Fay

Now you really should. You'll be imitating Yuzu!!!!

It looks so weird seeing Yuzu casually walking in a typical autumn Moscow park.

Yeah, it's about Yuzu's first visit to Moscow in 2010. He's just 15 here.

No, I think the kicking move wasn't there - he was just fooling around.

well, here Yuzu looks as if he'd never seen pigeons..

@gladi thank you for another wonderful translation!!!

NHK 2012 Notre Dame de Paris Sport Now Yuzuru Hanyu. The two-times current record holder in the SP – 95.07 and 95.32, twice over this season he’s has scored higher than anyone else in this new system of scoring, but it’s interesting what he will achieve in his free program. Yuzuru Hanyu couldn’t keep himself off from falling, maybe, he’s running short of physical strength. But before that, everything was nearly irreproachable. (after Yuzu falls in his spin) Yes, Hanyu is running short of energy somehow! In spite of everything and in spite of the ending being a bit marred, I think there’s no doubt about who wins the free skate today. Let us remember that the component score is quite high with Yuzuru and so let’s wait for the final score. To be ahead of his rivals he has to get quite high results, but they’re totally within his capacities. Yuzuru Hanyu has achieved what he intended to do, he seems to have won one of the Grand Prix events, and this could happen to him the second time after the Moscow event (the previous year). He’s got to score 156 points, Daisuke Takahashi got 164 for his FS. Yuzuru Hanyu can even lose around 8 points in the FS – that’s the gap between him and his rival after the SP. His personal FS best is 173.99 – that was at the 2012 Nice World Championship and then his total was 251 points. Now he needs more to win, but it’s likely to happen without any major problems and without much stressing. He doesn’t even have to get his 174 points, he’ll win with 156.02 points, even with those end-of-program falls and mistakes. Here, in this spin, this very young skater lost all his energy. On December 7th he will turn 18, and it’s on December 7th the senior Grand Prix Final will start. December 6th is the Junior day, and the 7th is the busiest day of the GPF in Sochi and on December 9th there’ll be only seniors. He got 165.71 even with two deductions for his falls. He’s of course first, with quite a gap. 261.03 points – that’s his new personal best, and he exceeds his previous best by 10 points. Brian Orser is happy, Yuzuru himself is quite subdued, but that’s the good manners which makes him so in Japan. The skater isn’t very happy with his skate, he made some mistakes, but even with them, the total score was very high – 165 points.

I received this email today, which I found extremely moving. I'm sure to write a few words of encouragement to Adian, but I'd also love to welcome the planet satellites to join this project! You can post your good luck wishes over here, PM them to me or send them directly to Katarzyna. Dear Fay, As I think Adian is a skater you like too, I would like to draw your attention to the fan project initiated for him: as Adian had to r**** from single skating we would like to give him a present of his fans in order to thank him for the joy he brought to us with his skating, for his hard work and how he was pushing progress in Russian male skating despite his short career in this field. This is also an opportunity to wish Adian success for his possible dancing career. So it will be a nice way to show Adian support for the big challenge he undertakes right now, but also to wish him well for his future life in general. Therefore I’m collecting e-mails and letters with good luck wishes for him as well as photographs and drawings, which will be put together in a scrap book as a surprise for him. In case you don’t have much time, a simple PM / mail with a few nice words will be great as well. Please remember it’s all about showing support, no matter in which way, every single good word counts. You can send your contributions either by PM, e-Mail: [email protected] or to my snail mail address: Katrin Flaschka Berchtoldgasse 4/5/16 1220 Wien AUSTRIA If you have questions, don’t hesitate to contact me. Your participation will be highly welcomed. The deadline for any contributions is 20th August 2017 Best regards, Katarzyna

Да там организации-то... продавать билеты, организовать охрану. Хотя да, для наших товарищей это может показаться непомерным трудом.

NHK 2012 FS Notre Dame de Paris RUS ESP …Now we've been admiring Takahashi, now we’ll have Hanyu. And then I thought – they also have Takahito Kozuka… Nobunari Oda… Nobunari Oda isn’t getting to the GPF. I mean, the Worlds and the rest… Oh yes! There’s also Tatsuki Machida who is also a contender for the GPF for the first time in his career. We’ll see. So, Yuzuru(i) Hanyu. (the audio’s horrible after that – one of the commentators is miles away from the mike). (Yuzu jumps his 4T) So far he’s clean. He gets a ten for it! (after 4S) Done, that’ll count (as a quad) Yes, they will, so BV 10.5, he’ll get less of course. He lost the spin! He lost the spin! But he has done this one very well! I liked it here. OK, he didn’t cope with one, he did the next one, so he lost one spin and one jump. He was great.. Was he? But I somehow believed Takahashi more than him. If one has to think according to Stanislavsky’s method, then Daisuke (was more impressive) Experience vs youth! There’s another year till the Olympic Games, Andrey. Yes, he’s just 17, and so far he’s like modelling clay. You can mould him into any shape very easily, but it’s difficult to tell what the final shape will be like. It’s crucial that that modelling clay got into the hands of a master, then he’ll be moulded into something very good… In spring 2012 he moved to Canada… … it’s essential that the modelling clay shouldn’t be old. Then the master can mould him into something very good. Here’s Takahashi, an experienced skater who’s assessing… Yeah, comparing him to Hanyu, he’s an old man! Yeah, a grey-haired samurai! “Does anyone compare me to him?” No, I think they’re friends in one team. Oh, come off it! Well, the way it is with our team… Yeah, everyone is friends with everyone in our team! Yeah right! Well, Orser… two different styles – Fernandez and now Hanyu. Well, I don’t know, do you see a distinctive style here? I don’t. All I see is good quality raw material for a distinctive style. There are certain distinctive gestures, some things he already developed, but he’s still very fresh in perception… here he barely kept his balance on his 4S, he saved it partially… well, we’ll see! I think that Daisuke Takahashi’s component score will be higher, but we can compare it now. Hanyu’s component score at Skate America was 79.56, and Daisuke Takahashi’s at the Cup of China 82.66, so he’s ahead by 3 points. And this fall… - you see, he’ll have two points of deduction! He’ll have a deduction for falling on his jump and a deduction for falling here, on the spin – he did fall here – here, he stopped there. Did he have a change of foot here? So he lost his edge on that spin. You know, Takahashi looks more Japanese… 165.71. Well, he won! He had a headstart after his short program, so he won! 261.03 Yes, you should have listened to your elders – I did say he’d win!

Ой, прости, не сразу поняла! Надеюсь, они все же будут доступны и тогда. Но даты турнира-то известны точно, так что можно и билеты на самолет купить.

Билетов сейчас все равно нет...

You're welcome!

Sochi Olympic FP Romeo and Juliet Rossiya 1. (Russia 1) So, Yuzuru Hanyu, and then Patrick Chan. So… er… Brian Orser has changed his jacket? That’s interesting! He had a red jacket on just 15 minutes ago. So now the man leading the competition. He’ll skate to Nino Rota’s music. The current Japanese champion. The bronze medallist of the last World Championship (wrong there), the silver medallist of the Four Continents Championship 2013, this season’s Grand Prix Final winner, 19-year-old Yuzuru Hanyu. He’ll turn 20 only in December. He had a phenomenal short program. (at Yuzu’s 4T): He pulled himself together! (3F) – Ooooh! Hanyu’s just handing Patrick Chan the Olympic Gold Medal! Or even hanging it on his neck – himself giving it away to his main rival! (after Yuzu finished his program): I didn’t say it before his skate, but notwithstanding his accomplishments, experts say Hanyu has two limitations: first, he doesn’t always last physically for the whole program, but second, he lacks mental strength and stability. I didn’t want to say it before the skate as I didn’t want to jinx him, but obviously, he’s got some mental growing to do yet (he’s not strong enough mentally yet). Some people think that it’s easier to compete in your first Olympics rather than if you’ve already had a few under your belt, but it’s not the same for everyone. Yuzuru didn’t cope with it, largely, with the burden of that mental responsibility, since… well, yes, I enumerated his trophies up to now, but he hasn’t had any really big wins. Yes, he’s won the Grand Prix Final (the Final of the Champion series, as he calls it), but it’s a separate competition, it’s more commercial. Yuzuru hasn’t had experience of winning at major competitions. Well, he got very high GOE for his 4T, nearly 12.5 points for it, for 3A3T combination 16.3 points. But there were things you can’t really forget… His personal best is 293 points. That’s not yet over, dear viewers, this performance of the Japanese skater is far from being decisive. The score isn't going to be decisive either – next person to skate is going to be Patrick Chan. Brian Orser look unhappy, to put it mildly. Well, of course, he’s first, he’s ahead of Denis Ten, he comes first in the free program. The component score is good, but not his maximum. He had 2 point deductions for his falls, so Patrick Chan has his chance. He was quite far behind – by nearly 4 points,

You know Russians, we love our drama...

Yeah, so Jason Brown and Misha Ge are boring whereas Boyang and Nathan are artistic. Yeah right.

It will just as for older girls, I feel. Anna and Elena might be in the same boat...

Just a sec... I have to re-edit the post... It plays funny.

So I decided to add some substance to the usual fluff here and translated Alexei Mishin's interview. The interviewer is Olga Ermolina http://www.fsrussia.ru/intervyu/3022-aleksej-mishin-programma-bez-chetvernykh-pryzhkov-vse-ravno-chto-sup-iz-topora.html Alexei Mishin: "The program without quadruple jumps is like soup made from an axe" June 28, 2017 Coach Alexei Mishin talks about his students, single skating, difficult jumps, which he thinks are an important means for creating a highly artistic work on the ice. "A coach should always see something positive in his athletes" - Alexei Nikolayevich, how are your skaters preparing for the upcoming season? How is Liza Tuktamysheva? - Lisa is now choosing between to be or not to be. And the coming season will be decisive for her. Liza's new programs are interesting, vibrant, which, with her good technical content, will solve her most difficult problems. If we talk about other athletes, we are pleased with the progress of Sonya Samodurova, who this season will prove to be not only a good athlete, but also her acting abilities. Alina Solovyova regains her physical form step by step, and I think she is one of the most plastic girls in our figure skating. And the boys? - You see the coach always needs to see something positive in his students, otherwise their progress will be pointless. So, considering our men's single skating, I would like to note the pros of their athletes. In my opinion, the competitions of recent seasons show that Alexander Petrov can be given a prize as the most consistent figure skater of our team. Petrov has a wonderful characteristic any athlete needs: he shows what he can do at competitions. If the athlete does not have this quality, then all the efforts of the coach are doomed to failure. Sasha Petrov knows how to do it and he is capable of showing it. If we talk about Andrey Lazukin and we highlight his positive aspects, then I would say that in his appearance Andrey is one of the most elegant and well-built figure skaters who has the most ideal build for figure skating. In addition, he is a gifted athlete, he has a way of gliding weightlessly. And, taking into account the fact that Andrey started jumping 4Lo this year at training sessions and test skates, then I have great hopes of his making it into the Russian team. As for younger boys, first of all we pay special attention to skaters with pronounced abilities for quads. Among them, the leaders are Evgeny Semenenko and the young athlete from Kazan Gleb Seyfullin. Zhenya already demonstrates a triple axel a quadruple toeloop at competitions and is close to the execution of the quadruple salchow. As for Gleb, together with Rezeda Kadyrova we will try to reveal his abilities. - You do not say anything about Liza Nugumanova and Pyotr Gumennik? - I invested a lot of efforts into these skaters, they are trained to do a lot, but I will say about these athletes: I wasn't happy with relationships between me, the coach, the students and their parents. "The atmosphere of Tartu is imbued with high intelligence" - Now, together with the guys, you are having a camp in Courchevel. The choice of this place is understandable: the mountains, the height, stamina-training. But every year, you also have a camp in Tartu. What attracts you there? - The question of organizing training camps is rather complicated. But we were fortunate back then to meet a good organizer from the city of Tartu, Kirsty Kull, who arranges our camps and summer international camps. During the year, Kirsti thinks out all the details, conditions, logistics, transport, and when the time comes, we arrive there and everything is ready. An important component of these camps is that the expenses for taking our athletes along are reduced by attracting foreign participants. At the same time, we have as much ice as we need. During these camps we have test skates, which are actually free performances for the residents of the city. Considering the retrospective of our summer camps, I would like to remind you that many figure skaters have mastered the technique of jumping under my guidance, including some outstanding skaters like Sarah Meyer, Kiira Korpi, Stephane Lambiel, Javier Fernandez, Carolina Kostner, young figure skater Zijun Li and others And why Tartu? This is a relatively inexpensive city. Good facilities, everything is close at hand, it's cosy and quiet, nothing distracts athletes from work. The very atmosphere of the city is imbued with high intelligence. 90 percent of Tartu residents are students, teachers or employees of the University, which is the oldest in Europe. The way we're treated is wonderful. And at the training camps there is a serious and creative atmosphere. - What experts did you call this time? - Every year we try to invite new choreographers for the production of programs. In general, the choice of a choreographer is a very important aspect. In our group - some like it, some do not - we consider the work choreographers do as something unfinished. Many foreign choreographers make programs in order to show what good choreographers they are - highly aesthetic. We are faced with the task of making a program which will allow a skater to win a medal. In this respect, Tatiana Prokofieva is a choreographer who herself lays out the programs and which brings these drafts to the final stages, makes the program comfortable for the skater. She is a master in this respect. This year we invited a relatively little-known choreographer Adam Solya to to our training camp. He is from Belgium, half Hungarian. Before that, I saw several of his programs on the ice, the programs that he made for other skaters. I liked Adam's style. I think that we will continue our cooperation. The athletes of our group also worked with the famous choreographer Lori Nichol. She made a program for Carolina Kostner to the music of a ballet of the Diaghilev seasons in Paris, with the choreography inspired by the "Afternoon Rest of the Faun" performed by Nijinsky. Laurie made both programs for our Chinese skater Zijun Li. Let me remind you that in previous years the figure skaters of our group were helped by Emmanuel Sandhu and Misha Ge with the productions of the programs. We continue our many years of cooperation with the outstanding representative of the French school of choreography Benoit Richard. Ramil Mekdiyev, a soloist of Igor Moiseyev's ensemble, came to us in Tartu, and this was a pleasant surprise. I would like to note that our cooperation with choreographers is of a mutual nature. Choreographers learn a lot of new things for themselves from experience, concepts that have been formed over the years in our group. And each time when the joint work is over, they do not hide that they have received additional knowledge, which in many ways contribute to these specialists becoming more and more in demand over time. In fact, cooperation with such athletes as Plushenko, Gachinsky, Tuktamysheva, Petrov, Lazukin establishes these choreographers as world class experts in figure skating and raises their rank. "Single skating is the root system of all figure skating" - Recently, we often hear coaches say that it is difficult to find partners for pair skating and dances. Do you have any thoughts on this matter? - At present, we cerainly see a shortage of partners in both pair skating and ice dancing. In this regard, I recall the aphorism of my academic supervisor, three-times USSR champion in pair skating, Professor, Alexander Borisovich Gandelsman, who unfortunately is no longer with us. He said that single skating is the root system of all figure skating. I believe that this view is relevant even now. I think that since this situation has arisen, we need to think about the meaning of this phrase and increase the share of single skating in the total mass of people doing our sport. I can say quite confidently that in such countries as the USA, Canada, Japan, Korea and others, the ratio of those who do single skating and those who take up pair skating and ice dances, is in favour of single skaters. I was lucky to be a witness, if not to say a participant, of the formation of modern trends in pair skating. How were the athletes for pair skating selected before? If you were not good at single skating, you were transferred to the pair skating. If you are not suitable for single or pair skating, then you can only do dances. If it does not work out there, you become a coach. If you're no good as a coach, you start to judge. And if it did not work out in any of these roles, then where else to go? That is a joke, of course. But seriously, in those days when we skated as a pair with Tamara Moskvina and went out for warm-ups or training, we were the best single skaters. Our technical arsenal greatly exceeded the that of our rivals. When the famous French coach Madame Vaudecrane saw what we were doing on the ice, she exclaimed: "This is a single skating! They jump without stopping! " And now, years later, you can't get anywhere without jumps. Now the pair skaters jump triple lutz, triple-triple combinations, and in the future pair skating will become more complicated. So now, to make a pair, you need to take two good single skaters and in a season there will emerge a new pair. Do not prepare pair skaters in childhood. Boys are still weak then, girls grow fast, a lot remains unpredictable in their physical development. By the way, the latest events in ice dancing also confirm my idea that there will also be dance teams composed of two strong single skaters. Certainly, Lyudmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov brought the artistic element to figure skating. But speaking of our pair with Tamara, we can say that we were also iconic figures. We were one of the first pairs formed of two strong single skaters. We were the pioneers of this trend. And look today: we hadour two single skaters Alexandra Boykova and Dmitry Kozlovsky transfer pair skating and they took off right away! Therefore, there should be more good single skaters. And then, I am sure, thanks to a better selection of partners, we will become better in pairs and dances. I talked with the heads of Russian federation on this topic and they agreed. "All processes in nature are fluctuating" - What prevents us today from bringing up strong male singles such as Yuzuru Hanyu and other world top skaters? - Now we have a lot of girls and few boys. If we take any beginner group, the ratio of girls to boys is 8 to 2. It is clear that the competition among girls is much higher, which helps them show progress. But if we talk dialectically, then all processes in nature have a fluctuational character. Tell me, where is the once invincible English ice dance school headed by Towler and Ford? Where are Austrian Schwarz and Danzer? Where is a French Calmat? Where is a Czech Nepela? An American Peggy Fleming? So I suggest we don't give into panic, but understand that such unique creatures of nature as Hanyu, whose magic combination of chromosomes led to the fantastic constitutional and motor abilities, supplemented by tremendous capacity for work, are very few and far between. In all my life in Soviet figure skating, we had wonderful pairs, dancers, strong menbut there were no decent women skaters. Probably, now it is somehow compensated, and we must do everything to eliminate the existing imbalance. I want to remind you the wise words of our Head of the Federation Alexander Gorshkov: "There can not be too many strong girls in our team". And the World Championships in Helsinki showed that this is actually true. After the end of the championship, only one turned out to be "unbeatable". But at the beginning of the season, many took offense at my words, when I looked at all of our contenders, and then the word was going about that Russian women skaters were invincible and no one else stood a chance, I said that the term "invincible" can only be applied to Medvedeva. It turned out to be true. And I want to say one more thing. When I was establishing myself as a coach - and back then, only people who achieved high results in sports, European and World Championship medalists started our as coaches - the fundamental training methods in figure skating were only being formed. And the athletes who managed to cross the "Iron Curtain" and to become familiar with the current state of the world figure skating, were the ones who became coaches for the Soviet team. I remember Zhuk, Pliner, Moskvin, myself constantly filming the performances and training sessions of the best figure skaters of the world on our old-fashioned amateur cinematic cameras. In the future, the methodology and the training system were formed, and the jumps of Urmanov, Tataurov, Yagudin, Plushenko and other my athletes became the golden standard for jumping quads. Currently, any athlete can become a coach, even those who have not even achieved great results in their careers, as long as they use the established methodology. Moreover, the modern judging system has brought the mathematical component to the forefront. Previously, we tried to make an outstanding program - a masterpiece, not constrained by the number of turns, the number of rockers and counter, by how horizontal the thigh is, by the number of revolutions in the sit spin... "If jumps go, then mustard, vinegar and pepper also disappear" - Do you think that at the Olympics in Korea we will see men jump as many quadruples as at the recent World Championship? We will. And even more quads. The one who will try to make a quadruple lutz or flip, two salchows and two toe-loops will win. The one who will create the best reputation in the current season will win. And, of course, the one who'll have the luck and the correct arrangement of stars in the sky. - After the World Championship they began to talk that the programs of men with so many quads are built according to this scheme: run up and jump, the artistic component is absent. How to deal with this? - In time, everything will fall into place. I have a great example when, before Vancouver Olympics, many said that they do not need quads, that they will beat Plushenko in transitions component. The processes occurring in sports and in other spheres of human activity depend not only on their spontaneous development, they are also manageable. Then, at the 2010 Olympics, the pendulum of the International Skating Union (ISU) swung in favour of the transition component. However, after those Olympics, Lysacek and Chan themselves rushed to learn quadruples. I have always tried to ensure that my athletes jumped technically difficult jumps, with the maximum number of rotations. It is a profound misconception that the execution of difficult jumps and aesthetic beauty are mutually exclusive concepts. When brilliant figure skaters started skating in shows after their competitive career was over and stopped jumping difficult jumps, it looked boring. Yes, the skaters looked flexible, elegant, high-class, but as soon as their programs lost difficult jumps, then mustard, vinegar and pepper disappeared. All this was not impressive. Because one of the most convincing means of expressing choreographic ideas in any skater's programs are the most difficult jumps. Even the spectators sitting in the stands distinguish very well the number of revolutions performed in the air and they reward the performers with applause accordingly. It would be foolish to say that the spins and the steps are not important. They are also components of success. But the program without quadruple jumps is like soup made from an axe. And no matter how much celery and parsley you try putting into it, this soup will never taste good.

I just miss Yuzu.

She drew them, yeah...

I'd still give the medal to Yulia Lipnitskaya here.

Creating art with their bodies - Ivan Bukin and Alexandra Stepanova

And Evgenia Medvedeva has her works of art exhibited... http://www.fsrussia.ru/news/3021-evgeniya-medvedeva-predstavila-risunki-v-stile-anime-na-vystavke-v-moskve.html