rockstaryuzu

OMG. Is this a sign that Javi has also succumbed to the media day wait madness? Joking aside, this kind of thing is why Javi pretty well defines the term "good sport"...

What's annoying is that there's so much they could to make the technical scores more objective. PCS is never gonna be.

Sorry for the double post!!!

Can't watch the video, but I love the thumbnail. The fedora suits him so well.

Who knows? I'm going on the assumption that most sponsorship deals do end eventually. Although if Lotte wants to keep this up and start a TV series "Making Chocolate with Yuzu" after he retires, I'd be quite delighted.

Didn't he though? Anyway, the arm hair Twitter post...if you click through, someone in the comments has a link posted to the full video and it's worth a watch. Yuzu is being very cute and extremely extra and also, for some reason, learning how to temper chocolate? (Japanese sponsorship deals seem to be very different from the rest of the world LOL). You can see him trying to memorize the chocolatier's moves as she shows him how.... it's just like choreography. Also, don't miss his adorable mouthful-of-chocolate-cake voice at the end. It instantly made me want to cook for him. What do you mean, I'm gushing? If this video is any indication, by the time his partnership with Lotte ends, he'll know everything he needs to launch a career in the chocolate arts.

If memory serves, that was because it was so bloody blatant and there was actual proof that it happened, not just suspicion. And also, it took place in a country where freedom of the press is pretty near sacred. There's no American journalist who'd be scared to cover a story like that for fear of repercussions or reprisals.

Media backing? I don't know about that. My recollection was the media ( not the commentators who were calling the programs) found proof of corrupt judging and exposed it, after the competition had taken place. Which is actually one of the correct and rightful roles of journalism in the public interest. My point is that judges don't listen to what the commentators are saying during the programs and then use that to arrive at the final score. And the judges are in a far better position to see what's going on on the ice than any of the commentators. So to bring this back to where we started, a jump's not UR until a judge rules it's UR, and all the commentary by sports journalists in the world doesn't change that. Hence the commentary is not worth mentioning. Anyway guys, this is the last I'm going to say on the subject because I feel like we're derailing the thread.

WOW. that's incredible.

This is one particular instance that I don't know much about, since my TV sports channels are TSN, CBC, and CTV. And sometimes NBC. Just looking at what you wrote, I wouldn't call your particular comment an attack, but I'm sure many of the comments directed at the commentator in this instance were attacks. Now I'm not going defend the CBC, because I happen to think that at least two of their female FS commentators are certified idiots. But I've seen them bashed online over really innocuous comments they made that didn't even have much to do with the skating at all, and frankly, it was ridiculous. Bottom line: sports commentary isn't rocket science, and a lot of the people that do it make mistakes, but I don't see the point in setting the bar too high in terms of what one expects of them, given what the nature of the job is. If they're outright lying to the public, that's one thing. But if they're just blabbing away trying to say something sort of related to the skating because that's why they're there, then they can and probably should be ignored. And even if they are biased ( I'm looking at you, American sports channels), in the long term, their words don't change the competition results one bit. So why waste the electrons and pixels it takes to complain about them.

Oh! Now I wanna see Yuzu do Ruroni Kenshin! He'd be perfect! And the story would be perfect for him!

A great idea! And maybe put a link on Yuzu's Wikipedia page? Although I can't volunteer to do it either, I have no time.

No. The actual general public (as in, the man or woman on the street who never watched skating) don't know even that much about figure skating, and even if they happen to watch a competition, they're such casual watchers that they won't retain what the commentators say. The people who watch once and take an interest and do remember the comments will watch more and sooner or later form their own opinions anyway, regardless of what the commentators say. As regards Brian's comment, I saw that in an interview I watched on YouTube, I can't remember which one. He says specifically that when Yuzu came to them in 2012, that he needed to work towards more consistent control of his skating. Bear in mind, you're attacking me right now as if I had said that I think Yuzu is inconsistent (which I don't, by the way). Instead, I was merely pointing out a specific instance where the comments that commentators make don't necessarily come out of nowhere.

Honestly, if FS was commentated like this, I think most of the problems people have with what they say would just go away. The problems all start when they're trying to fill 'dead air' with the first thing that comes to mind. Imagine a play-by-play for Ballade. Or LGC: "And here he comes down the ice....his speed is high...got to be going at a good speed before this next elements...you can see the power in his legs...he's working hard...Mohawk... inside edge... 3turn...crossover...crossover.... aaAANNDD it's a knee slide! Oh, what a display of showmanship! He really nailed that. Great effort by Hanyu, and the crowd goes wild!!!" * Please note I did not actually look at LGC while writing this. The choreography may be slightly off.

The reality is, not one bit of any of those comments ever made a difference to Yuzuru's performance, or Shoma's for that matter. Therefore those comments were irrelevant. The fact that people will pick up on a commentators opinion and perpetuate it just makes it all the more imperative not to give too much weight to what they say. If either fans or antis start giving out online about what some sports reporter says in the heat of the moment, they're giving it far more life than it needs to have. As for whether what they're saying is factually true or not...well, for example, Brian himself has commented that when Yuzu came to him, he was sometimes inconsistent. Sports commentators can hardly be faulted for repeating stuff that came from the coach's own mouth. IMO, the role of the commentator is to say as little as possible anyway. It's better to let people watch and listen to the music. Then make the comments during the replay.

This would come under the heading of "egregiously bad". Most of the commentators in this category , I've noticed, are not specialists in figure skating, but just sports reporters dragged in from other sports because the network needs somebody. You make the comparison with football, but most football commentators are following that sport full time.

Sometimes they do, sometimes even in slo-mo they don't catch it. TBH, unless the commentators are being egregiously awful, in my opinion there's no reason to pay much attention to what they say at all. And they're not omnipotent skating gods or anything. They're ordinary human beings trying to do a sometimes tough job on the fly. If they make a mistake, it's instantly broadcast to the entire audience, because it's live TV. And because it's live TV, something is happening every second so even if they are aware of a mistake, they don't always get to go back and fix it. This is why I find most commentator-bashing really offensive. They're working stiffs trying to do a job, for the most part they do ok at it, and nothing they say during a broadcast in any way affects the skater's scores, so if you don't like or agree with what they say, just ignore them.

Considering that they're doing it live in the moment and probably have a bunch of other things they have to pay attention to offscreen ( because making TV is like that) , they might not realize right away. All I'm saying is, it's pointless to expect a perfect call from the commentators every time. What matters is the judge's scores, not what the commentators say. Personally, I tune them out unless it's Kurt, and the only reason I listen to Kurt is because he knows a lot of the skaters as friends and has interesting anecdotes to tell about them.

I think that often the commentators don't have any better of a view of the skating than we have. They're not sitting down where the judges are...so depending on the vantage point they might not see everything well. Something to keep in mind when you don't agree with what they say...

I sometimes watch TSL but they take way too long to get to the point &are so affected in their mannerisms that they drive me crazy. Plus their videos are way too long. Who has 90 minutes to sit and watch them blab, really? On the topic of Yuzuru being bullied or not: either way, success is the best revenge and he's got that in spades.

I love this. Just goes to show how big he's become. On the topic of bullying: there's a saying in Japan that goes 'The nail that sticks out is hammered down' , and what it's basically referring to is the traditional Japanese preference for a society where everyone is sort of the same, people work to fit into their role in society and not stand out, and retribution towards those who do stand out is swift and vicious. And it can hold back people who have exceptional talents from fully succeeding. It's probably where an awful lot of the bullying against Yuzu came from. But in the words of another famous 'nail that sticks out', Toma Ikuta, the actor, if you stick out far enough they will have to leave you alone. Hopefully Yuzu is now in that zone.

I know, right? Dude won't hit the ice without them but fearlessly plunges his bare hands into hot soapy dishwater... Now I want a dishwasher Yuzu in an apron for my kitchen... . . . imagine a full line of Yuzu household appliances. Or a Yuzu housekeeping robot. Every aunty's dream!!

Well, the whole thing is obviously some kind of mess and there's probably a lot more going on than meets the eye, so there's actually nothing that we can say for sure beyond the obvious.

I wonder if they made him do them all. 🤣

You think so? I've watched this interview on YouTube (someone did Engsub for it - aoyuzu maybe?) and this expression comes right where he starts listening to the pianist start playing. Later in the music, he breaks out in sweat, and when she's done playing, he apologized for sweating, saying that because of his image training, his heart rate automatically goes up when he hears the music ( something like that. I think the phrase he used was 'get excited' but it looked he was talking strictly about physical reaction. ) So this looks like his concentration face to me.