https://www.sueddeutsche.de/sport/yuzuru-hanyu-ruecktritt-eiskunstlauf-1.5624441
A long article in a german newspaper ... Translation here
His fans flew around the world, after his performances it rained plush bears: Two-time Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu is extremely popular, especially in Asia - now he is retiring at the age of 27. But he still wants to make the most difficult jump.
By Barbara Klimke
How the ice shook, Yuzuru Hanyu has never forgotten. Sometimes he told the audience about it, in his own way: dancing, floating and with images he created from movement. He dedicated his 2017 World Cup freestyle to the victims of the earthquake disaster and tsunami in Japan. Likewise the gala program after the Olympic victory at the Winter Games in Pyeongchang. This short piece, "Notte Stellata" to music by Camille Saint-Saëns, is an elegy on skids. A lament without words that everyone in the world understands.
Hanyu was 16 years old and in the middle of training at the Sendai ice rink when, on March 11, 2011, the earth shook, he felt the ground buckle upward, and he ran outside with skates on his feet. His family briefly took shelter in an emergency camp; his parents' house had become uninhabitable, and the ice stadium, like many other buildings, had been badly damaged and destroyed. So many people, he later recounted, had helped them back then, when no one knew how things would continue, when his own career was also in the stars: "I therefore wanted to do something for them - and what I can do is skate."
Nineteen world records
From then on, Hanyu defined his sport for eleven years before he now declared his competitive career over on Tuesday at the age of 27. He was the first Olympic champion from Asia in men's single skating in 2014, the first also since 1952 to defend his gold medal four years later, plus two times world champion, four times Grand Prix finalist. 19 times he set world records in points. But no number can express what this slender, quiet, introverted athlete also achieved: he enchanted spectators, touched their imagination.
When the music kicked in, he led the proof that this sport, born of drill and discipline, can have a soul in its most beautiful, weightless moments. That art, even if it is figure skating, always consists of a give and take. He understood his audience, and his audience understood him. Hundreds of thousands cheered him on the streets of his hometown of Sendai after his second Olympic victory.
His fans, called "fanyus," drew him pictures and wrote poems, they flew halfway around the globe to see "Yuzu" live, they sometimes camped outside arenas to stand at the front of the line when the box office opened. Geographically, this shy young man is a rock star only in Asia; figure skating in general has lost much of its popularity. But there, after his performances, yellow plush bears pelted the ice from the stands as if someone had opened the floodgates to bear heaven; in Pyeongchang, some female spectators wore hair bands with bear ears to express their admiration for the artist, whose mascot is Winnie the Pooh. He has donated stuffed animals to children's hospitals by the sackful.
"He has an aura, a special presence," Midori Ito, the 1989 world champion, once said. Even the American Nathan Chen, who most recently took the world championship title from him three times and also most of the records, called him the "greatest of all time" after his own Olympic victory in Beijing in February, probably not just out of politeness. For Hanyu's weightless artistry - part artist, part Ariel the Air Spirit - was only one side. The other revealed itself in a competitive toughness and robustness that contrasted spectacularly with a delicate, ethereal being. Hanyu, who moved to Canada soon after the earthquake to train with former world champion Brian Orser, was also the first athlete to stand the quadruple loop in competition, pushing himself to ever new heights in his duel with Chen.
Still in Beijing, at his last competition, when he was almost hopelessly behind after the short program because of an accidental Salchow, he bet on everything and risked a world novelty: the quadruple Axel, the only vault where even four and a half turns around its own axis are necessary. The attempt ended in a fall and is now recorded with an asterisk as unfinished in the style bible of figure skating.
Hanyu finished the 2022 Winter Games in fourth place behind Chen and two young Japanese colleagues.
Days later it became known that he had again competed with an ankle injury. In 2018, he had already torn the ligaments in his foot in a fall three months before his second Olympic victory.
But Hanyu has not yet written off the quadruple axel. He wants to continue to bring it to perfection - even after the end of the competition. Because his life as a figure skater, he explained at the press conference in Tokyo on Tuesday, is not over yet. From now on, he wants to perform in shows without being subject to the judgment of judges: "I want people to see me continue to fight." He feels he can still give a lot to people. "I'm not sad at all," he said after a deep bow as he left.
This post has been tagged by yuzuangel as [NEWS].
