Yuzuru Hanyu FCC Press Conference

This press conference was live streamed today, and since it's in English and doesn't need translation, I thought it would be great to share. FCC stands for Foreign Correspondence Club.
https://youtu.be/JzzCE8MZJec?t=2m8s

There are lots of interesting questions, some tricky ones, and some demonstrations to the general public about what an Axel jump is. 17:59 min
Some highlights include Yuzu talking about the balance between quads and artistry (a constant debate here on GS) 26:30 min
And the importance of cultural music in changing the way expression is perceived 24:30
Him being delighted that the Spanish media finally asks him about Javier Fernandez 50:13

Also talks about 4As Quints and more.

-They also asked him about the North Korean athletes at the Olympics...a sticky subject in Japan and a very loaded question. His answer was very good. 47:44
Watch and enjoy.

Interspectator said:

This press conference was live streamed today, and since it's in English and doesn't need translation, I thought it would be great to share. FCC stands for Foreign Correspondence Club.
https://youtu.be/JzzCE8MZJec?t=2m8s

There are lots of interesting questions, some tricky ones, and some demonstrations to the general public about what an Axel jump is. 17:59 min
Some highlights include Yuzu talking about the balance between quads and artistry (a constant debate here on GS) 26:30 min
And the importance of cultural music in changing the way expression is perceived 24:30
Him being delighted that the Spanish media finally asks him about Javier Fernandez 50:13

Also talks about 4As Quints and more.

-They also asked him about the North Korean athletes at the Olympics...a sticky subject in Japan and a very loaded question. His answer was very good. 47:44
Watch and enjoy.

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He has done a lot of interviews and press conferences after coming back to Japan, and this is my favorite so far :agree: :luv17:

He was so perturbed when they asked him to describe what it feels like to jump a quad. Like...how do you explain the feeling. The answer was very complicated.

All those people at the beggining... like let him breathe. The translator lady was really good :clapper:
Javier question was probably his favourite one
And I have a feeling they ask him some of these questions expecting him to say something controversial. They were so many stupid questions in other press conferences and I have no idea how he managed to answer all of them

My favorites ones were the ones about food... jk

Really great interview. The part about Javier reflect in how much he is conscious about how his presence has sometimes affected Javier.

Also the part of the balance between technical and artistry is my favorite argument of all the discussion I have seen about the subject.

The part about choosing Seimei speak of how much he reflects before developing his programs and how involve he is the process.

Great interview.

Also the translator was the real MVP

The translator for FCC is A+++ level.

The 'lesson' on 4A reminds me of Nobu on tv showing the difficulty of 3A, hehe

when he was 1st invited to FCC for interview in 2014 after his gold medal there was a question about his potential rivals for 2018, and his answer was along the line of "in 2010 i was junior skater and noone could guess i would take the gold, there will be many rivals among the young skaters", that was exactly the case in 2018 and he knew it, had plans not for a year but years to come, and because of it he was always in the conversation for medals, i cant stop wondering how would his progress be like if didnt slow down because of injuries and everything, there is no doubt that he is birlliant athlete, i cant wait for the day he has a chance to share his knowledge/experience/vision with his students!!

also, i feel like a mean person for saying this but it was so funny seeing him struggle to answer the "hard" questions

cruzceleste said:

My favorites ones were the ones about food... jk

Really great interview. The part about Javier reflect in how much he is conscious about how his presence has sometimes affected Javier.

Also the part of the balance between technical and artistry is my favorite argument of all the discussion I have seen about the subject.

The part about choosing Seimei speak of how much he reflects before developing his programs and how involve he is the process.

Great interview.

Also the translator was the real MVP

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Since Yuzuru talked about the reason why he cried, I'd like to leave this here.

https://twitter.com/nyapippi/status/968464825566183424

Thank you for sharing! Hanyu is amazing not only on the ice but in public speaking. His English is improving a lot and I think he will be an extraordinary public figure when he chooses to retire.

The comment that made the biggest impression on me was his observation that skating is slanted towards westerners (the sport having originated and developed in Europe) and how Asian skaters face more disadvantages. It seems on the surface that that’s no longer true especially with the rise of Japanese skaters (and perhaps the Koreans over the next two-three years) but beneath the surface I see that discrimination is still there. I wonder how Hanyu feels about the rise of Asian American or Asian Canadian skaters and if he would see them facing similar disadvantages to Caucasian counterparts in North America.

Metis said:

Yuzuru is a universal language.

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Suze said:

The comment that made the biggest impression on me was his observation that skating is slanted towards westerners (the sport having originated and developed in Europe) and how Asian skaters face more disadvantages. It seems on the surface that that’s no longer true especially with the rise of Japanese skaters (and perhaps the Koreans over the next two-three years) but beneath the surface I see that discrimination is still there. I wonder how Hanyu feels about the rise of Asian American or Asian Canadian skaters and if he would see them facing similar disadvantages to Caucasian counterparts in North America.

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I found that fascinating as well and was glad to hear him say it. There’s so much structural racism and inequity out there, and I‘m happy he was willing to come out and say, “Hey, Asia is under-represented here, and it means something for me to skate to to Japanese music and not try to conform to European perceptions of what it means to be a male figure skater.” When he was interviewed immediately after his short and asked how he felt about his odds of winning the OGM, he said, “I don’t even care. I’m doing me.” Part of me wonders if he would have been able to say what he did if he hadn’t won the gold, however. :/

I don’t think he was saying the sport itself is “slanted,” necessarily — more that it developed in Europe (and that Europe has certain institutional advantages that stem from that), but a more subtle bias: that because figure skating is newer to Asia, Asian figure skaters are expected to conform to European norms in music, dress, style, etc. Which is part of what makes skating his “Seimei” routine so important to him, as there’s nothing European about it. And considering that Hanyu embodies Japan on the world stage... that is so much to put on one person, but he’s carried it all with grace.

(Am also a minority. It was definitely a moment for me.)

matmuh said:

when he was 1st invited to FCC for interview in 2014 after his gold medal there was a question about his potential rivals for 2018, and his answer was along the line of "in 2010 i was junior skater and noone could guess i would take the gold, there will be many rivals among the young skaters", that was exactly the case in 2018 and he knew it, had plans not for a year but years to come, and because of it he was always in the conversation for medals, i cant stop wondering how would his progress be like if didnt slow down because of injuries and everything, there is no doubt that he is birlliant athlete, i cant wait for the day he has a chance to share his knowledge/experience/vision with his students!!

also, i feel like a mean person for saying this but it was so funny seeing him struggle to answer the "hard" questions

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I think Yuzuru knew Nathan would have been a threat all along. That's why he insisted on the 4Lo and 4Lz.

If Nathan had done a PB in SP at Olympics and in same vein Shoma with PB FS and Javier with PB FS, Yuzuru would still be able to win with a SUPER-clean 2015/2016 Seimei but if he had perform with the two jump mistakes and one missed combo, as in the Olympic FS, he would have needed a clean 4Lo and/or clean 4Lz. (i.e. 4 quads/5 quads with two 3A with 2 mistakes)

da96103 said:

I think Yuzuru knew Nathan would have been a threat all along. That's why he insisted on the 4Lo and 4Lz.

If Nathan had done a PB in SP at Olympics and in same vein Shoma with PB FS and Javier with PB FS, Yuzuru would still be able to win with a SUPER-clean 2015/2016 Seimei but if he had perform with the two jump mistakes and one missed combo, as in the Olympic FS, he would have needed a clean 4Lo and/or clean 4Lz. (i.e. 4 quads/5 quads with two 3A with 2 mistakes)

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Sincere question: have you ever spent time with highly competitive people? I ask because my boyfriend is an international competitor. (Ironically, Japan is the dominant nation, and they consider him one of America’s top talents, if not the top talent.) I have the competitive jerk gene myself, although I’ve learned to keep it in check (it goes bad places). But having been around high level competitors... they’re not normal. Olympians are not normal. My boyfriend is not normal — not just because he’s abnormally wonderful, but also because he’s abnormally competitive. And there’s good and bad to that, but one element of that kind of personality, and the ability to compete at a high level is the belief that nothing is decided until you’ve made your play and the unfailing confidence in the belief you can win. (I have straight up told my boyfriend there was a time when he had no chance. He says that since he didn’t make it to the last round, we’ll never know. That level of surety of self and the belief that nothing is ever decided in advance baffles me, but it’s integral to competing at a high level.)

Yuzuru may look adorable and offer diplomatic soundbites, and I don’t doubt that much of what he says is genuine, but there are specific remarks that are — athlete boilerplate? And those should never be taken seriously. All of these guys went into the games with the sincere belief that they would win, including Yuzuru. Whatever respect they have for their competitors, they believe they are the best, that they can do something better, bigger, cleaner, that base values be damned, they’re the x-factor. You don’t train the way they do for years, put your body through these injuries, and stare at one goal for four years under the assumption you’re going to lose at the end. These guys have given up their lives for this. The fact that Yuzuru was willing to, in his own words, “bet his life” on these Olympics says it all, really.

I’m sure Yuzuru had a strategy for Chen (and the rest of the top contenders), but I sincerely doubt he thinks as much about the competition as you think he does, save for figuring out what elements were absolutely required against the field and that he was capable of performing with three weeks of practice. Same for the rest of the top flight, minus the injury complication. Ultimately, there’s the competition against others and the competition against yourself, and in my experience dealing with highly competitive people (including myself), regardless of how you do in the former, it’s the latter that actually matters.

You can create whatever what-if you’d like, but at the end of the day, Chen had obvious weaknesses, and while I obviously didn’t want him to perform the way he did in the short, it wasn’t a surprise. If Yuzuru was doing his research as he said, I doubt he was caught sleeping either. I don’t doubt for a second that the top men respect Chen’s talent, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if they saw him as weak competitively (constantly changing layouts, relative lack of international competitive experience, etc.), and I wouldn’t be at all shocked if they considered him a much weaker contender than the American media. (I certainly didn’t think of Chen as a good bet at even money for the gold, but I knew I was the minority.)

Of course, Yuzuru could have crashed and burned and Chen could have won. Anything is possible. But I think what-ifs are pointless to begin with and it’s worth remembering that all of these guys are out to claim first and they believe that they can do it; they’re confident, not afraid.

Metis said:

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I have literally nothing to add really except thanks for that post because that was probably the best I've ever seen a competitive mindset explained.

Metis said:

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Fascinating insight! Thank you for sharing. I've honestly sometimes boggled at the fact that competitors (not just skaters) have to objectively know their chances of winning are slim, but still go out there and compete with everything they have. I think your post goes a long way in explaining that, as well as the inverse--that Yuzu must have known his chances were great, but refused to rest on his laurels.

somelikeitpink said:

I have literally nothing to add really except thanks for that post because that was probably the best I've ever seen a competitive mindset explained.

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Shandy said:

Fascinating insight! Thank you for sharing. I've honestly sometimes boggled at the fact that competitors (not just skaters) have to objectively know their chances of winning are slim, but still go out there and compete with everything they have. I think your post goes a long way in explaining that, as well as the inverse--that Yuzu must have known his chances were great, but refused to rest on his laurels.

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[emoji847][emoji847] wow, thank you! Glad my teal deer were of service! (Funny story: my boyfriend took a loss better than I did. He’s ... good at dealing with the pressure. Me? I cried and blamed myself. The kind of person it takes to survive the pressure is beyond comprehension, and for Olympic athletes, there’s not a “normal life” to fall back to. I am very lucky my boyfriend is sane with another side of his life, or as sane as anyone can be who competes at that level, because it’s definitely a good way to lose what sanity you have.) Competitive drive is real (I keep mine in check by not going there — I worked more as a coach/commentator/researcher/talking infodesk), and the way Yuzuru talks about his ankle feels very familiar. Boyfriend is currently not actively competing while finishing his doctorate, and he can’t just “casually” compete; when you know what your best is, not performing at it is ... worse than not trying at all, in some ways. But the Olympics come every four years, which makes Olympians an even rarer breed of crazy.

The chances of winning are slim, but if you’ve ever heard someone say, “Skaters should be allowed to leave the ice after falling” — that’s the kind of statement that just doesn’t make sense to a top competitor. You can make the most devastating mistake, but there’s no time to truly think about it while you’re in competition (you can beat yourself up about it for a year after you’re done); it’s a trait that has ... good points and bad. (... when a pseudo-lawyer and a competitive genius quibble over word choice: three hours of verbal trench warfare! Hot dictionary on thesaurus action!) But the idea of giving up or not finishing a program when you know you’ve won is ... literally unthinkable, in that it’s a thought that cannot naturally occur. It’s anathema to what makes competitors what they are.

By any conventional metric, what Yuzuru did was irrational, even crazy: risking further injury in pursuit of a medal, allowing him to tie Button’s record and — I honestly think he wanted this the most, though I have no special insight — skate two clean programs for the gold rather than win the way he did in Sochi. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he tries again in Beijing precisely because injury means this Olympics is forever an asterisk, a sort of “what if” — what if I hadn’t been injured? What if I could have actually prepared? What if I’d been able to truly show what I know I’m capable of? I may very well be wrong, and I’m not suggesting I think he’s a lock four years from now, just that I suspect that even with this kind of ridiculous accomplishment — what he did in spite of his injury is frankly ludicrous, even before you consider the podium placings — there’s still that drive to do better. (When I said Orser is going to have to drag him off the ice for his own good one day, this was what I meant....)

Yuzuru does leave a fair number of clues, though they may require a second watch. Off the top of my head: describing Fernández as almost too nice to compete; “I bet my life on these Olympics”; revealing that the pain reduction was actually only at 20-30%; the way he pressed his forehead against the rings in the Olympic ice after his free skate, completely spent; “I don’t even care. I’m doing me” when asked after the short about how he felt about his chances for the gold.... The last one is more nuanced, but the others are pretty straightforward, I think? The comment about Fernández is especially revealing, since it came after he said he wanted to talk about how important a friend Fernández is and how much he respects him, and I don’t think for a moment that was meant as an insult. It’s just... very indicative of the competitive mindset: even though we all rise together, when we’re all improving and pushing the sport, at the end of the day, only one person is awarded the gold, and there are no medals for kindness. (I think my boyfriend is what would happen if Javi and Yuzu raised a child together... and I’m only realizing that now.) Sort of how it’s not exactly “playing dirty” to evade being honest about the state of your 4Lz, but it’s certainly a competitive advantage.

And this is still a guy who described the 4Lz as being like a cat! I... think Yuzuru is Yuzuru: in some ways, he’s guileless and a dork (the headdesk!), and I have no doubt his friendship with Javier is genuine, that he’s actually a nice guy — there are way too many non-self-serving moments that have been captured when he had no reason to believe they would be for me to think he’s an inauthentic jerk. But he’s also been living under the pressure of a nation for most of his life, he’s extremely talented (and he knows it), he’s easily the most complete skater of the last two cycles and has redefined what’s possible for Asian skaters and men’s skating more broadly, and he wants to win. You don’t risk skating with that kind of injury unless you’re some kind of crazy, and, well, he is. And outside pressure. It’s more than any one person should have to bear.

You have to wonder how any of them stay even remotely close to sane, rather than beginning from the presumption that they are.

Metis said:

(whole post)

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Very interesting insight. This also should take into account the amount of competition they have to face since young I figure skating, specially strong federations like USA or Japan.
And taking this into consideration, maybe it's no surprise Javier Fernández and him could have a good working relationship/friendship. Yuzuru said "he's so kind he's almost not suited to competition", and this really says wonders about the mindset they both have had while training together while being top rivals against each other. But Javier hasn't had to face the kind of pressure Yuzu had until he was older, and I think that's the reason he has kept a different, "kinder" approach. Of course he had other troubles that come with coming from a smaller federation that couldn't support him, but not that kind of competitive ferocity, so to speak...

However other athletes like Yuzuru or Plushenko are/were actually fueled by it. Shoma has said on occasion he prefers to compete among Yuzu because he takes the blunt of the media pressure. Nathan crumbled in the Olys but then did an amazing comeback and will learn from it. Boyang has been showing a strong mentality so far. They're all confident in themselves, in their abilities, but show it in different ways.

TBH this is mostly speculation in my part, but I found your insight interesting. And that press conference was gold, thanks Interspectator.

Edit: started writing this before your last post, LOL, so maybe it looks a bit weird.

@Metis, this quote from Yuzuru from a press conference today might interest you. Basically JPN press was playing the 'what if' game just as much as GS members in the FS thread and...

they also told Yuzuru about Shoma's statement when he said he came into his free believing that if he gave an absolutely perfect performance, he'd win but then Shoma fell on his 4Lo. Yuzuru responded with "I'd say that even if he'd landed the 4Lo, I wouldn't have lost" ahaha

Twitter source

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I love how he made a point about using Asian music specifically from someone's own country. I think someone here once said something to the same effect (sorry I can't remember who specifically and which thread it was), but how unique it is to use music like that. It applied to Yuna Kim as well, doing Homage to Korea because there's nuances and subtleties that don't quite translate as to when it's "Asian" music but are composed by western composers, such as Miss Saigon or Madame Butterfly. Its nice to see that outlook being pointed out.

As for information, Yuzuru said himself a couple of times before he didn't like to use "what-if" words. And he really likes the competitions all the skaters bring their best. It also amazes me he says he likes to do the interview and press conference because they help him to clear his thoughts and look himself objectively. He rewatches his interviews and makes good use of them, and he even thanked the press for giving him these opportunities since he was a child.

xeyra said:

@Metis, this quote from Yuzuru from a press conference today might interest you. Basically JPN press was playing the 'what if' game just as much as GS members in the FS thread and...

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Yes, he said he wouldn't have lost because there was the gap in points after SP. He was also asked "what-if" question related to Nathan in the same press con