I think he knows he needs to heal completely, which is why he is going under the radar and skipping all ice shows.
But what if skipping the shows won’t give him enough time to heal completely?
But he himself knows what is at stake and the direction of the sport is progressing. He mentioned in his post-WC interview and I quote : "First, I’d like to increase the difficulty of my programs. I WILL increase the difficulty of my programs. Half-way through the season, I was able to do most of the things I set out to achieve. This is why I have to aim higher. It made me want to become stronger than ever." (from yuzusorbet trans, skipped some part).
I assumed it is out of the question that he will increase his tech content? Plus, he had trouble with his toe-pick jump due to his injury, doing an edge jump like a 4Lo probably would be an option for him to lessen the stress on his injured toe-pick foot. Brian also said in his interview about a plan to add 4Lo and move one quad to the 2nd half. It's not like Yuzuru never landed 4Lo before, he has already landed it multiple times in practice and shows, he just needs to get used to it. (though 4Lo means... poor hip)
If he’s already been doing 4Lo, it’ll certainly be easier for him to put it into a program than if he needed to learn it from scratch. I’m very glad to find it he has a way of uping his tech content this season without having to learn a new quad – thank you for the info! Moving a quad into the second half of the program seems doable and not injury-inducing, provided he has enough time to develop the needed stamina.
I doubt he will do 4 quads, especially after his injury, but reading his interview, he himself feel that he needs to keep progressing otherwise he won't feel challenged.
I hope he’ll find a different way to feel challenged than to add a forth quad to his LP!
Also there are some inaccurate things that you mentioned:
-Yuzuru did not add his 2nd triple axel in between GPF and world. That is javier. Yuzuru literally always have 2 planned 3As in the LP in almost his entire senior career. The only change he made in this season planned LP was the 4S, and that was because he already had problem with his mid-foot for the toe-pick jump, so he did less 4T.
I’m sorry, you’re right, I didn’t make accurate enough notes.
Shoma had already have higher BV than Yuzuru since TCC. He did a 4F+4T in SP and 4F+2 4T in the LP. Also, looking at his new layout in his FaOI ice shows, it does seem like he is setting for a 4-quad LP. His problem is not the quad though, he has quite bad jump landings and lack of transitions, keeping him from getting max GOEs and high TR component score. But you know what will happen when he fix this, he will also be rewarded. Though this layout seems highly injury-prone.
When did Shoma do 4F4T in SP and 4F2 in LP? I checked the protocols, just in case, and according to them, he did one quad toe-loop in SP and two quad too-loops in LP at SA, GPF, 4CC and Worlds. He also did one quad toe-loop in SP at TEB (there was no LP< of course.)
I think he is more likely to get more severe injuries by having a long break between national and WC. 4CC doesn't have much prestige. Almost all top skaters skip 4CC. So GPF is the 2nd most important competition in a non-Olympic season. If at the beginning of the season, he knew he will have 5 competitions in the 1st half of the season and only 1 competition after national with a 3 months break, he will end up pushing himself a lot more before national because he knows he can rest and recover after national. If he plans to attend 4CC right from the beginning of the season, he won't push himself as hard in the 1st half of the season because he knows he has a long season ahead. He will still get injuries, but his injuries would not be as bad as the injuries he gets when he doesn't plan to go to 4CC right from the beginning of the season.
Somebody needs to save him from himself! Like his mother, Orser, other staff at the rink.
His injuries in 2014-2015 and 2015-2016 seasons are more severe than his injuries in 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 season when he did 4CC and Olympics between national and WC.
I think it’s fairly common for skaters to get more severe injuries as their career progresses and the stress on the body increases and accumulates.
I'm so busy to keep up with the thread but I just wanted to share that I had a weird vivid dream where Yuzuru skip the whole GP Series and attend Japanese Nationals, won there and got send to 4CC and World then won at both events qualifying 3 spots for Japan. The funny thing is before all the events, I was even at the cricket club and Brian told me (which is weird I mean who am I for Brian to tell such thing
) that due to Yuzu's injury they decided to try a new tactic to make sure Yuzu peak at World and since he got 4 GPF title so its ok to skip and also it give a chance for Yuzuru to heal fully.
I hope your dream comes true!
I don't think it's a good idea to skip the GPs. He won't have enough competition to practice his layouts in competition. We can't expect him to execute a new harder layout perfectly by skipping competitions. It took him 15-20 competitions to stabilize his 4S. Skipping GPs is only a good idea if he doesn't plan to up his tech and only tries to stick to the safe layout until the Olympics (Doing a safe layout at the Olympics means he is pretty much guaranteed to lose unless everybody bombs. Judges will not give the gold to a defending champ who doesn't have harder layout than his rivals. All of his rivals are upping their tech. He can't stay stagnant.) or if his summer schedule is too over-loaded like in the summer after the Olympics.
He can do a B competition in December before Nationals. If there are some competitions in Japan after Nationals for skaters who haven’t made the team, he can also do one of these, if he feels he needs an extra competition before Worlds. Or there may be some in Canada which are open to foreigners. If the worst comes to worst, Orser can organize a competition between Hanyu and Fernandez on their rink and invite the local public, if Fernandez agrees, of course.
And he can always up his tech content before the Olympic season, if his health doesn’t allow him to do it this season.
He tried easier tech when he was younger and physically weaker. He tried harder tech when he is older. But he also physically grew stronger. So the amount of risk he takes is proportional to his physical strength.
Every athlete knows he has to take risk to win medals. No pain, no gain. He already knew before he practiced those layouts, that's the outcome he would get when he attempts those difficult tech and trains intensively. Unless he regrets the medals he received and have regrets about his WR performances, I don't think there is anything ironic about it.
It's normal he feels pain. That's the price he pays if he wants to win. If a person wins major championship by taking little risk, he will pay later (in some other ways). There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Pain is not just an unpleasant sensation. It’s the organism’s way of telling the person that something is wrong. I think we all know the cases when skaters thought feeling pain was normal, with sad or tragic results (Michelle Kwan, Rachael Flatt, Alexei Yagudin who was lucky to get a career-ending injury soon after Salt Lake rather than a bit before it, Dmitri Shabalin, Evgeni Plushenko, to say nothing of Sergei Grinkov).
I’m sure Hanyu doesn’t regret winning gold medals and setting WR with the price he’s paid so far, but if he had found himself unable to compete at top level again or at all, I think he would have preferred he’d won fewer medals and set fewer WRs between Sochi and Korea, but was still in the condition to up his content in the Olympic season and be in the running for the gold.
http://www.goldenskate.com/forum/showthread.php?59728-ISU-votes-to-abolish-anonymous-judging/page6
Someone found a series academic papers that studied subjectively judged sports. The bias and collusion in judging is statistically significant to change the final placements. The compatriot judge is not just one person. Federations form voting blocs and trade votes. So whoever has more connection and long term partnerships will receive more generous judging.
I tried to think that the abnormal judging is just one outlier at one particular competition. But the judging just got worse and worse towards the end of the season. After this season, I don't believe in the judges any more. The judges simply don't care about fairness. They didn't even try to be fair. They just gave out scores however they like to boost the skaters they are told to favor. Who can be sure that these judges will actually follow the rules/guidelines? They are not rewarded for following the rules and they are not punished for violating the rules. How can Yuzuru leave his fate to these judges' hand and rely on judges' mercy to give the scores he and his rivals deserve?
Personally, I think the most flagrant cases of unfair judging this season resulted from having Worlds in a country with medal contenders, an undue influence by the rumored next president of ISU, and a national federation sabotaging its own skaters due to internal intrigues. None of this affected men’s competitions, though, and none of this are likely to be problems in the upcoming season.
However, I agree with you that no skater can afford to pitch his hopes on fair judging. I just think that
if Hanyu doesn’t heal properly in time to prepare for GP and/or to up his tech content this season, he can do so next season.
