#fsrpf

still, a lot of the talk you'll hear about him is how important he was to the evolution of skating in the mid-2010s! he was one of the pioneers of the quadruple jump revolution and is very respected in the community despite underscoring. the commentators talk about him a lot like he's a beloved old dog about to get sent to a farm upstate. which is unfortunately very danny ric coded.

aside from that, he's also known for having some sillier/quirkier program concepts which feels very apropos, such as this spider-man themed one. he will almost certainly not be medaling at this year's olympics (more likely than not his last), but he's a real treat to watch when he’s on (and he has been quite on so far!). his short program is set to music from ted lasso this year, and it's one of my favorites :)

now, that said, let's take a moment to talk about the real danny ric of figure skating, my boy javier fernandez.

javier fernandez is a now-retired spanish figure skater who is a two-time world champion, and a seven-time european champion. he was known for being an incredibly tidy and charismatic skater, and also for being just really, really goofy (see: this aerobics class-themed exhibition skate where he pours water all over himself and does pushups on the ice)

but of course, being successful and silly alone does not a danny ric analog make. what really makes javier fernandez the guy for dr3 lovers is the fact that his sporting legacy, like danny ric’s, will always be informed by his relationship with a twinky little wunderkind who would go on to become one of the greatest to ever do it. because just like danny ric had max, javier fernandez had yuzuru hanyu

this dynamic is, to me, what truly makes javier fernandez the perfect danny ric. like max, hanyu is probably the one skater that people know even if they don’t know skating. he was just that good. and like max with danny, yuzuru was also just so deeply besotted and obsessed with javier for reasons unclear to possibly even himself. the whole reason they started training together is that yuzuru wanted to have quad jumps as good as javier’s, so he decided to move to canada where javier was so they could train under the same coach.

and under said coach, yuzu did learn how to jump like javier. and then he learned how to jump better. but rather than grow resentful of this, rather than hate yuzuru for the fact that he was reason javier came back to spain in 2018 with a silver medal around his neck instead of gold, the two of them became really, really close--close enough that javi compared his friendship with yuzuru to having a wife.

naturally, rpfers were really chill and normal about this at the time and certainly did not create a robust ao3 tag nor a fuckload of youtube compliations of them being cute together to cope. all this to say, their maxiel coding is not just on their own narrative side, but also the fandom response to that narrative.