micaelis

Excuse my ignorance, but what is arena seating?

I've been skipping numerous pages on this thread since it's moving forward so rapidly, but correct me if I'm wrong, but is there some new rule on a competition in Japan that prohibits flowers and other gifts being thrown onto the ice in addition to banners. If that is in fact the case, what are the odds that a large number of spectators will be sporting Pooh ears, today's rendition of the Mouseketeer ears of a television program from my childhood. Never underestimate the cunning and determination of Yuzu's fans.

A qualification of what comprises a perfect 100. Too many people are thinking that it involves a best ever skating performance. That is, in my opinion, a misapprehension. A perfect 100 should properly be applied to the SPECIFIC program being performed. In short, could any performance of this particular routine be better. That, in my opinion, is what a perfect skate would be. As far as some elements, such as choreography and musicality and such, they should be seen in terms of their fusion into an artistically satisfying whole. When I was in graduate school working for my doctorate in English, my area of specialization was literary and critical theory, and one of the major issues I dealt with on an almost daily basis was how do we distinguish the great literature from the not so great and the pure trash. This is where the element of relativity in aesthetic judgment comes into play. People would say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, say that we cannot define what is beautiful, yet it is difficult to maintain that all beauty is simply relative. There is an anecdote about the English painter William Turner, who is famous for the absolutely fantastic, almost surreal sunsets he depicts in so many of his paintings, where a woman is looking at one of his paintings and says she's never seen a sunset like that. His reply was simply - But Madame, don't you wish you had. It's just like the total solar eclipse I witnessed last month. There was no way I could say that what I was looking at as the sun completely vanished and the corona was seen and, since I was out in an open field, another aspect of total eclipses not generally known, I could also see along the horizon in every direction the colors of a sunset, well, the beauty of the experience could not be denied. On that basis I think it possible that the judges could come to the unanimous conclusion that given the combination of music, choreography and performance, nothing could be better. That, as I see it, is what would garner a perfect 100. In short, every thing comes together and nobody could think there could be a better realization of this. In short we are seeing a William Turner sunset.

In regards to the speculation over a perfect 100 for FS PCS score. People are saying the judges will not go for it. That basically was what they were saying about the gymnastics score back in the '70s when Nadia Comenici scored the first perfect 10. We have already seen that Yuzu has earned perfect 10s for some of the components of the PCS but one must remember that the judging is done with the judges not privy to how the other judges are scoring. If the judges are witnesses to a performance that is simply transcendent in terms of all its elements, I think it possible. Likely? No, I can agree on that. I will maintain, however, that if anybody is going to achieve a 100 on PCS it will be Yuzu. No one else has his natural flair on the ice and remember, he does have superior choreography. His programs are much more densely choreographed, as far as I'm able to tell, than other skaters. In his routines there are almost no parts of the program where he is simply skating. He's always doing something. I haven't been watching figure skating for very long but I've been dealing with ballet for decades and his programs strike me as being as thoroughly choreographed as any I've seen in ballet. This means that he is doing a lot more than other skaters over any period of time. How many skaters simply do their step sequence and choreographed sequence plus their jumps and spins but don't really do much beyond that? I recognize that the elite skaters are doing more but none of them are doing the transitions and difficult entries and non-standard landings on such a consistent basis as Yuzu does and none of them have the complexity of spin sequences he does. Quite simply when it comes to the totality of his programs in addressing ALL aspects of what great skating involves, Yuzu leaves them all behind. A perfectly skated Yuzu performance, if for no other reason than he is doing a lot more than the other skaters just in what is laid out in his routine, that deserves a 100. Will they give it to him? It will be hard but he's the one to do it if anybody does.

The 4A is skating's Mount Everest and whoever lands it is skating's Edmund Hillary. I can't remember where I read it or saw it, but some time ago there was a conversation amongst several skating commentators and other 'experts' and the discussion was the 4A. When the question was asked who would be the first to successfully do it, all there said 'Yuzuru Hanyu'. One can believe it. After all it's Yuzu who has pushed the boundaries of this sport more than any skater in recent memory. I remember the CBC commentary at the FS of the 2014 GPF when Carol Lane said - There are good skaters and there are great skaters and then there is Yuzuru Hanyu. The others chuckled but none of them disputed the observation. Kurt Browning at one point said he was so glad Yuzu hadn't retired after his gold at Sochi, because he was bringing so much more to the sport since then. Will Yuzu be the first person to achieve a 4A? Time will tell. I will offer this, however. Yuzu could be the the Nadia Comenic (the first to get a perfect 10 in gymnastics) of figure skating and be the first to achieve a PCS of 100. I don't think any other skater could even be realistically dreaming of that. If Yuzu does that, even more than a 4A, that would cement his reputation as the Greatest of All Time. Think about the PCS. He's already topped 99. 100 might seem a big jump but as far as I know, Patrick is the only other skater to top 99. When combining Yuzu's PCS with the records he holds for Short Program, Free Skate and Combined Total, a 100 PCS would make his position unassailable.

I did something on a whim this afternoon. I went to Google and put in Ice Rink Sendai, which I had researched to find was the name of the rink in Sendai where his early training was. Once I had it pinpointed on Google Maps, I then switched over to Google Streetview and was then able to go past it as if I was in a car. I stopped my movement and turned to face it. To be blunt, there is nothing outside to let you know that it's an ice rink that played a pivotal role in the formation of a legendary athlete. It's just a plain white box, looking almost like a warehouse or factory. Not much for romantic imagery, but then we know you can't really judge a book by its cover or a building that is simply a white windowless box. In any case I think it very possible someday that that rink will have its name altered from Ice Rink Sendai to Yuzuru Hanyu Ice Rink or something like that. I can't imagine they wouldn't take advantage of the history associated with it. I'd link to it but you can't link to specific locations on Google Maps so you'll have to search it out just like I did. Just go to Google and search for 'Ice Rink Sendai'. Then click on Maps and the rink will be pointed out. Zoom in, switch to satellite view and then to Streetview. You'll see a little human shaped yellow figurine in the lower right hand corner. Switch on that and then explore to your heart's content. PS - I found my way around it. Evidently my first view was of the rear of the facility. Once you get on the other side it reveals itself as a full fitness complex with signage and what appear to be small shops or something. I can't tell since it's all in Japanese. At least it looks less utilitarian than it does from behind.

In reference to somebody seeking consolation and self-encouragement by going back to GPF 2015, I might suggest GPF 2014. He fell once in the FS but otherwise skated brilliantly and the score he received, had he not fallen, might have set a FS record. In any case, the inspiration comes from seeing him skate so well after the crash in Shanghai and the subsequent disaster at NHK. Even after all that he was able to put everything together and take his second GPF. In short, Yuzu's worked his way back from far worse than this weekend. Just look at GPF 2014.

A thought about something that puzzles me - Does Yuzu look younger than I remember him? It looks like he has a slightly different hairstyle and I'm thinking that it makes him look younger. Is it an illusion on my part? I mean, the fellow is blessed with perpetual adolescent looks that were he in the US would have him being carded until he hits 40 but does he look even younger than last time we saw him competing?

The beauty! The beauty! And perhaps a record to be the icing on the cake. Thoughts about Yuzu and his focus. Very simple. Yuzu is not trying to be the BEST skater. He's trying to be the PERFECT skater, which means he's really not concerned about how the others are doing. It's more than Trust Your Training. It's Trust Your Program, since his program, if skated cleanly, will eclipse anyone else's out there, no matter how well they do. It's not just doing the jumps perfectly, it's not just doing the spins perfectly. It's doing everything perfectly. It's also remembering that the real battle in a field filled with landmine jumps is not the TES but the PCS. Remember this. Yuzu's advantage is not that he's capable of being the BEST skater, which others can achieve (as witnessed by the fact that Yuzu is occasionally defeated). I think, I hope, that Yuzu realizes that his best skates come when he forgets about being best and just goes out and does the job he was trained to do. When he does that, then he's the PERFECT skater (as witness last night, though there are a few places where he could be better but let's not quibble about little things).

The lines that formed. Does anybody not believe that 90% of those in line were there for Yuzu? The other ten percent are those who knew about the Yuzu line and figured the only chance they'd have to get in would be by getting into that same line.

[edited by yuzuangel: no politics/irrelevant]

Quoting Brian Orser (and perhaps others but he's the most important) - TRUST YOUR TRAINING

A thought - Might Yuzu and Brian be following a more devious strategy and taking a 'minor' discomfort and amplifying it so that some of the skaters this weekend will come out all guns blazing with the hope that they might actually 'beat' Yuzuru Hanyu and thus revealing to Team Yuzu the entirety of their own arsenal. With all the strategizing going on going into this season, I think it possible if not likely that the major contenders for gold in February might be holding something back to surprise everyone when they put it in at the most critical time and this would be a means of luring them to prematurely reveal their own hidden weapons? Of course this weekend with Javi being the biggest threat, he already knows everything about Yuzu's program, so there can be no deception on anybody's part there. But if the 'knee problem' persists beyond this weekend, it might be a way to flush out of hiding the fully-loaded programs of Yuzu's biggest rivals. Just a thought. Another thought - Might this be a means for Yuzu to plausibly withhold whatever new elements he has incorporated into his programs without seeming to be scheming? If nobody outside of Team Hanyu knows whether it's a quad lutz or quad flip or any other new element he's incorporated, that puts everybody in a weakened and confused state. They don't know EXACTLY what Yuzu is planning. All they know is that the Chopin and Seimei he's doing right then is not the new, improved version, which psychologically puts Yuzu's competition at a disadvantage. In short, might this whole thing be a means to gain a mental edge on Yuzu's part?

I stand corrected by several others. I was unaware of the seeding protocol. Beyond that, while not dismissing any of those skaters I cited in my earlier post, I feel that none of those are able to do what Yuzu does best, marrying the TES and PCS. Javi skating perfectly cannot match Yuzu skating perfectly. The two World Championships he received were the result of Yuzu losing, something which mighty be said of every competition Yuzu's been in since 2013-2014 (with the exception of the disaster following the crash). Boyang can jump better than Yuzu but he seems to lack involvement with the music accompanying him and I really don't think that however he tries he will ever get his PCS up to the stratospheric heights Yuzu routinely hits. Patrick, in comparison to Yuzu, is an incomplete skater, but on the opposite side of Boyang, being essentially what I term a 'lyric skater'. He'll never be able to top Yuzu on the TES, not unless Yuzu makes a real mess of things. Nathan is hampered by his inconsistency and his tendency to try to do more than he's currently capable of doing, which means he picks up negative points fairly readily. This is not to dismiss them but it is to state that if Yuzu does what we know he can do, it'll be a slam-dunk. More than one commentator made remarks back in those two legendary programs Yuzu did back in 2015, saying that if he continued skating like he was there would be nobody able to touch him. The only skater I think should really worry Yuzu is Shoma. I think Shoma at his best would give Yuzu a real run for the money. He is a 'complete' skater, though not yet quite in Yuzu's league but if he's on and Yuzu is not quite on, things could be very close if not turning out silver for Yuzu. As for another remark made about waiting forty years to see another complete skater, I think the remark was made in reference to John Curry and I am inclined to agree though during those forty years I was more or less unaware of what was going on in figure skating. Sombreuil, this thought for you. You might be seeing two complete skaters (Yuzu and Shoma) dueling over the next few years. I still go with Yuzu, mainly because he has been fortunate over the years of having superior choreographers, going back to his first coach/choreographer. Besides Shoma's style is not quite as elegant as Yuzu and he doesn't pack quite the charisma that Yuzu has. I think it was Kurt Browning who said that Yuzu is the only skater he knows who can command an audience's complete attention while doing absolutely nothing. That, I think , says it all.

I think I want to bring something up because as far as I can tell nobody's broached this topic - Yuzu's competitors this season. I've been going over the competitor lists in the competitions Yuzu's in and it looks to me like he has it relatively easy, which isn't good. This weekend his primary competition will be Javi and I think there will be attention to it. NBC has an article headlining the Yuzu--Javi match-up, pointing out that those two are responsible for the last four World Championships. Then at Rostelecom his only significant opponent would appear to be Nathan Chen. NHK's primary competitor would seem to be Patrick Chan. Which means that Yuzu's first competition with the person I consider the most dangerous this season in Yuzu's quest for Olympic gold, Shoma Uno, will be the GPF. I might add also then will be the first time he faces Boyang Jin also. That isn't good. Yuzu needs to get a feel for what Uno's packing this season as early as possible. Some might ask why Uno as his prime competitor, just look at his record the first two years of his competing on the senior level. It's formidable and much more dramatic than Yuzu's first two years. In these last two seasons Shoma has skated in fourteen competitions and in all except three he has ended up on the podium, with five of those being gold. In fact four of those golds were last season. Also, remember that Shoma came within just a few small points of beating Yuzu at Worlds last season. Shoma had two good skates, while Yuzu had a bad SP and only beat Shoma by having a PERFECT FP. I might also add that Shoma's already taken the gold at the first of his competitions this season, which means the boy is still hot. I also think there's a danger of Yuzu having too easy a time before the GPF given the relatively light challenges he'll be facing before then. I can only hope that he forgets about those challengers and focuses on just skating the cleanest possible programs. If he does that he'll make it to that gold in Pyeongchang. I remember a comment Johnny Weir made in one of his commentaries for NBC, when he stated "Nobody can beat a perfect Yuzuru Hanyu." I think that still applies but it's possible to enter this season overconfident. After all he's the reining Olympic champ, the reigning World champ and the reigning GPF champ, which means he's by far the one to beat this year (Actually he's been that ever since the 2013-2014 season, with mixed results the years since). So, I just thought I'd raise the issue. One more observation about Shoma - He's the only skater right now who some of the commentators are labeling 'complete', a label most often applied to Yuzu over the years, which means that Yuzu must pay as much attention to his PCS as to his TES to top Shoma. That's why I'm saying Shoma is the biggest threat to Yuzu this season.

I am a recent convert to figure skating, although that might not be the right expression since I didn't convert from anything to Yuzuru Hanyu. Actually I discovered Yuzuru Hanyu by accident as I was YouTube surfing looking for coverage of men's bicycle road racing. Somehow I stumbled on Yuzuru Hanyu and his World Championship winning free-skate this year. That caught my attention so I began looking for more Hanyu and discovered there was more there than I could possibly watch in a short session. Knowing how much was out there I pulled up Wikipedia and read what it said about him, getting some sense of the chronology of his life. Because he'd won the gold at Sochi I started from there and so watched his brilliant short program. I was really blown out by that. Here was something I'd never thought I'd see, though I wasn't particularly looking hard for it. He brought back to me memories of John Curry's win in the 1976 Winter Olympics. Not that the style was the same, but that there was such close attention to the total body in the choreography and such a close matching of the motion to the music. This was not skating. It was dancing. And that sealed the deal. I was hooked on Yuzu. So I started researching. You have to remember, I'm a trained researcher. My studies in English took me all the way to a PhD and I'd really learned in my trek to receiving that diploma how to go about finding stuff out. So bit by bit Yuzu was fleshed out for me. I remember finding this one playlist with more than 300 items on YT, one that took him chronologically from the earliest days to the present and I remember watching that first video of this little fellow skating and doing these jumps and spins and seeming so very, very earnest about it. As my own knowledge of figure skating technique broadened I returned several times to that early video observing now with a better knowledge of what he was doing and my amazement simply increased. He was doing what seemed a perfect Bielmann, and these jumps were all doubles with a triple salchow thrown in. The kid was nine years old! I then began focusing my research, looking not only how Yuzu progressed as a skater but also how his fame progressed. One of the wonders of the internet age is that one can see so much from the past with literally a simple search. Going chronologically with him from that All-Japan Novice B to the 2017 World Championships, I was able to grow up with Yuzu, seeing that interview when he, still a mop-headed kid of maybe eleven or twelve, I'm not quite sure, talking about winning the Olympic Gold in 2014, when he would be about the 'nineteen or twenty' that he said in the interview. I was also able to see how his growth as both a skater and a person was structured by two events - the earthquake in 2011 and the collision in 2014. Those two crises I think benefited him immeasurably. They helped put things in perspective. Seeing how he handled those made me see him not simply as a great skater but as a great human being. I can honestly say that there are few people living now or who have ever lived that I regard more highly than Yuzuru Hanyu. As a skater I revere him because he is a skater who dances on the ice. While I haven't followed skating since those John Curry days, I have been a strong fan of ballet during all those decades. Hanyu IS a dancer. He moves with the sense of total control of every part of his body that a supreme dancer has. Had it been ballet, I think he would have been up with the likes of Rudolf Nureyev (who with Margot Fonteyn was in the performance of Giselle, the first live ballet performance I ever saw) or Mikhail Baryshnikov or Roberto Bolle of recent vintage. He has not only the technique but the presence that those dancers had. Like Kurt Browning said, Hanyu can engage an audience fully even when he's not doing anything. And then there's Hanyu the human being, the one who shows no arrogance, throws no prima donna tantrums, and who feels guilty skating when the world he grew up with is trying to repair itself after the earthquake, and who feels the show must go on even if he has to skate wearing a panoply of bandages. He has the true grit of the true hero and yet he's the ever humble one, bowing to his coach in the kiss and cry and jumping for joy when his scores come up making official a victory everyone else saw when he was performing. He's always grateful for his victories, never seems to feel he expected it all along, although if you look at his expression as he's coasting on the ice after his GPF 2015 FP, you can see an almost smug look as if he was saying to those who thought his NHK records would take quite some time being broken that perhaps they'd have to rethink their notion of time and call 'two weeks' as 'quite a long time'. What in fact we see is that Yuzuru Hanyu does not conform to most people's notions of a world-class athlete. He smiles and laughs and tears and shows surprise just as all the rest of us do. He's the boy next door until he comes out on the ice. Then he becomes a rockstar, as Kurt Browning calls him. So that is how I came to know Yuzuru Hanyu. From that first brief glimpse I've come to know and actually love him for his skating talents and his immeasurable humanity. It is a love I hope to carry to my grave, which at the age of seventy I know is not that long away. But these last years of my life have been in some measure enriched by knowing that the world l will some day leave behind has people like Yuzuru Hanyu in it.

I was looking for a thread about POTO and lo and behold I found it. Why was I looking? Simply because both the program and the costume are my favorites. I love the costume because it's close-fitted and really highlights Yuzu's elegantly slender physique. The feathered look and coloring, it's just fabulous in my very humble opinion. Then the program? It has what I've thought has been lacking in Seimei and Hope and Legacy - that is, DRAMA. Dramatically it's the best thing he's presented since RJ1 which is my favorite of the earlier programs. It also brings out the best of Yuzu's talents. There are two types of skaters, athletic and lyric. Boyang is probably the best example of an athletic skater. Patrick Chan in the recent past and Jason Brown now, are lyric skaters. Hanyu combines the best of both and that is why he's the one to beat and has been since the 2013-2014 season, and it's my opinion that POTO highlights both of those most spectacularly. I've never been fond of Seimei and Hope and Legacy. I think them too subdued. I respect them and appreciate them for what they did for Yuzu's career but rather than Seimei, I wish he had chosen POTO to reprise for this season if he was going to reprise an earlier long program. It was a program that due to the crash never really had a chance to shine. At the GPF it came damnably close. One fall on his last jumping pass of a triple lutz marred what would have been a cleanly skated program, one that would have become as legendary as his performance at the next year's GPF where he broke all the records he set just before at the NHK. I think it quite possible that he would have broken two hundred were it not for the fall. As it was he won the GPF that year in what has to be regarded as a blowout. So enough said. We'll have to wait and see whether Seimei redux has the magic to deliver gold again.

OK, everyone's talking about 'secret weapons', but I think they are limiting their choices. Right now the main choices seem to be QLz, QA, and maybe QF. Someone also raised a Q-Q combination, and there has been some talk of a quint, but as pointed out there's no point-value currently assigned for a quint. Having intensely studied Yuzu since I first became aware of his existence last spring, I think a reference to Brian's statement about strategic concerns is very germane here. Yuzu I think would shy away from either a QLz or a QF because Boyang's doing the lutz and Shoma the flip. Also, we should remember that the QA is the Holy Grail of jumps and we have no idea of how many years(?) Yuzu may have been practicing it outside of formal practice situations. A QA would have great impact because it is the most difficult of the quads but also it would substantially raise the bar in competitions. So if Yuzu is going to introduce a new jump in his repertoire, it would seem the QA would be the choice, unless Yuzu chooses an equally spectacular alternative, leaving the QA for the future but adding to his weaponry BOTH a QLz and a QF. That would have him leading the pack with the MOST quads. So there are now two possibilities that would both involve Yuzu doing something no one else can do. There's yet another possibility, one that nobody is looking at, and that involves the 3A. Hanyu is 'king' of the 3A, mainly because of his patented entry into it, an entry in which there is virtually no preparation. With that in mind, could one see him doing a 3A as the second part of a combination? I remember a remark one of the British Eurosport commentators made when watching Hanyu's performance at the 2009 Junior Worlds (not the one he won, but the one before it). In his program Hanyu attempted a 3A but fell, and the commentator made the remark that it was to be expected, because a '14 year old doing a 3A boggles the mind.' Well, as we all well know Hanyu has made his perfectly performed 3A's a part of his routines (in the second half, BTW) that garner as many points as any quads he's done in the first half. I could see that as a very daunting weapon in his arsenal were he to incorporate it. Another potential weapon, one that has been mentioned, is a quad-quad combination. I think it quite possible for him to achieve that. The thing, however, that I feel everyone is missing, is the PCS element. Hanyu quite simply outskates EVERYBODY in that regard, particularly in terms of his greatest potential rivals. Boyang has his jumps, and they are not the prettiest things around, but he can work to clean them up. His PCS numbers, however, are hardly impressive and I don't think they will ever be. He just lacks the innate musicality that Yuzu has. Nathan Chen is quite simply too inconsistent in his performances, so I don't think he is a particular threat. Hanyu's biggest challenger is going to be Shoma, who was only a very few points behind Hanyu at Worlds this year. Shoma possesses a showmanship that rivals Hanyu's and we should not forget the fact that Shoma rose to the level of the elites at the senior level much more rapidly than Hanyu did. Shoma took the silver at Worlds in only his second year of senior competition and took the bronze in the GPF in his first and second years. He has Hanyu's charisma, also, and his personality is like that of so many very short people, highly competitive. He radiates an intensity on the ice that few skaters possess. He's the Hanyu to Hanyu's Takahashi. I am sure that Yuzu is well aware of this so I think that it quite likely that in the revised choreography of his programs for the coming season we will probably see a concentration on giving the elements comprising the PCS a dazzling complexity and virtuosity. I can see Yuzu chasing PCS scores of 50 in the short program and 100 in the long and then adding to that a full measure of TES basic points and GOEs. It's not a secret that Hanyu is a full master of strategizing his programs for the gaining of points. All skaters do that, of course, but Yuzu does it better than anyone else. As far as what Hanyu might do beyond this skating season, I think it quite possible he might retire. 2022 is just too far away and I don't see him trying to hang onto things that long. I feel, however, he has a couple of options for his post-competition life. One is to coach. He has the personality to do so successfully. For one his genuine desire to see other skaters do their best, his cheering Javi the prime example but there are others. I am also reminded of that short snippet of his returning to the rink in Sendai upon its reopening after the quake and how this one little girl comes gleefully skating up to him to welcome him and his very genuine greeting of her. It is the quintessential Hanyu. I don't think, however, he will stay with the Cricket Club for that. In fact I think it quite possible that he could set himself up in Sendai for that. The fit would be natural. Another would be for him to skate shows, but with his reputation and the right people to support him, I could see him starting a show of his own. We must not underestimate the considerable clout he has in the skating world. All the evidence I've been able to find indicates that he has the highest profile not only in Japan but around the world that any figure skater, male or female, has ever had. Finding the backing for a show would not be at all difficult, particularly since that option would utilize his intense love for sheer performance. Watch him in the ice shows where he's on the ice with others. There's a natural showmanship there. He loves to play with the audience and it's interesting how he can go in an instant from skating independently to becoming part of the choreographed skating of the others on the ice. I don't see him as the producer of such a show but as the one who is the guiding light, the one who provides the essential rationale for the show's existence, that is a possibility readily envisioned. All this, of course, is sheer speculation. The reality is that very shortly Yuzuru Hanyu will be taking to the ice and pulling us along on a journey to what all of us hope will be a gold medal in the forthcoming Games and then a gold at Worlds. If he also has a fifth GPF gold draped around his neck, that would be the perfect bookend for a career at the most elite levels of figure skating, one that began in the season of 2013-2014 with the triple golds of that season and ending with the triple golds of the one we are about to commence. I can't wait.

Greetings. I've just signed up and only in the last few months have known about Yuzu. Essentially I'm new to the figure skating scene and I will admit my interest now is primarily in Yuzu, who I see as more than simply a figure skater. Actually he's a phenomenon. I've often wondered when Brian Orser undertook to train Yuzu if he had any inkling of what Yuzu would become. I think it safe to say that Yuzu is simply bigger than figure skating. Whether he can be called the greatest skater ever will be dependent on the season all of us are awaiting. For me there has arisen the question of what it is in Yuzuru Hanyu that has elicited from me the most fervent admiration I have had for any public figure in the seventy years I've lived on this planet. I perceive in Yuzu a nobility that almost every public figure lacks. On the ice he is a fierce competitor but off it he's the boy next door. One looks in vain for any arrogance or petulance that so many public figures demonstrate. Why might that be? I think it all comes into focus if we remember what happened on the eleventh of March in 2011. Yuzu almost certainly remembers it for on that day he found himself terrified and scrambling for safety as the earth beneath the ice on which he was skating bucked and heaved. In his skates, without any skate guards on them, he fled the rink which would cease to be his skating home for the next several months. He and his family would live in a shelter for the next three days. His world was wrenched apart and we have his own testimony how turbulent and agonized were his feelings after the event. What happened? Yuzu learned that there is more to the world than skating and that lesson has remained with him ever since. He had a glimpse of the possibility of death. That has kept everything in perspective since then. At least that 's how I read the situation. What has emerged since then is a superstar of superstars, a skater who has become the object of almost cult-like devotion. I remember seeing the video of the end of his long program at the 2015 worlds and actually laughing at the avalanche of flowers and Pooh bears (some of them as large as a toddler). I remember when commentator remarking that they should put a plow on a zamboni to clear the ice. That phenomenon, to be observed after almost every performance Yuzu gives, makes it necessary that the managers of any competition he is in have as many flower girls as possible. So he's the object of fervent devotion. Partly, as I said above, because of his obvious genuineness and humility. I have another observation, though, that I think is also a factor - Facially he is very much an anime figure. He possesses the inverted triangle facial shape that is the convention for anime characters and he shows no trace of beard growth. He is, in fact, a perpetual adolescent or teenager. If he were in the United States, with his looks, I would venture to say he would still be carded well into his thirties. All this gives him a certain aura of vulnerability which feeds into the mindset of his legions of admirers. I think that vulnerability is also a result of the fact that in the last few years we have seen that Yuzu's greatest weakness is his sometimes inconsistency. Every Yuzu fan knows that other skaters don't defeat him. He defeats himself leaving the other skaters to move in for the kill. One should not forget that of the eleven records Yuzu has set, only one time has a record he set been broken by someone other than himself. That was in 2013 when Patrick Chan broke a record Yuzu had set for the short program. Two weeks later, however, Yuzu broke Patrick's record. Of Yuzu's eleven records, seven have involved him topping a record he had established. Not bad - just some of the statistical data to confirm why these last few years of figure skating should be seen as the Yuzuru Hanyu era. Since the 2013-2014 season where he took the GPF gold, the Olympic gold and the World Championship gold he has remained the one to beat in men's figure skating. As Johnny Weir said during one broadcast, "No one can beat a perfect Yuzuru Hanyu." Another short comment - It is interesting that Yuzu's mother, who is reportedly living in Toronto with him and traveling with him for competitions, is never seen on TV. I'm thinking how Michael Phelps' mother was always very visible at his competitions. It would be nice if Yuzu's fans could at least be given some information about his family. Final comment - looking toward the Olympics coming up, unless Yuzu has a meltdown in the season preceding, which is highly unlikely, my betting is that Yuzu will be carrying the flag in the opening ceremony. After all, he was the only Japanese athlete across all disciplines to win a gold medal at Sochi and he is arguably the most popular Japanese athlete ever in any sport. (A related, totally off-topic remark - I expect that in the summer games almost certainly to be held in Los Angeles in 2028 I expect that it is Michael Phelps who will light the torch). So in any case that is all for the present. I know this is a long post but there is a lot I wanted to say to others. Hopefully future messages will be considerably shorter.