rockstaryuzu

Thank you for putting my thoughts into words! It makes me extremely angry the way people are ready to jump down Brian's throat over each bump in the road. It's like there's a portion of fanyus that just don't want to believe a Western coach like Brian could ever possibly be trusted to care for an Asian skater at all, and their reactions border on hysteria. I wonder if Brian had to go through all this with Yuna's fans too. If so, I don't know how he keeps on putting up with it.

I'm very disappointed, but not at all surprised, that NBC contacted Brian and tried to dig into this situation. They were obviously looking for some dirt to fling around and personally I think they should have left well enough alone. It is interesting that Brian says JSF submitted Ghislain's name before Brian knew about it. That could have happened for many reasons, with the simplest explanation being a straight-up misunderstanding between JSF and Yuzu. I don't think we should read any more into it, but I do find it to be another example of how little JSF thinks of Yuzu, that they couldn't do something like this correctly. And there's also the possibility that Yuzu simply realized Brian was busy and didn't want to bother him. I could totally see Yuzu doing that out of general politeness.

Asthma does three things: it makes the muscles lining the respiratory tract spasm, constricting the airways, the tissues of the airways swell, and it makes the body produce more mucus. So 3 different things happen to close off the airways, so as a result it becomes harder to breathe, and the lungs get less oxygen. So for an asthmatic athlete, they're already at a disadvantage before they even begin because their body can't always draw in enough air to keep their performance up. Edited: sorry, I just realized two others have answered already. Anyway, allow me to contribute something from my own personal experience as an asthmatic athlete: you go for months between attacks where your breathing is completely normal, so at those times you can train normally. But an attack can hit you out of nowhere and leave you coughing, wheezing and gasping. And when you're having an attack, it feels like you're trying to breathe through a plastic straw. Breathing out is almost as hard as breathing in. And your whole upper body has to get involved so your chest and back heave trying to breathe in. If his attacks are anything like mine, he'd be in a lot of discomfort when they happen, but perfectly fine when they don't.

Just leaving this here is case anyone hasn't seen it. We've all done so much hand-wringing over the GPF results but he himself sounds remarkably matter-of-fact and even sanguine about it: @holina for some reason, I could picture him as a surfer. I don't know why, maybe he just has that slightly off-beat character. And yes, the mental image is very

But is it anything new? People have said crap like that for ages...and if it weren't for his deep knee bend landings, Yuzu would not be able to save as many jumps as he does. @Figure_Frenzy I'm not a physiotherapist, but biomechanically, I think landing with stiff knees would actually cause you hip and back problems because more of the force of the jump gets transferred up your leg. A deep knee bend actually absorbs and distributes the shock.

I have to agree about body composition being a factor. One of my most spectacular learn-to-swim failures is my brother, who is a Nordic skier/rugby player/rock climber. From the start he would sink like a stone no matter what we tried because of his high muscle density and low body fat. He eventually learned to compensate by kicking more and adjusting his body position but it was a struggle. Yuzu's sinking point would definitely be his thighs - he's got so much muscle and bone with no floaty body fat at all. Swimming would be a lot of effort for him, is my guess.

I was really proud of myself for managing to read the whole thing in French! Not as out of practice as I thought.

The whole asthma-sports connection makes me laugh. Half my swim team had asthma - their doctors recommended they swim to improve it! (Humid environment = good for lungs, I guess). Yuzu's definitely not the first Olympian with asthma and he won't be the last. And yes, I have taught many adults how to swim and would be delighted to help Yuzu with that. That being said, swimming is big as an elementary school exercise in Japan. I'd be very surprised if he'd never had lessons at all, not even through his school. But I suspect Yuzu would prefer to build his stamina by doing runthroughs and laps around the rink.

I don't know but I'm leaning towards yes. The 3 months between JNats and Worlds is a long time and he hasn't had a full competitive season in 2 years, so maybe he'll be champing at the bit to go. That being said, going to 4CC may not be up to him - it might be a question of getting assigned there by JSF. So who knows, really? I don't think there are any other convenient competitions in January or February that he could go to if he wants to give a new layout a dry run.

Yeah, TCC makes stuff like that available to their skaters if they want it. And we've seen in previous Japanese interviews that Yuzu spends a lot of time doing dryland runthroughs of his programs in front of a mirror at home, plus from videos posted by various TCC skaters they have a dance studio they can use to work on routines together or separately. So even if Yuzu is only on the ice 10 hours a week, he is probably spending quite a bit more time than that working on his skating while off the ice. Training for a sport, as I learned back when I was a competitive swimmer, is never about how much practice you do, but about how smartly you practice. Being focussed and using the time wisely will take you a lot farther than hours of endless repetition. Unless you're trying to up your endurance. Then you need to put in the miles. If Yuzu is serious about the five quad layout with 3A3A seq., he probably will have to put in some miles to build his stamina.

Personally I think Yuzu is better off for not having the dance training; posture aside, he didn't have to unlearn any habits that would interfere with his skating. The two disciplines are completely different ways of moving through space, IMO. Not having dance instruction in his head probably frees Yuzu up to do what actually works well for his skating without any unnecessary 'shoulds' getting in the way. Besides which, if he really thought he needed it, he could get dance training now easily enough. I don't think he'd find it much of a challenge, honestly. He could probably already manage grand jete (sorry no accents on my phone keyboard), cabriole, saute de basque, and maybe even barrel turns pretty easily.

I think he's already the Phoenix. His costume last year was definitely phoenix-like. He's in the process of rising from the ashes IMO. I'm only going to quote Tracy "We thought we'd seen his best, but his best is yet to come." I feel this very strongly.

Oh that's so pretty!! (I love textiles, especially embroidered ones, by the way, and collect them when i travel). Or is it a painting? Where's it from?

Yuzu's true legacy.

I don't need to look...have spent far too much time on aircanada.ca for my own travel purposes and have a pretty good idea what their routes and timetables are...

It's only five hours by train! It would be 90 minutes if we had a shinkansen tho. perfectly good skating clubs here. Minto is pretty famous. They don't have any big skaters right now though!

I hope he chains his passport to his wrist! Also, I haven't seen any media with Ghislain at all - have you got a link?

up until a couple of years ago, as far as I can tell from reading interviews and news reports, he was able to take TTC (Toronto city buses) to and from TCC, but some fans figured out his bus stop and bus routes and started popping up on his commute, which he was uncomfortable with, and so he had to stop. He should move to my city, no one looks at anyone here, and in winter, you're wearing so many layers no one can see your face anyway. he'd go completely unnoticed.

and give poor Ghislain a break...did Utashin make JNats? If that's the case then probably Tracy will go as well. By the way, I predict the very first thing Yuzu will be asked by Brian is something along the lines of "What were you thinking, trying 4A there?!"

That was my interpretation as well. Raf's Yuzu's fan, remember.

Probably not but who knows. This thing is like a soap opera..."As the WADA Turns" or maybe "The Young and the Drugless"...

Without having any actual information to go on, I do believe that Olympian was probably Zhenya. It was her appearance before WADA prior to Pyeongchang that helped convince them to let the Russian athletes compete there at all. Which is why she was named athlete ambassador for the 2020 Tokyo Games. With all this going on, I find it amazing that she can continue to train and stay at the top level in her sport. She's one formidable lady - and she isn't even 20 yet. Imagine what she'll be like in future!

Yes, his life really follows the hero cycle. If you wrote it in a story, people would tell you it was too unrealistic to be believable.

No they just add the skating while Russian bonus to the scores is all.

ANA, like most airlines, uses partner airlines (it's called 'code-share') to provide coverage on routes where they don't fly their own planes. ANA's partner airline in Canada is Air Canada. Air Canada flies Toronto direct to London, Paris, Amsterdam, or Frankfurt daily in winter; to every other destination in Europe, you have to take a connecting flight. As to why this is, I really don't have room to write a dissertation on how airlines operate here, so let me sum it up as saying, it allows airlines to reduce costs and make profit. I'm just glad ANA isn't partners with Ryannair. Imagine Yuzu having to catch the equivalent of a Greyhound Bus, only flying.