a concrete competitor to motivate him, though I think the motivation is not so much to skate better than that particular rival but to skate better than he himself could skate before. It's the instigation to once again make him psychologically determined to be the 'absolute champion', the GOAT.

You know, I've been wondering why the JSF would favor someone else over Yuzu (even though it's supposed to be evenhanded in its support of its various skaters). Could it be because Yuzu is training abroad and not in Japan? That seems to me to be the only likely reason it does so. In any case, as has been mentioned previously, it favors Shoma over Yuzu only at its peril. I just hope Yuzu considers this as a basically a non-issue. He's out there to skate and win. Of course if Yuzu is (marginally) upset about the JSF and he beats Shoma soundly at nationals in December, it will constitute a first-class middle-finger to the JSF.

Considering the passion that Yuzu fans worldwide have for him, if for some reason he weren't in the Olympics, they would boycott. Boycott attending, boycott the TV, and boycott the most prominent sponsors of figure skating. Yuzu packs a very large punch when it comes to the economics of figure skating. As much as the JSF might be favoring someone else, you can be sure there's likely behind the scenes pressure from other national skating federations to make sure Yuzuru Hanyu is in the Olympics. There is no other skater who can fill the seats like Yuzu can and have fans watching the live events at any hour of the day or night. You don't go and kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, or should I say the golden Poohs.

Jumping into the conversation again without backtracking from this last page. The subject as to Yuzu's world ranking seems to be at issue. I don't know how exactly the rankings are calculated but I would like to make a point. Yuzuru Hanyu has won the last four GPFs, tying a record for number of wins and holding the record for three consecutive and four consecutive wins. He's taken the World Championship twice and silvered twice. He's the current Olympic champion. He owns all the significant records that matter and over the course of his senior competition has set 12 world scoring records, eight of which involved breaking records he himself set. Only once in the last four seasons has he finished off the podium and of the twenty competitions involved, 12 were for gold and the remainder (with the exception of the 2014 NHK which he came in fourth) have all been silver. There is no skater active in competition today that even comes close to Yuzu's statistical standing and I do not see how any body (official or otherwise) can rank him any less than number ONE.

It's just impossible to keep up with this thread, it moves ahead so rapidly, so I'm jumping into the discussion without having read anything preceding this page. My take on what I've read is that there is video of the 'jump heard round the world', and it shows that Yuzu screwed up from takeoff onto landing. If we've been able to see it, I'm sure Brian has also, and I would bet that he's taken off his 'good' coach hat and put on his 'bad' coach hat and given Yuzu a sound cross-Pacific thrashing by phone with, unknown to Yuzu, Brian's intention to greet Yuzu with his 'good' coach hat when he arrives back in Toronto and gently nurses Yuzu back to his effectively aggressive self. As for Yuzu himself, he's probably spanking himself knowing that he was too impetuous in going into that jump. Let's hope he doesn't overcompensate and become too cautious. One of the things that is so exciting about watching Yuzu skate is you know he's constantly skating on the edge (pun intended) and you never know with any certainty whether he'll make it or not, thus you have this collective intake of breath when he launches himself and relieved exhalation when he lands safely, smoothly, and beautifully, garnering a ton of GOEs when he does it. Psychologically Yuzu is already probably forgetting this weekend and focusing on nationals in just over a month. I'm not sure how the selection of an Olympics team proceeds. Is it just based on how one finishes at nationals or are other factors taken into account, particularly a skater's over-all record, when choosing? Obviously the goal is to make the cut but I think Yuzu will also be wanting to make a statement vis-a-vis Shoma, who is quite obviously the one-to-beat there. I'm still firm in my belief that Shoma is the primary threat to Yuzu's gold at PC. He's been skating so consistently high this season and if seen in the context of his skating the last two seasons, he's on a roll, not always gold but more often that then not, and podium finishes every time. His is the strongest record in comparison to the other skaters as we approach crunch time in PC. As for Yuzu, once nationals are behind him, I hope he takes a 'sort-of' vacation, leaving hard training for a couple weeks (meaning only maintenance practices) and working to get that mindset he had when he overcame the adversity following the quake/tsunami in 2011 and the crash in Shanghai in 2014. He's got the memories of those two crises in his past, and now this third crisis faces him. Just remember this - Third time's the charm.

There is a silver lining in this, I think. Yuzu can head back to Toronto and convalesce and resume training for nationals. But with no competition between now and then he can also return to Japan well ahead of the competition and thus get past jet lag and be fully rested when the time comes for the face-off with Shoma. That meeting of the two of them guarantees that the Japanese Nationals will be one of the most closely-watched national competitions by the world at large. I can pretty well say that with two strong Olympian hopefuls facing each other the Japanese Nationals are going to be almost extravagantly replete with drama.

I haven't had a chance to backtrack and read all the commentary after Yuzu's withdrawal but I think this is the occasion for me to bring up an issue that I've thought about for some time. I think the ISU should make a rule that allows for anybody who has had a podium position in a previous season's event to have an automatic spot to compete in that event, with the caveat that the skater (or skaters in the case of dance and pairs) have been competing continuously since that podium finish. It's too late to change things now because to do so would be seen as favoring Yuzu, but if the rule were in place Yuzu would be automatically eligible for the GPF. Putting that rule in place for the Olympics would not be possible since the Olympics committee makes the rules there, not the ISU. I do not think skaters would abuse this, either, since if they are past their prime they would not wish to face the humiliation if they should lose in a big way. They would probably only enter if they felt themselves legitimately in the hunt for a medal. If I'm not mistaken, I think the PGA has a rule along these lines. Just a thought.

I think, if at all possible, he should skate. He can 'dumb down' his program, doing triples instead of quads (maybe keeping his easiest quads). Patrick, the champion PCS skater, has withdrawn, so Yuzu can outscore everyone else with his PCS, then all he has to do is keep his TES in the hunt and he wins. I know he's fixed on the Olympics, but I think missing the GPF would be a terrible blow to his morale. Even if he just squeaks through he would still be building momentum towards PC. Remember 2014, how he fought back from that bloody crash in Shanghai and won the GPF by a very wide margin. He's capable of skating through adversity. Another thing is that missing the GPF would make it so much more difficult come nationals. Everybody is looking at Yuzu's physical condition and nobody seems to be taking into account the psychological damage that could result if he pulls out. Have faith in our Yuzu. If he skates he at least keeps himself going. He refused to stay out of the NHK in 2014 and had the only time since the Olympics where he didn't finish on the podium, but just weeks later he wiped out the opposition at the GPF. I think he was in worse shape back then than he is now. It's really bad that Brian's not there. That's making it very hard for Yuzu. I know there must be communication across the ocean between him and Yuzu right now, but it's not the same as seeking advice face to face. Just hope. I repeat myself - Yuzu's fought his way back from what I think is much worse than what he's experiencing right now.

A thought - Might Disney have banned Yuzu's Pooh, knowing that Yuzu's fans would respond by wanting to give Yuzu a replacement for the missing mascot? After all, with all the fans we presume will be in the stands, that's an awful lot of Pooh bears meaning an awful lot of profit for Disney. Nothing increases sales more than when something is banned. Forbidden fruit and all that.

Thanks to all for clarifying the issue. Like those others who have said there will be plenty of Poohs on the ice, I have to agree and because of the issue I'm thinking there will be hardly a Yuzu fan in the stands who isn't armed with a Pooh bear. Come the end of his program we will see an avalanche, an inundation, a flood, a tsunami, a landslide, a torrent (you should get the picture) of Poohs turning the ice into a sea of yellow. A thought, though, mightn't it be nicely symbolic if we said the Poohs are gold rather than yellow? Thus every Pooh thrown onto the ice is a prayer for Yuzu to take the gold and return home in triumph with his gold medal in one hand and his Pooh bear in the other.

A question, since this thread is moving ahead so rapidly I've given up trying to stay with it - Is Pooh banned from being tossed onto the ice, or is it just Yuzu's Pooh that's at issue here?

Some thoughts now that Cup of China is history - First is that Javi may not make the GPF. He finished seventh in China, which means that he has to win in France to even have a chance to make the GPF. A second observation - A new name enters into the ranks of those who threaten Yuzu's plans - Mikhail Kolyada turned in a very good performance in China, placing 1st in the SP and third in the FS, more significantly besting 2nd place finisher Boyang Jin by some fifteen points in a situation where Boyang had home ice advantage. I think we might have to place Kolyada amongst the potential spoilers come February. We'll know at the GPF where he will once again face Yuzu in head to head competition. Just so some don't get the wrong idea, I'm not yet ready to drop Javi from the list of those I feel threaten Yuzu at PC but I now am ranking him at outlier status with Chan and Kolyada. I'm almost tempted to put Boyang there, also, since he didn't do so well when he had home-ice advantage. Right now, as I see it, Yuzu's chief threats are Shoma and Nathan with my feeling that Shoma is the greater threat of those two. In any case we'll have two oppurtunities before PC to see Yuzu and Shoma facing off against each other - the GPF and Japanese Nationals. What happens there will give us strong indications of how the podium might look like come February.

I agree with you and I think I did not express myself accurately enough. Obviously those others did win but I do think we have to remember that after the 2013-2014 season Yuzu was definitely the one to beat and even after he lost Worlds to Javi those two years he still remained the one to beat. I am also reminded what Johnny Weir said one time that 'nobody can beat a perfect Yuzuru Hanyu'. That has remained true ever since the last Olympic year. Actually, I was looking at things in terms of an overall 'narrative', one that works through pain and trials to a triumphant end. In that sense then the GP series leading to the GPF of 2014 has an almost archetypal purity, with the crash in Shanghai followed by the disaster at NHK and then the triumph of the final, where Yuzu skated an extremely good short program but in his free skate, except for one fall late in the proceedings, he skated brilliantly. If not for that fall, he most likely would have set a free skate record. When one sees that victory in the light of what preceded it, there is a dramatic culmination that you rarely see in sport. That was what so impressed me about that. On the other hand the double spectacular of the 2015 NHK and GPF, where Hanyu simply rewrote the record book, not once, but twice, that has a totally different dynamic, one that is summarized in my mind by the expression Yuzu has after the GPF long program, where it is almost certain he had broken yet another record. Look closely at him as he slowly moves around before taking his formal bows. It's not quite a smirk, but there is definitely something of an 'I showed them' feel to his facial expression right then. As far as the last season, Worlds 2017 has a dynamic somewhat similar to the GP series of 2014, but in this case it's more localized in the the World competition alone. Then we see the story of the bad short program (bad by Yuzu's standards), including the one-point time penalty, where things might have seemed to be about to repeat the last two World competitions, but in this case the reverse. Here Yuzu was truly at a disadvantage, facing a challenge which he successfully overcame, marking up a new free skate record. Yet he barely won. If he hadn't skated not simply error-free but in a way that as Kurt Browning remarked, had given the judges 'no excuse not to go and throw the book at him' loading him up with extra points everywhere, what Browning called a 'big picture moment', (remember, Shoma was just a few points behind at the end) that was different, more like rescuing victory from the jaws of defeat. So in that sense I'm looking now at the season unfolding. We have NHK coming shortly. We should remember that in these last few seasons since 2013-2014, except for the disaster of 2014, Yuzu has always taken the NHK, but also he has not won any other Grand Prix event, always coming in second. In fact since Sochi Yuzu has only finished off the podium at Grand Prix events once, NHK 2014. I think for Yuzu GPF this year is nearly as important as PC. He wants to keep the streak going, the one record which after each successive year becomes increasingly unlikely to be ever equaled or broken in the future. Worlds for him comes third. I'd like to finish by looking back at Yuzu's first Olympic season. At the beginning of the season he was still just one of the crowd. He'd taken the bronze at Worlds a couple years before but he was still seen as simply a promising new talent, even though that season was his fourth on the senior circuit. Things started really changing with the GPF, where he defeated Patrick Chan and took the first of his four consecutive GP golds. Then came Sochi and then Worlds, where he sewed all things up and held the three most prestigious titles. After that season he was no longer the new kid on the block. He was also establishing his reputation as a 'complete' skater, if you listen to what the commentators are saying, and doing so in such a way that in the GPF of 2014 Carol Lane (who can be snarky) stated quite simply and sincerely -'There are good skaters and there are great skaters, and then there's Yuzuru Hanyu,' although she was not the first to say he was putting skating on a whole new level. In the end what we are seeing this season is perhaps the final chapter of what is already a legendary saga, one that we can see in its infancy with that amateurish video of nine-year-old Yuzu skating so earnestly and making those jumps, (including a triple salchow) and his signature Bielmann, or maybe what we're seeing is just another chapter on a still-continuing journey. We'll know by April.

I think everyone should take a look at Yuzu's Olympic medal. If we look at it with some objectivity it should be said that he didn't win the gold, but more or less stumbled into it. He was far from perfect in his free skate, but fortunately for him, Patrick was even less perfect. I still remember that short video of him being so surprised that he had won the gold. In fact, in my judgment the one competition he truly won of the Big Three that season was the GPF. At Sochi and Worlds he just screwed up less than the competition. In the 2013 GPF he skated two solid programs and was clearly the one in charge. Beyond that, as impressed as I am (nobody could not be) by Yuzu's legendary two weeks in late 2015 I still think his most dramatic and truly triumphant victory was the 2014 GPF, followed closely by his triumph in Helsinki this year. Knowing how that 2014 season had been so disastrous leading up to the GPF, it was the fitting Hollywood finale of his pursuit of GPF gold.

Results from Skate Canada and significant implications for Yuzu at the NHK. Those who were worried about Patrick Chan should relax somewhat. He came in fourth and combine this with what happens next at the NHK, should he do as bad there as he did at home, he might not even be in the GPF. The real story is with Shoma, who took the gold, and this should be disturbing, Shoma won by some forty points over 2nd place Jason Brown. That's like some of Yuzu's big wins. I said in an earlier post that I considered Shoma as the major threat to Yuzu's Olympic success and I stand by that opinion. We'll finally see Shoma and Yuzu go head-to-head at the GPF and also again shortly later in the Japanese Nationals. Because of Shoma's success so far this season and the fact that he was the silver medalist at World's last March, I would expect the men's event in the Japanese Nationals to be the one with the most international interest of all the various national competitions. I watched Shoma's short program at SC on YouTube and I can say he was totally in charge. He broke one hundred on the SP score and nearly topped two hundred on the FP with his combined just north of 300. In the Lombardia Trophy that began Shoma's season he cleaned up big time, with his final score being some sixty points above 2nd place Jason Brown and his total score just shy of 320. The kid is really coming on strong and doing so by showing the same kind of dominance in the events he skates as Yuzu does when he's really on. Yuzu, though, I feel is ready for Shoma. He's finished over Shoma in every event they've competed in over the years as far as I know and I have a feeling that he really wants to defeat Shoma and continue being the dominant skater in Japan. So I'm not panicking over the coming showdowns with Shoma. They will prove riveting though because Shoma is showing himself with every competition he's in to be the one skater out there showing all the signs of being a 'complete' skater, an attribute which explains why Yuzu should be worried as no other skater, with the exception of Patrick Chan, gets the high PCS numbers like Yuzu routinely receives.