Vulnavia

I haven't listened but I believe Boitano is still fairly active in doing stuff with USFS, so him saying questionable things about Yuzu isn't too surprising. Try not to let it ruin your OGMiversary.

The problem is that the judges are going to continue to treat Nathan as if he's the full package even though he's not. All of Yuzu's programs are better than anything that Nathan has ever done, but if the ISU and USFS are determined to crown Nathan as the new king it's going to be an uphill battle for Yuzu no matter what his programs are.

Maybe Yuzu watched Johnny's commentary at USNats and decided he didn't want to perform Otonal anymore

I know it's random and silly but I totally want Yuzu to be the most viewed skater on the Olympic youtube. I think he and Yuna currently have the most in terms of total views of their different programs, but in terms of a single program he's got a way to go to catch Lipnitskaya's 13 million views on her team skate from Sochi.

This is totally random, but with all of the Notte Stellata talk lately I've realized that we've been slacking off because the Olympic version is not at a million views yet:

Reminds me of Max Kovtun after Worlds last season when he called Yuzu a god, dismissed a Nathan fan trying to get him to compliment Nathan too by reiterating that Yuzu is already a legend, and then said in an interview that he couldn't care less that Yuzu lost to Nathan because Yuzu's performance impressed him more.

In my experience, a lot of Nathan fans are very quick to characterize any criticism of his skating or his scores as "hate", or they'll say that he shouldn't ever be criticized in any way because he works so hard (as if working hard is unique to him and not something that all elite athletes do). Also just generally speaking, people who know deep down that their fave is overscored are going to be prickly and defensive when scoring discourse starts. It's not always worth engaging with that, and similarly, I feel that not all skating forums are worth my time and energy to read. That forum does not make my cut.

I think Max was conflating two things that are somewhat related, but separate, and he should have been more specific and clear. Nathan and Alysa aren't overscored because they're Chinese-American. They're overscored because they're American and USFS is a powerful fed that politics aggressively for their chosen skaters. Where Nathan and Alysa's Chinese heritage will come into play is with NBC when they start pushing their media narratives going into the Olympics. Someone upthread was wondering whether the American media would be dumb enough to assume that Nathan and Alysa will have massive popularity among Chinese fans simply because they're of Chinese descent and yes, the American media absolutely will be dumb enough to think that. They're not going to look into the Chinese fandom and realize that Yuzu is way more popular than Nathan and Alysa combined, or that some Chinese fans aren't that into Nathan because of stuff like the Mao's Last Dancer program. But the thing is that while narratives that are created for PR and politicking purposes do often affect the scoring, there's not a direct equation of Nathan & Alysa are Chinese-American = inflated scores, and Max shouldn't have mushed the two things together in such a vague way.

If I were Brian I would have told Doug Haw never to speak to TSL again a long time ago.

Then he shouldn't have been speaking to Hersh about the situation at all, and especially not before he discussed it with Yuzu. (Or if he felt that giving no comment would look bad, he could have just simply stated that there is no problem at all between Yuzu and his coaching team and that they'll be with him next week at JNats.) Just like he should not have been doing 'everything is shiny and happy and wonderful here at the Cricket Club!!!!!' posts on Instagram while his top student was alone at a major competition, regardless of the circumstances. I've worked in PR and social media and I evaluate Brian's terrible PR game from that perspective. Not everyone who disagrees with you is some hysterical overly emotional fan just flipping out and overreacting.

I saw that too and I'd say there's a reason why the person who said it only has two followers. But yes, unfortunately we're going to hear more and more of this stuff now.

Yes, Brian probably will say something like that. Luckily, Ghislain was with Yuzu in Torino and he understood why Yuzu did it and played it perfectly PR wise in the media. And speaking of Ghislain, no break for him, he'll be at the Korean ranking competition with Jun in a few days.

He's bitter because deep down he knows that Yuzu will always be the superior skater and that no matter what happens, Nathan will never be as globally popular or beloved as Yuzu. You can become powerful by gaming a system but earning loyalty and respect on a large scale is a different story.

I guarantee you that if Nathan were to recycle a program next season, the narrative among his fans and the US media would immediately shift to 'OMG look at how Nathan's decision to recycle is such a great opportunity to show how much he's grown as an innovative balletic artiste, what brilliance!', and they wouldn't care in the slightest that they sounded like huge hypocrites. Kinda like how the narrative in Vancouver was that their American champion was much better than Plushenko because Plusenko had nothing but jumps while Lysacek was such a well rounded skater who should win without quads, but now that they have an American champion who is a good jumper but not well rounded at all the narrative has shifted to 'our champion is the quad king! Quads are everything! Who needs great skating skills or spins or meaningful artistry when you have quads!' No matter what Nathan does, it will be right, and no matter what Yuzu does, it will be wrong.

So you defended Kavaguti's comments without actually having read them? O...kay. Well, I did read them and I stand by what I said yesterday. I think some people are using "semantics" to give Kavaguti a pass by claiming that she was only criticizing a small subset of fans, but there's actually no indication that that's what she really meant and there was no reason for her to drag Yuzu's name in at all if her real goal was just to complain about some Japanese fans not meeting her personal standard of the proper way to be a skating fan.

I mean, fans "trash talking" about other skaters is in no way unique to fanyus. There's plenty of trash talk among Russian fans of various skaters, for example, and some of the trashiest trash that I've seen has been directed at Yuzu by Nathan fans and not the other way around. So why single out fanyus as the only problematic group when that's far from the truth? And honestly, while I do think that fans should follow rules as competitions and be respectful towards all of the athletes, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being a fan of Yuzu mostly or even exclusively and not of the sport as a whole, especially considering that the integrity of this "sport" on the whole is questionable at best at the moment. The vast majority of fanyus are supportive of many skaters, but if someone wants to support Yuzu and Yuzu alone, that's 100% their right and they shouldn't be shamed for it. Kavaguti's comments are completely inaccurate, inappropriate, and disrespectful to Yuzu and his fans and none of us should have to sit around pretending that she might have a point. She doesn't.

"I can't produce a meaningful critique of any substance of Yuzuru Hanyu as a person or of his skating since they don't actually exist, so please try to enjoy this fake deep sounding gibberish instead."

No, it's okay, I know exactly what you meant and you're right. I saw that "meaningfully engage" tweet too and there's not enough in the world for that kind of take. Nothing against any other skater, coach, choreographer, or just athlete in general out there, but there's literally nobody who meaningfully engages with their sport more than Yuzu does. And even if that weren't the case, he's more than earned the right to do whatever he wants with his skating. I guess since they can't say that anyone else has skated better or scored higher than him this season, they have to resort to this pseudo-philosophical weirdness.

I apologize on behalf of sane and knowledgeable American skating fans I usually just try to laugh that stuff off because it is funny how far they have to reach and twist themselves up in logic pretzels trying to find anything to criticize about Yuzu or his skating.

Sure, he should do whatever he wants, he doesn't owe anybody anything at this point. But at the end of the day, figure skating is a highly political sport where narratives matter and can affect scoring. And right now, the narrative from the pro-Nathan camp is that he has this amazing, unique, modern artistry with diverse and exciting music choices. I don't think that narrative reflects reality at all, but it's out there and being used to justify Nathan's inflated PCS. So while I don't think Yuzu's recycling is an issue this season, if he were to recycle one or both of these programs for a third time he'd be adding fuel to the narrative that Nathan and other skaters are making more interesting choices artistically, and while I don't think it would cause his PCS to drop dramatically or anything, it would just be one more challenge he'd have to deal with.

I hate to be pessimistic, but I don't think the judges will respond favorably if he recycles again next season. He's already fighting against the narratives coming from some corners that he's old news and should just retire and that skaters like Nathan are growing so much artistically with their "modern" and "innovative" choreo and music choices. (And this season, even some Yuzu fans felt that there wasn't really a burning need to keep Otonal as a short program when he'd already skated it so well last season.) Although we all know that Yuzu is always deserving of high scores regardless of the program thanks to the quality of his skating, I'm not sure that keeping the same free skate for three seasons in a row would be a good move PR wise at the moment. Hopefully he'll be able to perform it to his satisfaction this season, or at least shelve it until the Olympic season if it comes to that.

Didn't Yuzu say something in one of his interviews after SCI about how last season he cleared the "jinx" of never winning his first GP event, and now he's won SC for the first time, and that he wants to keep clearing these 'jinxes' one by one? So if he's healthy and it makes sense to him in terms of his plans for the season, I wouldn't be too surprised to see him at 4CC.

Going back to the conversation about youtube views from before, Yuzu's PW from Sochi just hit five million views. I'm sure everyone who went back to watch it again (and again and again) after SCI helped.

It is really sad to me that the #1 coach in the USFS system right now is someone who thinks it's appropriate or funny to refer to his young students as cows or 'pigs who can't fly', and openly brags about gaming the scoring system.

My vote would be no, because he doesn't need it to win in that field and he's already mentioned how aware he is of what happened the last two seasons and his desire to minimize injury risk at his second grand prix, especially with the GPF so soon after NHK. It would be an unnecessary risk and putting extra pressure on himself for minimal reward. That being said, it wouldn't surprise me at all if he lulled everyone into thinking that there won't be any 4lz this season only to pull it out of his bag of tricks at the GPF. But a lot also depends on how his training is going and what he's prioritizing, so hard to say for sure.