rockstaryuzu

LOL. Well in a sense, Brian is also a citizen of Planet Hanyu...

It's more a matter of not upsetting my sister in law. Don't think she'd take kindly to me missing 2 years in a row. I can definitely do the Friday, should be able to manage the Thursday. Will have to think on it. This year is killing me. Usually the competitions are out of reach but here we are with ACI and SCI within driving distance of me, and GPF within the country. If only I didn't have to work for a living from September to December...

I have a terrible dilemma regarding that. I could easily go, but the Saturday session is the same day as my nephew's 2nd birthday. I missed his first birthday last year because I was out of the country and i don't want to miss it again. ACI/Skate Canada hasn't released the schedule of the comp, so I don't know which day is the men's competition. I don't know whether to go or not, or if I go, which day. Maybe I shouldn't be greedy and should just hope for the best when I go to Skate Canada International in Laval...*confused* Oh hey look! I'm a tissue box now! Yay!!

That's so Yuzu! He's such a baseball fan too.

Yes we are. This is a bit OT but indulge me for a bit: there's a wonderful story about the time Pierce Brosnan came to my (Ontario) town to film a movie. He and the director went shopping in our biggest, busiest downtown mall...and no one even noticed. They went to the food court to get coffees and were sitting there enjoying the anonymity, when suddenly they overhear two kids at the next table arguing. It turns out one kid had recognized them and was trying to convince his friend that they were famous. The other wasn't buying it, arguing that if it really Pierce Brosnan, he'd have bodyguards and a manager with him. And then the kids argued over whether they should approach him and finally decided not to. Brosnan himself told the story to the local newspaper when they came round to write a piece about the movie, because it gave him such a chuckle. Canada. The place where no one will admit they recognize you, even if they do. 😆

This. This is what I was getting at with my original comments. If he wants to go out and do these things, I hope he actually gets some time to do it. All of the comments implying that there's something wrong with expressing a wish for Yuzu to not be so busy he can't stop and smell the flowers, and that he seems quite happy to keep his head down and only skate, you are misunderstanding. In more than one interview, Yuzu has given the impression that he might like to do some ordinary things ( such as go see Kanazawa castle) but that he's simply too busy. When I say things like I hope he can go to a Jays game, what I mean is that I hope the busy subsides enough for him to take some time for himself to do those other things he enjoys. That is all.

Anyone can go incognito in Toronto. It's not like most Torontonians expect to see celebs on the street and keep an eye out. Plus, your average Canadian's reaction to seeing a celebrity is closer to 'let's not bother them, pretend you don't notice' than to act all star-struck and ask for photos or autographs.

You have weigh that against the odds that there'll be that many figure skating fans going to a Blue Jays game at the Skydome who are also seasoned fanyus. I think if you dressed him up in Jays gear no one would look twice, especially if he didn't sit too close to where TV cameras are likely to spot him in the crowd. There are thousands and thousands of Asian men in Toronto...he could potentially blend in quite well. Anyway, I'm just saying it would be really nice if he could, and I hope that he'll be able to do some of these things.

In interviews (such as the one he just gave in Kanazawa), he always sounds like it's a combination of being terribly busy and too famous to go out safely, that holds him back. Anyway, the reason I mentioned baseball is because I know he's a fan. Although he missed his chance to see Ohtani play in Toronto, those games were right before the start of FAOI so no dice.

Honestly, I just want him to get the chance to go to a Blue Jays game while he's in Toronto...it seems like no.matter where he goes in the world, he never has time to enjoy the place...

You're definitely right about the Chinese wanting medal contenders in Beijing. I'm not really sure I agree that Boyang needs an 'image upgrade' so much as some different training from a fresh perspective. He has oodles of raw talent but needs to develop more control over his body and mental focus, is the way I see it. But his 'image' ...that is, his public image, to me seems very good already. I don't know what kind of changes China would want him to.make in that regard.

To be fair, it wasn't just Brian who pretended Yuzu was fine before the Games, Yuzu himself also said nothing until afterwards. Brian has since admitted it was a strategic choice made to ensure the other skaters and coaches didn't get Ideas about how they.might be able to surpass Yuzu.

This only highlights even more how unusual a step this is for them, to my way of thinking. Plus it also makes me wonder if Boyang has high connections and if so, what kind. But maybe this talk is getting too political? Anyway, congratulations Yuzuru. What a lovely honour!

Well, we overthink because we don't have solid news and can't be eyewitnesses to these events.

My impression of Yuzu is that he probably also would think it wrong to object to Boyang coming, thereby holding him back from improving...Hanyu seems like the kind of guy that would encourage all of his competitors to reach for the stars, just so that he can beat them all at a higher level... Tracy has always worked a lot with Javi so it'll probably be her.

I'm also surprised that Brian hasn't spoken much with Boyang yet either. from the sounds of it, even though this is an unprecedented move by the Chinese, they may be trying to handle it in a very controlled way, as is fairly common for them. Makes me madly curious to be a fly on the wall at TCC right now.

I'm not crying, you're crying...😭😍

Ah, I see my memory of it is slightly wrong...but you get the idea!

I've heard Yuzuru 'Hanyo' a lot. But my favorite mangling is not a name but the time an announcer introduced both Yuzu and Shoma as Chinese. Yuzu's side-eye is epic, and when the announcer followed up by saying 'Boyang Jin, China', Yuzu does the most sarcastic slow clap ever. It's worth Googling the video.

All of this story is new to me, since I started following Yuzu seriously only after LGC came out, but having been both a competitor and a coach in Canadian amateur sports, and therefore knowing a little bit about how coaches are trained here, I can feel confident in saying that someone like Brian would never knowingly ignore an issue that big with one of their athletes. It's a massive no-no and completely opposite to the Canadian approach to sport in general. Brian must have been quite upset when he finally realized what had really been going on with Yuzu that year. When all is said and done and Brian finally hangs up his many team coats and retires from coaching, I hope he writes a book about his coaching methods and philosophies, because I really want to know them.

I remember watching the news coverage of the night the Berlin Wall came down, and thinking it couldn't be real, it was so unbelievable. Then getting up and checking the news again the next morning and realizing it really was true. It was an exhilarating feeling - as if the future was suddenly boundless and incredibly bright. And I was never especially affected by the Wall or the Cold War...just an ordinary teenager growing up under the global threat of nuclear war, but in a country where it wasn't a daily personal reality. What a time to be alive. It was like there was nothing the world couldn't do. [Admin edit: politics] as for Yuzu, his uni studies seem to be science-y related (honestly, the name of his major translates so awkwardly into English I can't figure out what he's studying) , so pegging him for anything other than the informal ambassadorship of cameraderie seems a bit unrealistic. But I do like how he interacts with other skaters. He and Boyang will hopefully have a good time with this now.

That being said, I really cannot get over both the Chinese and the Russians letting star athletes out of their respective countries to train in the West. Maybe all of you are too young to remember the Cold War and what things have been like in sports with those two countries for a very long time, but trust me when I say that this represents a sea change in thinking for both those nations. I'm marvelling. I'm also kind of marvelling that the Japanese skating federation/ Japanese government didn't express more concern about their star skating with a Chinese athlete, considering how tense the relationship between Japan and China can sometimes be. It's like geopolitical influences/interferences are slowly ebbing away from sport. It's so awesome but it's so weird to witness for children of the Cold War like me.

Wow, sad. Anyway, gossip aside, I'm REALLY looking forward to the next few years of competition now. I hope having all these great skaters together at TCC produces unprecedented excellence all round and that it'll be something the world has never seen and can only marvel at. So proud of Brian. I loved him back in '88 at the Calgary games when it looked like he got robbed of the gold medal by a hair, and I've loved him ever since, and what he's doing with coaching now is blowing me away in another way...proud of Tracy too, for the same reasons.

I've heard this before, but I've never seen much of it online so I honestly don't know what it might be referring to. Are Japanese tabloids worse than western ones? I can't imagine what someone could possibly say about Yuzu in a tabloid that would be so much worse than the usual celebrity gossip stuff that he'd feel the need to comment.

Lambiel and Vasiljevs have done this on several occasions. Also, I believe, Takahashi and Lambiel. It's not new. Would be very fun to see Yuzu and Medvedeva do one though. But on that note it would be very fun to see Yuzu with anybody. heck, I'd pay to watch yuzu read the phonebook. In Japanese. And i don't speak Japanese (much).