#worlds 2012

羽生 結弦 Yuzuru Hanyu (JPN)

for both are infinite.

Daisuke Takahashi making history of World figure skating championships

Happy 36th Birthday! Daisuke Takahashi  (March 16, 1986)

2004 Nyah / Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini

2005 Nyah / Concierto de Aranjuez

2007 Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto / The Phantom of the Opera

2008 Hip Hop Swan Lake / Romeo and Juliet (Tchaikovsky)

2010 Eye / La Strada

2011 Mambo / Invierno Porteno

2012 In the Garden of Souls / Blues for Klook

2013 Moonlight Sonata / Pagliacci

Hi! The first interview that came to mind, in which both of them were present, was their Scott Livingston one, which has a transcription here -

SL:  So to play off that, because that plays off the idea that somebody has a particular goal, maybe it’s losing weight, maybe it’s building a business, whatever you’re doing, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a gold medal, but then you get it, then what?  Like, did you feel, the way you expected to feel and what changed for you after?

Scott: I think the magical thing about 2010 is that it felt exactly how I thought it would feel.  I dreamt of that moment, being on the podium together, being in that position together, being in Vancouver being surrounded by Canadians, and it was exactly how I dreamed it would be, and I think that’s pretty rare in life.  And the medals, I remember when they put the medals around our necks it was just as heavy as I thought it was going to be, and at Worlds they put the medal, and it was like [Scott mimes a very light medal], this is it? and we did all this?  But it felt right, and seeing all the school kids was a great experience, but then re-setting after that was a lot different than I thought.  There was a huge come-down period, what we called an Olympic hangover, that lasted probably for the better part of a year and a half, it was a lengthy time to try and get re-motivated.  And going into those next four years – we always say we learned more in those years between 2010 and 2014 than in our whole career before that.  And we were trying to reinvent ourselves, trying to push ourselves to skate to different music, to move differently, to try and figure out what was behind Tessa’s leg injuries, so there’s a whole bunch that went on in those four years.

Tessa:  But interestingly, while that Olympic experience lived up to our expectations, it didn’t change us -

Scott: [?]

Tessa:  - and I’m not sure we had talked openly about that before the Olympic games, but there is some anticipation that you have this perfect recipe, this quick fix to success, or that you’ll just be happier, that people will treat you differently, but like -

Scott: Yeah.

Tessa: - I don’t know what the expectation really is, but nothing did, like nothing really changed, because the people that were in our lives on a daily basis remained the same, we were just Tessa and Scott -

Scott: Hopefully.

Tessa: (laughs) Yeah, and I remember that, just to fast forward to the second time we won the world championships in Nice, France, 2012, and we won the competition and there we were in the South of France, with a few days off, and nothing could be better, and I was sitting with my mom having lunch, and she looked over and I was just crying, bawling my eyes out, and she said, "What’s wrong?” and I said, “It just didn’t feel like I expected it to feel,” so I think we do set ourselves up sometimes, and if there’s one thing we could tell younger skaters, having had a bit of success, that it has to be about the process, that the feeling of getting the medals, that external validation, is nothing compared to gratification you get simply from hard work, or from chasing a goal…

Scott: Which brings us kind of  to 2014, because that’s what we did exceptionally well, because now when we look back to 2014, I think that people think we’re less excited because we’re silver medalists, but the way that we prepared for that and how much we enjoyed the process, we really took in the experience, we only have fond memories of Sochi, and kind of being really in that Olympic experience and taking full advantage of it, I mean, that’s priceless to us.

I poked around for a bit at some of their other joint interviews that I thought might have included it, but came up blank, but this was as close as I could get to your specifics.

I think Tessa spoke of it in another interview she did on her own, and of course it was mentioned in their book in a more roundabout way, as being a turning point to understanding that they needed more than just winning gold, to really take satisfaction in their performances.