The post Hanyu era

[¯\_(ツ)_/¯]

1) I guess I'll be sad but only in the way one is sad when something comes to a close. While I can't honestly call myself a fan of the sport itself even now (I still have a lot of trouble sitting through entire competitions and performances of skaters whom I'm not even a little invested in unless their choices are bold ones), it was him who opened my eyes to how fascinating it can be. I mean I've come a long way from thinking men's figure skating is basically like what I saw in Blades of Glory. I wasn't even sure if the Iron Lotus wasn't really a thing, I was that ignorant of it lol...I mean I wasn't a fan of any sport to begin with (although I am a fan of seinen sports manga haha) and never in my life have I followed an athlete as closely as I have followed Hanyu as, being far from athletically-inclined and a non-sports fan, I've always found athletes hard to relate to.

 

Since he's about the only person doing what he does in the way he does it, FS with him in it seems so much more exciting in a way it had never been to me before I stumbled upon him. So when he leaves the competitive arena, unless someone else strikes a chord in me, I probably won't be paying as much attention to it, besides checking back every now and then to see performances of some skaters I quite like and follow up on their progress. But I won't be tracking anybody's progress closely anytime soon. 

 

I'll most definitely be mostly pumped for whatever new endeavor he decides to invest his time and effort into (albeit it'll most likely be one where he won't be in the limelight as much, if at all) because as much as I love his skating, in supporting the guy as a person, it excites me to be able to find out what else he has to offer. :))

 

2) I honestly have no idea. I guess it could just go back to the way it was before Tornado Hanyu came along and tore up the field but with some changes thanks to said storm leaving behind a changed landscape. There won't be sell-out of arenas and phenomenons like the pooh storm anymore for some time, I do not think, but there could be a significant increase of fans compared to before depending on how the ISU plays their cards, I feel.

[rockstaryuzu]

Firstly, I just want to say that I don't really understand these 'figure skating is losing popularity' complaints, since I don't know what kind of data they're based on. I've been a figure skating fan, one way or another from way back in the Toller Cranston era, til now. Sometimes I drift away from it for a bit, but something always piques my interest a brings me back. And I have to say that competitions are infinitely more interesting to watch since the bad old ordinal placing, 6.0 scoring system, and the ferociously biased reputation-based judging that went with it, got turfed. Now when I watch a competition, I don't actually know, before it starts, who will win, and that is awesome. I love it, and I personally think the ISU should move even more strongly in this direction and take steps to make their judging as objective as possible. Then viewers can get caught up in how hard their favorite skaters are working to get that perfect performance in, instead of thinking it's a foregone conclusion.

 

I honestly don't think Yuzu would be as exciting a skater for people to follow if we were back in those bad old days. For starters, he would have had to move the sun, moon, and stars, and so would the JSF, behind the scenes, to break past the old prejudices and corruptions that used to dictate who could win and who couldn't. And ALL of his European and North American rivals would have to have simultaneous splatfests as well. That is how bad the old system was. There wouldn't have been any room for him to succeed no matter how great he was.

 

So let me be clear: the new/ current scoring system is what made it possible for Yuzu to even get his victories. People complain about Chanflation etc, but it's nowhere near as bad as what used to happen.

 

So that being said, as long as the ISU sticks to a scoring system that keeps competition open and unpredictable, I'll keep watching.

 

Ice shows are another matter. I think whether they sell out or not has a lot to do with the economy and how many kids people are having and so forth. If people have money and children to entertain, they'll buy ice show tickets. If not, they might not. 

 

Now, to answer your questions:

1. If Yuzu had retired this early, I'd have been disappointed, but excited. Disappointed because he still has tons of potential, excited because if he's not competing, presumably he'd do more shows, maybe even ones I could get to see! I want to see him skate live, no question about that. 

 

2. I think skating without Yuzu will still move forward. Look at the kids around him, the younger ones like Shoma and Nathan. Look at Evgenia. Look what Brian Orser is building at TCC. All those people are creative, innovative, ambitious, and more like then will come along. The future of FS is bright, IMO. Yuzu has pointed the way with his devotion to excellence, other skaters will follow.

 

Honestly though, if the ISU is worried about FS that much, maybe they should go to work removing some of the barriers to entry to the sport. Make it affordable for people to participate. Find a way to put shows in smaller markets to tap into audiences that can't go to the big city shows. Use the Internet more effectively to draw in new fans from new parts of the world. And so forth.

 

Skating is a beautiful sport. It'll never die, I think.

[vanadiezz]

I think I will go with 2nd option and be more a casual fan, but I will not drop my google alert for "Yuzuru Hanyu" either. 

 

Hopefully he will not retire so soon, though. I still need to see him live at least once. 

[wingman]

Oh wow, it's interesting to hear your 6.0 perspective, @rockstaryuzu. Thanks! I came from other less subjective sports, so the ISU weirdo scoring system really infuriates me. Good to know that it's actually an improvement of what came before!

I'm fascinated with Yuzuru Hany the athlete (it doesn't matter if he's doing FS or skiing or boxing). So once he retired I guess that's it for me - I would be interested in books / biographies etc of his, to understand how one can overcome so many obstacles, but I probably won't follow FS so much. Ice shows won't cut it for me   Figure skating is an extremely beautiful sport, it won't die for sure, but personally I'm not so emotionally invested in it (simply because I have other sports that I actually practice, and therefore can appreciate it at a much deeper level). 

[kaeryth]

24 minutes ago, wingman said:

I came from other less subjective sports, so the ISU weirdo scoring system really infuriates me. Good to know that it's actually an improvement of what came before!

 

Oh definitely. Don't listen to those who says the 6.0 system was better - it was better... for the judges to manipulate scoring and for the casual audience who don't know the nuances of scoring (It's easier to explain that a score of 6.0 is a perfect score while it's harder to immediately understand scoring under the IJS if you are a casual viewer). However, it wasn't of any help to the skaters themselves. If two skaters delivered a similar program with the same technical difficulty perfectly how would one know why they lost to the other (other than their country of origin)? They don't in the 6.0 system. The IJS (as flawed as it is) gives the skaters an idea on which areas to improve... spins? jump edges? transitions? quality in jumps to get better goes?

[rockstaryuzu]

8 hours ago, kaeryth said:

 

Oh definitely. Don't listen to those who says the 6.0 system was better - it was better... for the judges to manipulate scoring and for the casual audience who don't know the nuances of scoring (It's easier to explain that a score of 6.0 is a perfect score while it's harder to immediately understand scoring under the IJS if you are a casual viewer). However, it wasn't of any help to the skaters themselves. If two skaters delivered a similar program with the same technical difficulty perfectly how would one know why they lost to the other (other than their country of origin)? They don't in the 6.0 system. The IJS (as flawed as it is) gives the skaters an idea on which areas to improve... spins? jump edges? transitions? quality in jumps to get better goes?

Yes. This. And if you were a Canadian skating fan back in that era, it was painfully obvious what was going on. What comes to mind is Isabelle and Paul Duchesnay in ice dance. for the better part of a decade in the 80's-early 90's, they were the most innovative, exciting, and technically perfect dance team on the ice - and they could never, ever, ever score higher than third place in any competition. We all knew it, everyone watching them knew it - it was painful after a while. the Russians and Americans would always score ahead of them no matter what they put out on the ice. Even the uneducated eye could see it....

 

Matters came to a head at 2002 in Salt Lake City and after that everything changed. As Kurt Browning once said in an interview, "They changed the scoring and right away, boom, Stephane Lambiel is World Champion. A Swiss skater. Before that it was unheard of, a Swiss could never have won under the old system." 

 

IMO the only skater scored under the old system who's still around and actually deserved his wins was Plushenko. 

[Figure_Frenzy]

1. When I first came across this thread and the questions I inclined to think that I'd continue following figure skating as closely as I did like as if Yuzu is still competing (because, well, I don't wanna miss how the sport is going to develop after his leave), but after I observed my own actions during the season (especially when Yuzu was in the recovery mode) I must admit that I would most likely be only a casual fan after Yuzu retires from competitive skating. I wouldn't follow the comps as closely (ie. good for me if I can catch the stream live, alright if I only catch it after the fact — heck I even already do this at the latest comps I care about (4CC, JNats, what have you).

The reason why I felt like I would continue to follow it closely is because I don't want to miss the development that happens in the sport (the good developments ofc!). I don't wanna be an old hat like say, Brian Boitano :v :þ , I wanna remain in touch with FS, should I come back to watching FS closely (probably due to the newest star athlete) after not following it as intensely for a while after Yuzu's retirement.

But now, after seeing the bungling by the jUDGeS and the impotent ISU officials, I doubt that I can bring myself to keep following it as closely as before — sure there are promising skaters to keep an eye on (Rika Kihira, Yuma, Shun, to name a few just from Team Japan), but I must admit that I can't promise them the same support like I gave to Yuzu 😢.

 

2. Of course it will be impactful — if anything, other people (people outside the Fanyudom™) definitely underestimate the hole that he'd leave in the wake of his retirement — good luck filling that hole up, folks :þ

[peach-blossom]

1. When I first saw this question, I definitely thought I’d go for option 3, but thinking things over, it’s actually option 2. I discovered figure skating through the Google rewind video with Yuzu, and then I ended up watching all his performances. I researched about scoring and different elements and jumps so that I could understand what was going on. I’ve only been interested in figure skating for a very short period of time, around a year or less maybe, but it’s become something that I enjoy watching. 

 

So, if Yuzu retired I would probably not follow every competition with as much intent as I do now, but I would still try to keep up with the important competitions and who’s on top. This would probably only hold for men’s skating though; I tried getting into women’s skating and pairs/ice dance but it just didn’t click for me. 

 

2. I’m not really sure about what the impact would be. I don’t think it’ll be as drastic as figure skating completely “dying” but there will be some impact either way. I’m pretty sure the sheer scale of the pooh bears and the support etc Yuzu receives won’t be matched by anyone for quite some time to come though.