and the Dutch Eurosport FS, quick and dirty transcription
Yuzuru Hanyu, he cannot allow himself to make many mistakes anymore, because more and more men can do multiple difficult quad jumps. He’s third after the SP with 97 points, but actually he did really well with a quad loop and triple axel, but opened his second quad, the salchow, at double, but he did combine it with a triple toeloop so the damage wasn’t too bad.
Yuzuru opens with a SPEC-TA-CU-LAR quad loop (commentator emphasizes every single syllable of the four-syllable Dutch word “schitterende”!), which he’s added to his programs this season. Quad slalchow. Triple flip. Oh, the salchow turns into a double, he’d planned a quad, just like in the SP. But then, here, a beautiful quad toeloop. He’s still got a lot up his sleeve. Triple axel, triple toeloop. And you can see him thinking here, he’s rearranging the jumps now, he jumps a second quad toeloop here, and a double, because he missed that salchow. You can only execute every jump twice, you’re not allowed to repeat more than two. Here a second triple axel, superb!
Wow, I have enormous respect for Yuzuru Hanyu, not just because this was a brilliant program, but also how he dealt with missing the salchow in the middle of the program. You’re only allowed to repeat two triple or quad jumps, alone or in combination, so he knew he’d missed the repetition of that quad salchow, so he could do another quad jump twice, so he thought about while skating the program and so did two quad toeloops, and there were also two triple axels, so he knew it was exactly right with all his content. So he actually even made the program more difficult at the end, because he exchanged the triple lutz, the one at the end, for another triple axel, all the while during the program, that’s unbelievable. And exactly how talented are you when you’re able to, when there’s a lutz in your choreography, just change things around and jump a triple axel? And without a long preparation for the jump. And Orser here is astonished, too. What did you do?! Hanyu’s explaining to him, haha, did you see that, I just did this and that, I could do that. Yeah, but this also comes from many hours of training, I see him at competitions often and if you look at the practices there, he jumps one quad after another, the quad toeloop, sixteen, even twenty times in a training, and makes so many miles with those quads. And also, when you skate that program, he always skates like it’s a competition, you always look for those max scores, also in the trainings. So actually, he knows and understands everything so well [about the jumps], that’s when you are capable of switching things around, you can think, Oh, I missed the salchow, so I can do the toeloop twice, so it turns into plan B or plan E. That’s why he’s such a great champion, Yuzuru Hanyu, which means once again he’s the top favorite for the World championship, as well as the Olympic Games. He can do this like no other, and also skate a beautiful program with music with transitions, it’s just complete. So, this was by far the best program of the day, at least so far, of course, Nathan Chen still has to come, but he doesn’t have the presentations, the skating skills or transition like Hanyu does.
Hanyu twice in a row winner of the GPF, but not Worlds. He needs to have another season, and not peak in December, and so this 4CC has to lead towards a super-peak at the end of March in Helsinki at Worlds where he very badly wants to win back his Worlds title from his training mate Javi Fernandez. Look, he’s analyzing how he changed his program on the fly, Oh, did I do that, oh, okay! Yes, it all fit together, Yuzuru, you did well. Wonderful, this analysis in the kiss ‘n cry. Oh, wonderful [to see his reaction], he’s almost his own coach, to do it like this [again, still talking about changing the program around, I guess], unbelievable. Oooh, 303 points, wow, highest score so far this season. It’s not a personal best, that’s at 330, but it’s definitely the best achievement of the season.
And he looks so handsome in that suit
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