Eurosport E2 Dutch commentary of the FS
I think the E2 Dutch commentators are Haya Leenards and Ivo van Haaren. Jeroen Prins used to do it, but I'm not sure if he's done any commentaries this season. IIRC he was at Skate Canada (?) and NHK trophy as judge or tech controller, and this GPF commentary definitely wasn't him, either.
Can it be even better [than Nathan Chen]? He can respond to this like no other, Yuzuru Hanyu. Won the SP with great display of power, 106.53, the second-best score ever. And last year this was the competition in which he didn’t set a foot wrong in both the short and long programs. So he is in top form, exactly at the right moment, just like we’ve come to expect from him. We are very curious to see what his long program looks like. He, too, has four quads planned. Let’s see if he’ll execute them all.
His personal bests, and indeed his world records, he skated a year ago in the GPF. New jump for Hanyu this season is the quad loop, here it comes… yes, beautiful! Quad salchow. And a triple flip [Dutch “eventjes tussendoor”, meaning it’s put in between everything else like it’s nothing important, very easy and casual]. Quad salchow… no, this one doesn’t work out. Quad toeloop, he does hold on to that one. Triple axel, triple toeloop. Another triple axel, oiler (half loop?), double salchow, yeah, that was impossible to save, impossible to jump another triple there in the second jump. Oooh, a single lutz.
Oy Yuzuru Hanyu, I really thought after that first loop, which was finally completely perfect, I thought he would skate a world record, that he’d skate the rest clean, too, because he was already almost clean in Japan where he had only that little stepout I think it was in the loop, that jump he added this season. But it was followed by three small errors in the jumps. A fall at the second triple [???] salchow, well, that was a error [she means big error as opposed to small error]. Then he jumped the triple axel, single, uhm, triple axel, oiler, double salchow, where he had planned a triple salchow, so he leaves some [points] there, too, and then at the end the single lutz instead of the triple, so all things considered, he left some points in the second half of the program. Yeah, and then you don’t skate a world record, no personal best, and you don’t skate the best technical score.
15 points below Nathan Chen. Normally speaking, he should be able to close that gap [make it better, like compensate for the difference], but we’ll have to see how far into the 200 points he scores. Nathan Chen had 84 points for presentation, and the max score Hanyu can score for presentation is 100, that’s only 16 more, and he’s never going to get an average of 10 for everything, so then he isn’t going to win the FS. Yes, and maybe it’ll be close for the entire GPF [tensive?] because there are still two men to go. Well then, a glimmer of hope for the other competitors. We would have really liked to see him skate the perfect FS. He’ll have to save it for Worlds, then.
This is where it went wrong, and after that salchow I think he was so disappointed. That quad toeloop worked out okay, though also not very convincing. First axel was fine, and the second axel was fine, too, but the triple triple combination he couldn’t do after it. Of course the program is more beautiful than Nathan Chen’s, better built, Nathan Chen puts all those difficult jumps, those quads, at the start of the program, and after that he starts to skate a little bit and move, that’s very different with Hanyu. At NHK trophy he scored 197 and a half point, let’s see how far below that mark he gets. 187.37 even, and this is the third score in the FS, but he did havea big lead after the SP, so he will still be in first, but will this be enough for the win? That is still possible, but he has opened the door for Patrick Chan and Javi Fernandez.
(after Chan’s skate)
And so the ranking is completely changed, with Hanyu still the, probably even to himself surprising winner. He didn’t believe in it anymore after his performance, but his lead was large enough, an advantage of twenty points over Shoma Uno, that’s what saved him, but Patrick Chan is not going to manage that.
So only Hanyu and Rippon keep their placement, 1 and 6.
So the winner is Yuzuru Hanyu, wins the title for the fourth time in a row, equaling Yevgeni Plushenko, who also won the GPF four times, but not four times in a row.
Nathan Chen and Shoma Uno steal the show, but a competition is over two events, and in that regard Hanyu was the strongest and ends ahead of Chen and Uno.
[while they’re building the medal ceremony podiums and showing some highlights]
Hanyu does win, but does so with the third score in the FS. It didn’t go smoothly, although it started out wonderfully with that quad loop, and you think, if that works out, the most difficult element in his program, then he’ll go “all the way” (in English), but he didn’t yet. Let’s hope for his sake that he’s saving it for Worlds. He does win, and stays ahead of the young ones Chen and Uno.
arty:
). It's just better than I could have even imagined it and a LOT sooner than I imagined it. I was trying to temper my expectations when it was announced because this is probably my favorite Prince song, but he has truly knocked this one out of the park and I am so glad Yuzuru himself loves this program too. You can just tell he loves it. I showed a couple of my coworkers today (one is a Prince fan and doesn't know a lot about skating but knows Yuzu is my favorite). The other is a former skating fan. They both thought he was absolutely brilliant. They were genuinely excited about it. They especially love the footwork. I'm so glad Jeff choreographed it to be a real highlight and not a throwaway part of the program. To me that and the musically magical triple axel really make the program! Rock on, Yuzu!! 
Poor Brian.
:
It will be different in the arena, though, where I'll give 200% of my energies to cheer for him!
