memae

Omg the Origin hair How have I never known about this account before?

Also RJ from WC '12. Like, bless his little heart, he is so into it that it's impossible not to get completely absorbed by it. Every time I watch it, even though I know it's coming, my heart just jumps out my throat when he trips. Can anyone watch it and not feel like a physical jolt back to reality when he falls? I feel like it must be a collective experience or something.

We sometimes used to get the rugby team from next door come in to walk laps in the pool all together while we were training and they used swirl the water so bad that we'd get swept around lol About him being a big inspiration to kids with asthma reminds me of Gary Hall Jr., who has Type 1 Diabetes and won multiple OGMs in swimming. It's remarkable that our understanding of medicine and bodies has come so far that athletes of such high calibre with such terrible chronic diseases exist. And they themselves, of course, are more remarkable still.

A pretty good speculation now that I remember the monitor he was wearing for his asthma.

It's definitely a coordination thing. I taught swimming for years too and was teaching 2 year olds to roll onto their backs and float and call out for help. (I'll add here that the older kids get without knowing how to swim the harder it is to teach them because they get so scared of the water). Floating looks like someone is just completely sedentary in the water but there's a bit of adjusting of your body and a bit of movement to stay afloat that just becomes automatic once you know how to do it. I didn't have a speck of fat on me at one time or another as a teenager but could still 'float'. As for asthma, my brother had terrible asthma as a little kid and swimming improved it a lot. His asthma started to play up again as an adult when he stopped swimming. I know Sasha Cohen swam for cross-training. I wouldn't be surprised if other skaters do too, simply because it's virtually a no-impact alternative to running, etc, and gives their knees and ankles a break while building stamina. You'd be so peeved as a skater if you rolled your ankle going for a jog after everything it withstands on the ice.

Ah, another swimmer! I specialised in 100 & 200 fly and 200-800 free before switching to open water as a young adult (and then I had some random, consecutive injuries (from dumb things like slipping on the stairs at home) too close to nationals and other major events and just couldn't get back into it). We were doing around 6km+ a session from the time I was about 14 or 15, and for me about 1/3 of that was fly. I guess when I think of the pace work and timed sets that get your HR up above 60% (but not the crazy level stuff that had me crying between sets lol), I don't remember it being hard or exhausting, perhaps because of the level of fitness swimming demands or because as soon as you hit the wall it stops hurting. (Also, it's so uncommon for someone to specialise in breaststroke and free - very commendable!). I wonder if for skaters it's a bit like the difference between stroking, drilling jumps, and run-throughs. Just that their higher intensity stuff comes with a high impact that we didn't have to worry about in the pool.

Kind of. I mean, the kilometres and kilometres are mostly made up of drills, warm ups, and sets of light-ish pace-work for aerobic fitness. It's the kind of easy, weightless movement that may as well be breathing to anyone who swims competitively, but it doesn't make anyone fast. It doesn't feel like over-training because that kind of swimming is so effortless. It feels like walking compared to running or even jogging - but's important for technique and maintaining the base fitness for all the anaerobic and speed work stuff that builds swimmers up to their racing fitness. That said, swimming is great for asthma (most of the time) and it's low impact. Maybe Yuzuru should consider hitting the pool.

That's part of what I enjoyed about his On Ice Perspectives clip. He's going so fast he disappears out of the frame lol

Update on Maia from a couple of days ago: the tumor was malignant. In her Christmas post on Insta she mentioned it's the first one she's had away from Alex, who is visiting family (grandparents, from memory) but she's too unwell to travel. Such sad news. I hope her treatment goes well and that she makes a full recovery.

Omg you guys.... the shade on Twitter directed at Forbes right now.... So delicious. ETA: I kept scrolling and then came across all these tweets from March with Yuzu being on the Forbes 30 under 30. I'm cackling away like a witch on the inside.

I feel like he's probably already got a good few hundred (or thousand) emails, tweets etc from the more enthusiastic fanyus among us. I'm sure he'll soon see his mistake (and perhaps the others). He must have searched Yuzu to know he won both Olympics and that he has a calendar (I'm guessing everything else got snapped up and wasn't searchable). That he didn't realise it wasn't even the same event as Rippon's bronze really suggests he did minimal research. Yuzu hasn't written a book? Bet he just searched US Amazon because I just searched on the .jp site and I could very quickly end up thousands of dollars poorer for it lol. There is so much stuff. He's a financial planner who is also a blogger. I'm relieved he's not a real journalist.

The second half of that! He is sportsmanship itself. Such uplifting words. He knew people always dismissed Shoma's Nats wins in the past and would also be dismissive of Shoma's win here because he (Yuzu) didn't skate well so he's made very sure to direct people to think positively about Shoma and see him as deserving of his success.

Lord have mercy on me. I've forgotten how to breathe.

No, but thank goodness.

Exactly this. Also, he's had how many 'rivals' now? Like each season he has had true competition and while some of his wins had big margins, pretty much none of them were easy. He's had to contend with Takahashi, Patrick Chan, Javi, Denis Ten, Boyang, Shoma, and now Nathan. No one else has come out on top again and again against so much consistent competition - he really broke the cycle. I know some of those skaters have been bigger 'threats' than others, so to speak, but all of them have been in a position to beat Zu at at least one major competition depending on how things played out. The last Olympics really could have been anyone's, especially because Yuzuru had that injury. (Side note: I think bombing the Olympics was the catalyst for Nathan's current success and consistency. He's really used the experience to his advantage and grown much stronger (mentally) for it, in my opinion.) None of his big wins were handed to him. The ones with the giant margins (against any of the skaters listed above) were the ones where everything finally came together for him for an exceptionally clean skate but they're pretty rare. None of his Olympic wins or his WC wins were free of hiccoughs. He really fights, and that's part of what endears him so much to us.

Let's not forget all of 2017 too. I know he won WC because he got it together for his FS, but that season was full of trouble. Yuzu's history shows that this happens sometimes. After 10 years, it's the good ones that stand out and get remembered. It's easy to look back now and feel like he's never had a bad run because GPF '15 and Sochi and PC and WC '17 (etc) are so dazzlingly bright in our memories. He's tired, he's had a lot of big flights in just a couple of weeks, and he didn't look well. And cold is bad for asthma - at this time of year he has to contend with that when he's outside of training too because of the weather. Also, Shoma just had the skate of his life. It's not the best skate he's ever done, sure, but after the season he's had so far it may as well be and I'm sure it felt like it.

He really didn't look well when the camera caught him after Shoma's FS.

I didn't mean anything in regards to competition, just the possibility of getting a quad this late in her career.

If anyone has the determination to get there, it's her for sure.

Zhenya is a few years younger too, though whether she remains competing until she's 23 and has been learning and training a quad for 3 or 4 years is a big question. It seems she certainly has the drive to keep at it but whether that remains possible/practical when she's not making podiums is anyone's guess at the moment.

Very true, I hadn't thought of that. It also would seem cruel for Eteri's girls to be scored poorly because of something far beyond their control. I do wonder if Tukta and Zhenya might still get a bit of inflation out of it though - Zhenya doesn't have the BV for that to get her on the podium without someone stuffing up badly though, although a clean Tukta could possibly pull through with a medal.

Maybe this Eteri drama will work against her with Nats scoring. I mean, she's come out guns blazing for some of Russia's most beloved skating figures and now it looks like what happened to the adored Zhenya is happening to the adored Alina. So many people sided with Eteri's camp over the Zhenya thing and there was all sorts of attitude about Zhenya being ungrateful and jealous because Alina came in and took her crown. Now, a year later, it's happening to Alina - perhaps people might now retrospectively change their minds about what happened with Zhenya. If people side with the skaters rather than the camp... well, maybe Zhenya and Tukta will benefit from sympathetic politicking at Nats. This drama is interesting in itself but it is exceptionally so given that it's unfolding a matter of days out from nationals.

Don't forget a lot of the reasons many athletes are Googled. How many of those searches are for their athleticism so much as debauchery and abuse and other scandals? It's nice that a wholesome boi from figure skating makes the cut without having to throw and break his equipment in a tantrum or make sexist remarks or get underage girls drunk and (can't even bring myself to finish that), etc, etc, etc.

I really hope so. He has such great programs this season - it would such a shame if he doesn't get a decent performance of each out. And it would be nice to see him have a good second half of season after that heartbreaking first half.

TSL just posted footage of Shoma landing 3A-4T in practice. (I was on my phone when I saw it but now on my laptop or I'd share it here). Looks like he's shaping up well for nationals.