glasswinged

But do you know what happened when you asked questions, at least at my school(s)? They would say “I just taught this, weren’t you paying attention?” So of course that made many of the students feel like idiots because they asked for help, like they should have understood right away.

Tracy Wilson’s media day interview, transcribed and published in Figure Skating Team Japan Fan Book. Potentially to be supplemented with other magazines’ transcriptions if new materials/ different reads come up. Tracy’s take on new season challenges, Yuzuru’s goals, his mindset and his ongoing quest to improve and improve.

Please do not repost without permission. Image belongs to Figure Skating Team Japan Fan Book and original text belong to respective publishers.

— How is Hanyu’s condition at the moment?

What I feel, is that he’s come to understand what he himself wants to do. Mainly in the technical aspect. And my role is to aid him so that we find the spots where he can exert force. The balance on his blades and so forth. In order to stabilize the technical aspect. 

— How is the condition of his right ankle that’s been injured?

As far as I’ve seen, I felt that the injury has not affected his performance nor created limits. Looking at the quality of his jumps, what he chooses to jump, you can see that. There were no bad symptoms to be found in his skating. So I feel it’s 100%. 

— Is there any impact on Hanyu due to the rule changes this season?

I’m not sensing any in particular. Because Yuzuru has no weaknesses (laughs). I think the widening range of GOE into -5 to +5 is to his advantage. The elements he performs, even up until now — there are ones that have reached levels even beyond that. But due to the limited range in evaluation, it had also been hard to make a difference. From my point of view, this GOE rule change is advantageous to him.

Yuzuru Hanyu Presents: How to Twizzle — requested by anon

As step sequence element: Étude [1], Romeo + Juliet [2], Ballade [8]

As choreographic/transitional element: The Final Time Traveler [3], Phantom of the Opera [4], Notte Stellata [7]

As jump entry/exit: Requiem [5], Notte Stellata [6], Otonal [9] 

Yuzuru Hanyu | Scan/Edit

Note: This is a translation of an original article by Vogue China for their WeiXin/WeChat mobile platform. I’m quite surprised this actually made the cut, even if it’s just content for Vogue China’s mobile platform. What started as a Hanyu costume appreciation article quickly revealed its true form as a Hanyu appreciation post and the fangirling is anything but subtle. Not that I minded Ci The words in the brackets and the ~ are not my translator’s notes and personal input but are part of the original article. Captions for photos are in italics.

Click the link to view the original article: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/9bHolfsTxbJ2XYsmG465ng

There are more pics and gifs there, the writer has definitely spent a lot of time and effort on this labor of love so do check it out. Even if you don’t understand Chinese, a picture speaks a thousand words, so let all the pics do all the talking for you.

Hanyu Yuzuru - Starting from his face, Falling for his talent, Staying for his character 始于颜值，陷于才华，忠于人品  (T/N: Describing the journey of most fans - you notice his good looks first, then you appreciate his talent and you stay as a fan/become a loyal fan due to his outstanding character)                                 

“Blue roses do not exist, Hanyu as well, he gives an impression that he does not belong in this world”, Japanese photographer Ninagawa Mika has said this of Hanyu Yuzuru. This youth who is already a legend at the tender age of 23, what other miracle-like surprises can he bring us?

Please click here to view full size. 

Infographic of Yuzuru Hanyu. (Thank you for >4k followers! <3)

[[These images look low-res to me on Tumblr. Hopefully it’s better for you, but you can click the link above to see it in all of its true glory anyway. And please don’t repost this anywhere. Thanks!]]

I’ve noticed that my blog has got some new visitors recently and hi there, if you are familiar with the basics of skating technicality, welcome, I am very glad you dropped by and please feel free to skip this post if you don’t have time for it.

If you are a new or new-ish fan, hi there, I am very glad you dropped by and this post is for you. This came out of a conversation I had with my best friend the other day. So she’s a person who has absolutely no idea about skating, alright? She just felt like taking a look at this blog of mine once, and afterwards she told me that these technical contents I’ve got on here are quite overwhelming and she’s very confused by them all. 

Le me: But I have that sticky post in which I list my basic tech discussions.  Le best friend: Yes but it’s a bunch of bullet points, where do I start? How do I know where to start if I know nothing about anything?  Le me: Huh, that’s a surprisingly valid question.

With that, in this post, I’ll try to lay out a step-by-step orientation plan to get you up to speed on the technical side of skating. Also, full disclosure: I am trying to get you guys entertained by some of my old stuffs, because these coming two weeks I’m more or less going to drop off the grid and I don’t want to lose you because of this temporary scarcity of new content.

STEP 1: Watch Some Skating

I know, this is so obvious you are probably rolling your eyes at me, but I promise, I am being completely serious here. 

Now when you’ve just discovered skating thanks to a certain skater, it is quite tempting to just go hunt down all of his/her past performances and watch them on repeat. In addition to that, though, I’d recommend, when you have the time, to check out some full events. My suggestion: pick from the three latest World Championships: Shanghai, Boston, Helsinki, or the three latest Grand Prix Final: Nagoya, Marseilles, Barcelona. If you get bored easily, you can skip ahead to the two final groups at Worlds. It is a lot of fun to observe the differences between skaters, and by watching these events and listening to the commentaries you can really start to form a holistic view of the sport. The full version of these competitions will also familiarize you with the fact that when you follow skating, you should always expect an equal measure of great performances and awful mistakes. Figure skating is an incredibly difficult, risky sport and figure skaters are humans, is the idea. In my personal view, all the imperfection in this sport makes the perfection, when it happens, that much more wonderful to behold.

Spoiler alert: this is our 2017 World podium on the men’s side

STEP 2: Make Sense of the Jumps and the Spins

Jumps will serve as a good starting point to get into the technical. They are the most important technical elements and their fundamentals are fairly straightforward. By looking into jumps you will also get used to thinking about skating elements in terms of Base Value (by learning how to recognize the jump) and Grade of Execution (by learning how to tell when a jump is performed well).

Base Value: how to tell the jumps apart, and why one jump type is considered more difficult than another

Grade of Execution: the positive features and the negative features

Spoiler alert: this jump got a perfect Grade of Execution

Then there are the spins, whose basics are also quite easy to understand. So here’s a look at:

The spin positions and variations

The level features, and a practical example of how to apply this knowledge 

Spoiler alert: there are three basic spin positions

STEP 3: Make Sense of the Program Component Scores

We are coming to the business of PCS in this step because once you’ve got the jumps and the spins down, you have understood the majority of the Technical Element Score (TES). It’s time to turn to the other half of the scoring sheet and look at what is covered in the five program components. 

Once done with that, if you are interested, have a closer look at

Skating Skills

Transitions

Because these two will help prepare you for the fourth step in our orientation.

Spoiler alert: I like to throw in random gifs like this whenever I mention PCS, because reasons

STEP 4: Make Sense of the Turns and Steps

This step is optional, by the way. Getting into this will earn you a badge of honor for being a hardcore fan (at least in my book, you will). I’ve run into my fair share of people who have been watching skating for a lot longer than I have and never bothered getting into the details of turns and steps (for the record, none of them enjoys watching skating any less than I do). It’s just that this stuff is way harder to get compared to jumps and spins. It took me, I think, 3 months of practice before I was able to read turns and steps at normal speed, and certainly not without any mistake, so don’t get frustrated if at first you can’t seem to get it right.

The six turns:  twizzle, bracket, loop, counter, rocker, three-turn

The six steps: toe step, chassé, mohawk, choctaw, change of edge, cross roll

Spoiler alert: these are twizzles

STEP 5: Watch Some More Skating

Yes, we’ve gone full circle. Now is the time to rewatch your favorite performances (hopefully after going through all the recent Worlds and GPFs you have found a few more of those) and examine them under the light of your new technical awareness. Try to name the jumps, or count the spin features, or estimate the skater’s PCS, or, if you are into the hardcore stuff, read the step sequences. Remember: when in doubt, you can count on YouTube’s reliable speed control: slow ‘em down to 0.25 and hit replay.

And really, that’s all, folks.

As a bonus, here are the answers to some frequently asked questions:

What is the difference between the flip and Lutz jump? The basics, and some close-up of these jumps’ takeoffs.

What is the ISU Scale of Value? The basics, and one more practical example.

What is delayed rotation?

How do you count the number of rotations in a jump? Also in that post: how to know if a jump is under-rotated.

How do you tell if a jump is pre-rotated?

Why is there such a big gap in scoring between the men and the ladies?

Is there any trick to figure out the level of a Step Sequence?

Happy figure skating watching!