Anki

Olympic gold is worth about 4 Worlds gold just by regularity and the extra amount of pressure skaters have to endure ( I know fans of skaters who never won Olympic and only Worlds love to argue against that), but that is how it is reflected in the skating world. I recall Shizuka saying that she originally wanted to retire when she won Worlds but she did not get much pay-rise at the ice shows. Because of that she continued on to go to the Olympics, and after she won, the pay rise was huge. And if you look at the title of skaters on the Japanese ice shows, if a skater has an Olympic silver or bronze, they get introduced as such even if they had won World gold. Hence, at least in Japan, any Olympic medal is worth more than Worlds gold. Hence the lack of a Olympic medal at Sochi is why Javi never was seen as to be in an equal rivalry with Yuzu the way Yagudin/Plushenko or Yuna/Mao was. Consecutively just sounds good I guess - has a more ring to it. Compared to that I don't understand why people place more value on Patrick's 3 consecutive World wins than Yuzu's 4 consecutive GPF wins - I understand World still has higher legacy prestige than GPF due to its longer history, but in reality winning the GPF is no less harder than World - the pressure is the same for both - in fact GPF is harder because you have to prove yourself over three events, such that the winner is less likely to be a "just happen to have a good day" type of winner. Hopefully after GPF has a longer history its prestige increases.

He actually doesn't know how to ride a bike, he said so at the JoC or JSF ceremony this year - which immediately made headline news lol the News article said that only around 1% of Japanese can't ride a bike. I guess he is the special 1% after all. To me this is weirder than he can't swim, although i am pretty sure he will learn quickly if he tried - I am guessing he is scared of injuring or twisting his ankle in any way in riding a bike that is probably why he never tried

Isn't the main reason for Yuzu's lack of political support Shirota? Otherwise there would have been no reason JSF would not have given him full support towards achieving double Olympic Champion - that would have been huge for Japan and he isn't even at the age where he needs to pass the baton to the younger generation.. plenty of male skaters skate till they are 27 or 28. I often wonder whether his skating career would have been easier if he wasn't associated with Shirota - but then he wouldn't have moved to TCC (although even if he did not go, I am sure he would still have had a stellar career , but whether the stars would have aligned for a double Olympic gold may be a different story ) But on the flip side the reason Hanyu is so strong and a well-rounder is because he knows he has no one to rely upon other than himself - he basically have to do 110% for the judges to award him 100%, hence he is never complacent. This season he will probably be one of the skaters most vulnerable to the judging - despite the fact he hasn't ruled out Beijing, other than his fans, most people and maybe JSF and ISU too, seem to think he won't stay the full quad - which means they are desperate to create a new "idol" to fill in the void when he does leave. and unfortunately the only way they can think of is by having someone beat him.