General Yuzuru Chat

[Salior]

2 hours ago, madraykin said:

Can they give Dai a pass to Nationals now he's withdrawn from sectionals?

 

didn't know that 😂 😂 😂  inb4 someone screams unfairness 

 

also,

 

4 hours ago, Salior said:

WSJ wrote an article about “The Year Teenage Girls Blew Up Figure Skating”, addressing the quad mania after Skate Canada 2019. It was behind a paywall so someone reproduced it here 

 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-H6gcXbAVv2rUiDTLfVSIyvkIR7L_ENcgiLiKrzC7Bk 
 

 

[Salior]

I wrote some thoughts about Yuzu's views on skating here, since I thought it fits more in this thread.

 

 

reproduced as below

 

Just now, Salior said:

I'm rewatching Yuzu's 2014 Olympic performances and I realised something.

 

When Yuzu first started, he didn't put as much emphasis on skating quality as he did today, although he did show an above average talent in it. Yuzu was obsessed with quad jumps, until he saw Patrick's deep edges in his first competition with him, and went "Omg, I didn't know that was possible!" He proceeded to follow Patrick around the rink to observe the edges and forgot about his own practice, which made him flopped his first GP in senior lol. 

 

Basically I think the ENTIRE reason why Yuzu and Brian focused so MUCH on transitions and skating quality, is that they were NEEDED to beat Patrick Chan, who was then seen as almost unbeatable. Back then the technical elements weren't that high, and the stingy PCS marks made a huge difference in the final outcome of the scores. So Yuzu worked hard to earn every bit of that PCS, and became where he is today, to the extent that they became something like a part of his identity that he doesn't want to sacrifice.

 

Fast forward a few years later, he nearly forgot about them during his obsession with the quad loop. He thought that there's no point if he cannot land his jump, ie. a complete program is contingent on perfect jumps. He held on onto this almost maniacal fixation until the Lutz injury, where he reversed this stance during the Olympics, because it was his skating skills that saved him when he could not perform high base level jumps. 

 

And today we kind of have a different scenario, where PCS becomes more inflated and irrelevant compared to the TES. Yuzu noticed this trend, but is assured by SC that he was still right not to sacrifice his transitions for more stable, high base value jumps. Back when PCS still has a big role and is relevant to winning, Patrick set the bar for Yuzu to raise his own skating skills and transitions. Now that that advantage is taken away by high TES, I fear that Yuzu might not be able to play the role Patrick did. 

 

About Nate, it is true that he still has a long way to go for SS and Transitions, and that his TES isn't that high recently, but we also have to keep in mind that he is not currently training full time, and that he intends to do so the year before the Olympics. Patrick was complacent because he thought he had everything he needed to win - the best ss in the field, a decent quad toe. But he didn't expect Yuzu to be rewarded scores that could make up for those with his crazy high quality transitions and 3A (The R&J 1.0 was called a demon for the insane transitions I heard lol). Although I'm happy that Yuzu was still rewarded in SC, I don't want him to think that the scoring scene has not changed and he didn't need to adjust for it, to make the same mistake as Patrick, because he didn't expect his advantage to be diminished, and for scores to be awarded to rivals at places he didn't think much of.

 

Nate is still the person who did six quads in the FS, and Yuzu isn't 19 anymore - he's now 10 kg heavier with a lot more injuries, both of which doesn't help much in pushing his physical limits. He might be able to win now with his current layout, but if he intends to continue winning, there's no doubt that he needs the 4A and maybe the 4Lz. There's only so much he can do if he insists on putting difficult transitions that lowers the stability of the jumps AND up the tech content. I fear that this will be the situation when it's time for him to choose, that he cannot want everything without risking his health excessively. He is not the same boy at 15 year old who could pick himself up after spraining his ankle and keep training quad toe over and over again. 

 

I can only hope that he will choose wisely, between winning, his ideals, and his health. I wish that he didn't have to choose 2 out of the 3, but this is what I'm observing, and may I be proven wrong. 

 

 

 

 

[yuzuangel]

2 hours ago, sallycinnamon said:

Full message of Yuzu for the Spain-Japan Foundation Award ceremony:

 

 

Translation:

 

[river]

Interesting that some people are worried - personally, after Skate Canada, I'm feeling really good about this season.

 

Yuzu was looking stronger at SCI than he ever has since I started following him at PC - he scored 322 with several obvious places for improvement without changing his layout (hitting all his StSq levels, cleaning up the landing on the 4Lo) and has plans to further increase his BV later in the season. With the addition of the 4Lz (which we've seen clean recently, it's just a question of whether Yuzu feels like it's ready for competition) or the 4A... well.

 

Compare that with Nate at his strongest, which would be Worlds 2019. He scored 323, but is basically at his ceiling - I don't remember any major errors that he made there,  and he had at least all positive GOEs on all elements. He does have a few ways he could increase his BV, but switching his SP combo to a 4Lz+3T (and maybe backloading it), repeating his 4Lz or 4F instead of his 4T in the FS, or moving his new 4T+1Eu+3F to the back half of his FS are about all I can find. His PCS shouldn't go up any higher than they were at Worlds, so Yuzu has regained some of that advantage as well.

[Paskud]

9 minutes ago, river said:

Interesting that some people are worried - personally, after Skate Canada, I'm feeling really good about this season.

 

Yuzu was looking stronger at SCI than he ever has since I started following him at PC - he scored 322 with several obvious places for improvement without changing his layout (hitting all his StSq levels, cleaning up the landing on the 4Lo) and has plans to further increase his BV later in the season. With the addition of the 4Lz (which we've seen clean recently, it's just a question of whether Yuzu feels like it's ready for competition) or the 4A... well.

 

Compare that with Nate at his strongest, which would be Worlds 2019. He scored 323, but is basically at his ceiling - I don't remember any major errors that he made there,  and he had at least all positive GOEs on all elements. He does have a few ways he could increase his BV, but switching his SP combo to a 4Lz+3T (and maybe backloading it), repeating his 4Lz or 4F instead of his 4T in the FS, or moving his new 4T+1Eu+3F to the back half of his FS are about all I can find. His PCS shouldn't go up any higher than they were at Worlds, so Yuzu has regained some of that advantage as well.

Well, we will see after idf...

[Salior]

53 minutes ago, river said:

Interesting that some people are worried - personally, after Skate Canada, I'm feeling really good about this season.

 

Yuzu was looking stronger at SCI than he ever has since I started following him at PC - he scored 322 with several obvious places for improvement without changing his layout (hitting all his StSq levels, cleaning up the landing on the 4Lo) and has plans to further increase his BV later in the season. With the addition of the 4Lz (which we've seen clean recently, it's just a question of whether Yuzu feels like it's ready for competition) or the 4A... well.

 

Compare that with Nate at his strongest, which would be Worlds 2019. He scored 323, but is basically at his ceiling - I don't remember any major errors that he made there,  and he had at least all positive GOEs on all elements. He does have a few ways he could increase his BV, but switching his SP combo to a 4Lz+3T (and maybe backloading it), repeating his 4Lz or 4F instead of his 4T in the FS, or moving his new 4T+1Eu+3F to the back half of his FS are about all I can find. His PCS shouldn't go up any higher than they were at Worlds, so Yuzu has regained some of that advantage as well.

 

I think despite small differences in base value, the GOE differences can stack up really quickly especially with arbitrary scoring, and that's why Nate got such an inflated score despite similar BV imo. Yuzu can achieve those scores, but that's assuming he goes clean with absolutely no margin of error, which we have no control of such as influence by the ice conditions. Time and again Yuzu would've gone clean if not for the "hole in the ground" that messed up his StSq and docked 1 point off, or non-optimal ice conditions in Helsinki and JPN that made him mess up his quads, which is all the more important because he is an edge jumper that is affected more by these conditions than toe jumpers like Nate. If he misses one jump, he's almost confirmed to lose to Nate already, unless Nate messes up as well but it seems like he haven't popped jumps for a while, at least for important competitions. 

 

Nate seems pretty stabilised now no matter the circumstances, but I feel Yuzu is still very much affected by things that are out of his control, like ice conditions, injuries or just thinking too much. Even after all these time he's still unsure of how to control his thoughts, Iike in Pyeongchang iirc he started messing up SEIMEI when he let his mind wander and lose concentration after successfully entering the second half clean. There's also instability from adding new jumps, and he wants to add transitions to them as well. We've seen how he doesn't nail his 4Lo and 4Lz every time when he just started, and that his other jumps might get affected by those new jumps like the unusual high failure rate of 4S during the season he added 4Lo. 

 

I don't want to worry too much, but I don't think things are completely rosy and will be 100% smooth sailing for him as well. Hope I'm wrong but I felt like there's this overly optimistic tone every time he does well, only to be "caught off guard" by things like ice conditions or scoring scandals, then people get angry despite these signs being there all along. 

[IULIANA]

https://www.spreaker.com/show/kiss-cry-reloaded

This is th link to the podcast Kiss and kry reloaded where Ambesi and Dolfini speak about SCI, Yuzuru and most imporant the topics touched in the interview given by Yuzuru, so a western media mentioning it. Maybe dear admins will decide where to place it, i.e. the interwiew thread...

[Katt]

15 hours ago, river said:

Interesting that some people are worried - personally, after Skate Canada, I'm feeling really good about this season.

 

Yuzu was looking stronger at SCI than he ever has since I started following him at PC - he scored 322 with several obvious places for improvement without changing his layout (hitting all his StSq levels, cleaning up the landing on the 4Lo) and has plans to further increase his BV later in the season. With the addition of the 4Lz (which we've seen clean recently, it's just a question of whether Yuzu feels like it's ready for competition) or the 4A... well.

 

Compare that with Nate at his strongest, which would be Worlds 2019. He scored 323, but is basically at his ceiling - I don't remember any major errors that he made there,  and he had at least all positive GOEs on all elements. He does have a few ways he could increase his BV, but switching his SP combo to a 4Lz+3T (and maybe backloading it), repeating his 4Lz or 4F instead of his 4T in the FS, or moving his new 4T+1Eu+3F to the back half of his FS are about all I can find. His PCS shouldn't go up any higher than they were at Worlds, so Yuzu has regained some of that advantage as well.

I do think people have legit reason to worry about. Yuzuru got high score at ACI but we don't know how judges would do when he's the same event with Nathan.  Nathan's pcs at SA is basically the same at WC ( 46.5/94 vs 46.42/94.78), and it will rise at GPF/WC no matter how we think it shouldn't. Let's take a look at both their LP so far.

Nathan's SA LP : BV : 78.86 TES : 102.38 TES

Yuzuru's SC LP : BV : 92.98 TES : 116.59 TES

They basically got the same goe despite Nathan pop 2 jumps and lost level. With these layout, in term of TES, Yuzuru has about 8--10 pts at max that he could gain from goe. Nathan has 13-14 pts from lost BV with some more goe. So yeah, they pretty tied in TES and historically, judges would go wild with Nathan's goe and weird with Yuzuru's. Yuzuru must upgrade his BV to not let many power to the judges. While I think his 4lo will be fine from NHK, his 4lz is too risky. Don't forget Nathan could upgrade his BV to 5 quads +2 3A as well. Its gonna be a long and stressful season. 

[KatjaThera]

It's hard to predict anything. Ice is slippery, as they say. And Yuzu definitely has the harder path, because of his approach.

 

Nathan is more consistent and doesn't appear to have problems landing his quads nowadays, which also keeps him calm and confident. On the other hand, Yuzu has harder programs, with lots of transitions - he said it himself, that taking out some transitions would make it easier to land his jumps cleanly - and actually creative entrances and exits and artistry is also very important. So, of course, he has higher chances to make mistakes and I agree, the judges won't give him SCI-like scores unless he's 90% or more clean.

 

However, discussing hypothetically, in a scenario where both are clean, then Yuzu has the upper hand, because he has more room to grow his scores. I agree with river, Nathan is almost maxed out. Almost, because I think he can still add 4Lo and 4S. And they can pump his PCS a bit more, too, just because. But Yuzu is planning to, eventually, add 4Lz and 4A and even though 4A isn't what it used to be anymore, those two are still worth more than Nathan's two.

 

At Worlds, Nathan was grossly overscored. But Yuzu with two biggish mistakes in the free and not his usual level of performance wasn't that far behind. And overall, the 23 points weren't that much when you took into account Yuzu's mistakes, the PCS caps and the further PCS drop because the performances weren't Yuzu-level. Now, Yuzu got just one point behind that record, again, despite not being squeaky clean, and despite lower level jumps - even though he managed to get to an equal BV.

 

I also still tend to believe that if Yuzu were picture perfect, every program like those impeccable runthroughs of Otonal in SCI practice, they would still give him the win, unless Nathan did a quint or something. It's easier to put a clean Nathan over a not clean Yuzu, because it's harder to compare. If both were squeaky clean, I think it would still be too obvious. Plus, a perfect Yuzu winning isn't bad for them. It's good publicity and keeps his fans happy. Nathan winning keeps USFSA happy and help maintain the rivalry narrative. So, which ever way is good, but Yuzu would need to be perfect.

 

Bottom line, for me, is that Yuzu basically has two ways to win: one is to be utterly perfect, which is very hard to do, and the other is to upgrade his BV. Bring in the lutz, or the axel, or invent some new high-scoring combo. A BV upgrade would leave judges less room to fudge. But it would be harder on the clean aspect.

 

SCI has left me more confident because it has shown that Yuzu is in good shape and it was a good learning experience for him, to see what things help him with getting into such a good shape and mood, and also fix those things that didn't really work. And that he said he's gotten his confidence back some. It just seems to mean he's on a better path than he has been in a while.

 

However, I definitely don't expect this means things are back to normal. I wouldn't be surprised if they now try to pump up Nathan even more. But in a way, that'd be good for Yuzu, because then Nathan really would max out. While Yuzu would still have room to grow.

 

Anyway, we can only wait and see and try not to bang our heads against walls too much...

[Salior]

1 hour ago, Katt said:

I do think people have legit reason to worry about. Yuzuru got high score at ACI but we don't know how judges would do when he's the same event with Nathan.  Nathan's pcs at WC is basically the same at WC ( 46.5/94 vs 46.42/94.78), and it will rise at GPF/WC no matter how we think it shouldn't. Let's take a look at both their LP so far.

Nathan's SA LP : BV : 78.86 TES : 102.38 TES

Yuzuru's SC LP : BV : 92.98 TES : 116.59 TES

They basically got the same goe despite Nathan pop 2 jumps and lost level. With these layout, in term of TES, Yuzuru has about 8--10 pts at max that he could gain from goe. Nathan has 13-14 pts from lost BV with some more goe. So yeah, they pretty tied in TES and historically, judges would go wild with Nathan's goe and weird with Yuzuru's. Yuzuru must upgrade his BV to not let many power to the judges. While I think his 4lo will be fine from NHK, his 4lz is too risky. Don't forget Nathan could upgrade his BV to 5 quads +2 3A as well. Its gonna be a long and stressful season. 

Exactly, Nate is nowhere near his top form and their marks are already so close. People forget that he’s not currently training full time, and when he does he can easily go back to the 5 quad layout with significant TES boost if he wants to.

 

Yuzu literally has 0 room for error even considering factors like suboptimal ice conditions and unstable new jumps.

 

edit: admin can we move some of these to the Men Seniors discussion thread?

[luminescenry]

Speaking of podcast, please don't give ITL the views or click. They've been calling Yuzuru overscored without even backing up their arguments with the rules, and complaining about him looking down all the time which is??? Basically they keep praising other skater to high heavens or saying they will improve and all but with Yuzuru he's just overscored (when they don't even say anything about his other compeitors' goe and pcs inflation). Yuzuru. Who actually design his jumps to ticks the other goe bullets even if its wonky.

[Salior]

Also I completely forgot about 4CC... will Yuzu get his first 4CC gold this year as well? Makes a nice addition to his first SC gold...

 

As long as the 4CC champion curse doesn’t affect him, can’t get over how Nathan Boyang and Shoma flopped the Worlds after winning 4CC the last few seasons... 

[Salior]

7 minutes ago, luminescenry said:

Speaking of podcast, please don't give ITL the views or click. They've been calling Yuzuru overscored without even backing up their arguments with the rules, and complaining about him looking down all the time which is??? Basically they keep praising other skater to high heavens or saying they will improve and all but with Yuzuru he's just overscored (when they don't even say anything about his other compeitors' goe and pcs inflation). Yuzuru. Who actually design his jumps to ticks the other goe bullets even if its wonky.

tf I thought the founders were Yuzu fans, how did they become TSL

 

Why do all podcasts inevitably turn into TSL 😭

[Paskud]

3 minutes ago, luminescenry said:

Speaking of podcast, please don't give ITL the views or click. They've been calling Yuzuru overscored without even backing up their arguments with the rules, and complaining about him looking down all the time which is??? Basically they keep praising other skater to high heavens or saying they will improve and all but with Yuzuru he's just overscored (when they don't even say anything about his other compeitors' goe and pcs inflation). Yuzuru. Who actually design his jumps to ticks the other goe bullets even if its wonky.

Welp, I told you to not trust them.

[shanshani]

I think people are worried because at the end of the day it’s just too judge-dependent, and no one trusts the judges. Plus Nate will probably add difficulty by Worlds. It also leaves little margin of error for Yuzu, and Yuzu’s not often squeaky clean. 

 

I do think that assuming the judges score like they did at Worlds for Nathan and Yuzu at SCI, Yuzu has an edge as long as the BV gap doesn’t grow too much. There were lots of little areas where Yuzu could have earned more points. 3-4 points on the 4Lo, 1 pt on the Sal, 1-2 points each on the SP combo and the axel combos. Presumably the level of interpretation of the Origin program could go up too and squeeze a point or two more out of PCS (I wasn’t blown away by it, and Yuzu says it’s only 20-30% of what he envisions. It’s a pity those 70-80% are only worth 2 points).

 

Big assumption though.