PomeloPooh

Ah, so this year's magazine cover invasion is by a black T-shirt! I liked last year's white one better, since it went well with the trees in the background, but Yuzu in any color is amazing Yuzu! Since you seem to be going for basic colors, Yuzu, maybe try some basic gold next year? And lmao Jack really is digging up Youtube for good fanyu videos isn't he? My guess is with his "constantly evolve" mindset, we'll probably never hear "that's my 100%" from Yuzu. But when he feels satisfied he's achieved something (like winning a consecutive OGM lol) we may get to hear "it's 100% of me on this day!"

As for how long Yuzu's going to continue skating... I guess Yuzu himself may not even know right now, and he totally could find new motivations after the +5GOE 4A. My main concern is his health. He's definitely not old among male skaters, but his body is among the few that has endured the most injuries. I have once chatted with a Yuzu fan who also happens to be a sports physician and has worked with top competitive figure skaters. She said with Yuzu's public track record of injuries, she'd be extremely surprised if he continued for another 4 years... Of course it's only an opinion, from a doctor who after all have never seen Yuzu in person, so it's not in anyway guaranteed accurate. But it just made me think, sometimes it's easy for us to underestimate how hard it is for skaters to stay on top, even only physically. (And I say "stay on top" because Yuzu has stated that, as he continues, that's the only place he'll aim for.)

I don't think Yuzu is complete "shielded" from public contents about himself. In fact, he appears quite aware of them. For example, at the post-Olympics press conference in Japan, a journalist asked a question, and Yuzu recognized him and thanked him for an on-TV analysis of his skating the journalist did, saying that he have watched it. Also at the conference, when the host asked him about people saying Shoma could have won if he didn't fall, he said "I know a lot of people have being discussing this, and I'm sorry if some fans feel upset about it, but I can say that I was sure I would win the second I finished my program." And he has definitely seen many videos of himself on Youtube. I can't recall the name of the TV program, but in an interview he said he searches for his own performances online. Sometimes he watches the good ones to build images of jumps, and sometimes he look for fancams for a different angle. I guess his team may shield him as much as possible from meaningless things like rumors made by tabloids. And he himself probably tries to ignore them, like he said in the 2016 documentary, "I want to be alone/lonely, so that I can stay away from distractions." But I think he's aware of all the debates of the skating world, his own public image on mainstream media, and stuff like that.

The word is 少年气, meaning "having the aura of a teenage boy." 少年 is the same as the word "shonen" in Japanese, as in "shonen manga," so the concept is someone untamed by life, passionate, sincere, idealistic, probably kind of reckless but always trying their best with no holding back. It's a popular concept and a quality people admire very much, because (as per my observation) many feel that due to the pressure of life nowadays, young people become too realistic too early.

According to Number magazine, this "a while ago" is a month and a half ago, and it's still swollen, so yeah I'm honestly a bit worried... Especially judging by his words ("I sort of cut my finger but I don't know if anything's broken.") he probably didn't see a doctor Yeah he's an adult and he's got people looking out for him so nothing could really go wrong... I should stop worrying about it but why I can't

While catching up with the thread, I went online to look for goat plushies to throw at CoR. But all I can find is: - plenty of sheep plushies - many alpaca plushies (I'm tempted, they're super cute plus the long neck seems somehow appropriate) - one toy goat with plastic horns that might break when thrown onto the ice Maybe I should just buy a cute alpaca and sew a pair of horns onto it

But for GPF and NHK 2015 he skated last, and look what that produced! I think the last myth about skating order was skating second 2nd in a group means bad luck, and Yuzu broke the curse at ACI SP last year with a WR. So no more fear for any skating orders for fanyus from then on!

A few months later, the very cute skater turned into a little demon dragging him into a quad battle But when they both succeeded the celebration was indeed the cutest!

This may or may not count... Yuzu taking a pic with a short track skater (who happens to be an Oly champ too)

I read somewhere that Brian advised him not to make any public social media account, though probably it was Yuzu's intention all along anyway. The advice came from their experience with Yuna, who has a bunch of Korean media as crazy as the Japanese one to deal with. She had a little bit of unfortunate history with her twitter (unintentionally getting into a fan war I think), and all her accounts ended up with only charity & commercial content. Anyway, social media really carries great risks for any celebrity that doesn't feed off the clicks. When you're scrutinized by such wide public, whatever you do at all will get some people's hate. When it's as intimate a medium as social media, it gets personal. It's good for the peace of mind if not the public image, especially for someone with a kind and sensitive heart like Yuzu.

Wow. Origin is like, brand new Yuzu, but vintage Yuzu at the same time. Watching it is literally like having him gently but irresistibly grabbing my soul into his palm... And it's just a practice clip

people on TL yelling "NEW CONTENT!!!" without yelling what the content is I'm dead

Figure Skate TV is going on right now. Someone posted a screenshot on my timeline but I've no idea where to watch it Ahhhhhhhh hoping for new clips new info new anything hope hope hope!

According to the tweet, in 2008 there was a survey among male skaters, and one question was to name your favorite pair & dance team. About half the people leaved a blank, but Yuzu answered it: Xue Shen & Hongbo Zhao, Oksana Domnina & Maxim Shabalin. So our mushroom already followed pairs & dance back then! And he said in CiONTU that he watched Shae-Lynn compete and that was pre-2003. A true long-time fs fan!

Awww I love the new cover. Such an emotional moment, he's bathing in light and happiness. Also HAPPY 4000 PAGES!!! We've built in a bit more than one year what took like eight years in the old place! Even though the post count might be different.

If Sochi FS counts as bomb, 15Nats FS does too, 2 falls & 3 carrots. Nats in the last quad didn't have a splendid track record at all. 14 - disease & surgery, skating with blood oozing from the cotton gauze; 15 - aggravating foot injury & bomb; 16 - sick in bed & withdrawal; 17 - you-know-what & withdrawal. Hence all the gloom around it I guess Hopefully a new quad will start new traditions! (I'm also looking at ya, first GPs, Canadian Comps, 4CCs & the 2 qouta thingy, all ya silver-ish stuff)

Welcome the the planet and have fun here! No need to worry about English. A large number of people here are not native speaker either, but we always manage to understand each other. About figure skating getting more attention, at least in my part of the world (East Asia) figure skating is gaining fans in much larger quantities than before, thanks to Yuzu.I know I wouldn't have stayed long enough to understand all those rules (and experience all the hair loss) were it not for him! And after the Pyeongchang Olympics, pretty much everyone I meet knows who Yuzu is, even if they don't know a thing about figure skating.

Having faith and analyzing situations realistically are in two parallel dimensions IMO. Describing what difficulties he's facing, trying to figure out what the chances seem to be depending on the information we have, does not equal saying "I believe he'll win/lose." Belief IMO has more to do with emotions, and that's where our support for Yuzu comes in. I think we need both in this sport.

It's not "can't believe he can win." He very much can and very probably will. But the comp is no longer "a piece of cake" like it used to be 3 years ago. The difficulties are very real, and the battle will be won the hard way. (Unless they both get a bit burnt out at GPF and bomb together at Nats. That is a pretty big possibility too. Not really relieving the stress!)

Well, at the press conference on the first day he went back to Japan after Olys, the host asked him about Beijing, and he said that he doesn't know at all, but if he goes, he will only be going for gold. Tbh unless he somehow goes through a drastic personality transformation, I think he's physically unable to not go for gold...

I don't think nationals is going to be easy at all this time, for several reasons. 1) It happens to be a showdown between the reigning OGM and OSM. Yuzu used to bomb and still win nationals with a large margin, but that was before. The last nats he went to was in 2015, and by now his competition, namely Shoma, has grown a lot. 2) Nats is shortly after GPF, in the middle of the season, a time when Yuzu is usually tired and very prone to injury & illness. 3) Figure skating always has something to do with politics, be it scoring, pressure, perception or consequences. And with an domestic competition it's domestic politics. Shoma has Nagoya, the biggest figure skating powerhouse in Japan, behind his back, while Yuzu doesn't. (Ofc he himself is a larger skating power than the rest of Japan combined lol, but not politically.) 4) Traditionally Japanese skaters take nationals very seriously. Many have said that there's this very special crushing pressure associated with nats that even outweighs worlds. 5) The JPN media is going to hype so much. I don't even want to imagine if Yuzu loses what some of them will say. So I think I'm going to be nervous to death when this years nationals come close.

I looked up ISU's regulations and can't seem to find any basis for that. The thing you can complain on an official level is "anomalies in judges scores and suspected (national) bias." So basically if most judges underscore you (therefore not an "anomaly") I don't think anything can be done... And as far as I know it has to be pretty audaciously obvious for the complain to work, for example a CHN judge scored Boyang's skate with a fall over the world record and got herself banned. But judges' scores varying from +1~+3 on the same jump happens pretty often and is just treated like a difference of opinion. I guess it's because theoretically whether a jump hits some of the bullets is a subjective judgement, though in reality it often has to do with national bias. (Note that I could be wrong. I just read some files but I don't know any judges or how they actually work. ) Here's a link to the said regulations: https://www.isu.org/docman-documents-links/isu-files/documents-communications/special-regulations-technical-rules/special-regulations-and-technical-rules/17927-single-pair-and-ice-dance-2018/file

From your head to figure skating gods' ears! Since it was the birth place of 4Lz, Yuzu may feel comfortable to produce a new jump again there I don't think Yuzu would talk about his favorite lady skaters anytime soon even if he follows the discipline. Never underestimate how low some JPN tabloid stoop... I saw a news article on yahoo last month, accompanied by a fuzzy photo of Yuzu at TCC's gate that seems like it was taken by paparazzi, titled something like "Hanyu training for new season; he's not living in the same mansion with Medvedeva!" Like, what, why write that?? They don't hesitate a second to invent things and invade his private life. So I think he won't give them any thing to build on. It's sad, but a wise thing to do I guess. (It's not to say that he hasn't complimented female skaters, but as far as I remember he always focuses on very specific things like wakaba's jump, evgenia's consistency etc.)

About the Mao/Shizuka difference, in addition to political reasons, I think there are also factors like Mao was the genius little girl whom everyone watched grow up and jump 3A & even quads, while Shizuka was sort of a late-blooming flower, starting to win worlds and Olympics well into her 20s. Also probably most importantly, Mao belonged to a large agency that do publicity really well, sometimes crazily Shirota-san is head of ANA's figure skating department, which equals Yuzu's team leader. She was the previous chairwoman of JSF, but resigned the job because she was accused of appropriation. I read somewhere that the incident was actually them using fund for a skating program without required procedures, but I don't know the details. Anyway, after she left, JSF fell into the hands of her political rival (who had a speed skating background & imo doesn't care about figure skating...), hence association with her is considered a political disadvantage facing the current JSF. On the other hand, she's an important figure in the rise of Japan's figure skating. She started the summer training camp program that unearthed many talents through the years. She was the team leader when Shizuka won Turino. And she was the one who helped sending Yuzu to train overseas, and had given Yuzu & his mom a lot of help long before becoming his team leader. (This is all I know which is not much. Please feel free to correct me if I got sth wrong!)

To think about it, Yuzu doesn't really belong to any skating tradition/school/powerhouse or whatever you call it. He's Japanese & laid a great technical foundation in Japan. From Russian heroes & teachers he found his artistic origin. North American coaches & choreographers help him hone his skills & present a unique package. I think he's the most complete skater the world has ever seen for many reasons, and an important one of them is that he isn't confined to one place in terms of learning & experience. While many take pride in being totally "Japan-made," "Russia-made" etc, he is sort of a "skating global citizen." (pardon me for the lousy made-up term😂) None of the big feds or skating schools can call him entirely their own. I guess that might have cost him some political support, but it also helped him become the miraculous skater that he is. (Thanks to Shirota-san for sending him out!)