Javier Fernandez | Page 211 | Golden Skate

Javier Fernandez

So, I promised to collect some of the articles and photo galleries about Javi and here they are. :)

But first, I want to bring you this: Charlie Chaplin's official Twitter account posted about Javi's SP after the men's event. This is the company that officially represents the Chaplin family and manages Chaplin's entire heritage.

"Spain's Javier Fernandez channels Charlie Chaplin in this winning performance which saw him claim bronze at the 2018 Winter Olympics. Bravo @javierfernandez!"

There really isn't any higher praise than this for that marvel of a short program!!! :luv17:


SP galleries:
Spanish OC Facebook page
El Pais

FS galleries:
Spanish OC Facebook page
LaLiga
El Pais
Diario Vasco
RTVE
AS

Medal ceremony:
Spanish OC Facebook page


Articles - Warning! Hankies may be in order as some of these are basically eulogies to Javi's career. :sad21::sad4: And it's totally worth putting them through google translate too for relatively enjoyable English versions.

El Pais by Jordi Lafarga, one of Javi's childhood coaches: "For a coach with as many limitations as me, Javi was one of those students who break the mould. While his hard-working training mates fell again and again, Javi played tag with any skater who passed by - he was quick as a pellet, but with a growing myopia, so imagine the danger he posed to himself."
AS by Felipe Montoya: "Javi always looked very relaxed, but at the same time very concentrated and focused. And he has demonstrated it on the ice. It is difficult to remain calm when every minute they say the word 'medal' and he has managed to meet the expectations. I always trusted him, I saw him clearly on the podium."
Vavel: The invisible dance "Rarely has a skater been seen flying across the ice with so much charisma, passion, personality and ability to perform"
Practico Deporte: Don Quijote on ice "Charles Chaplin, Don Quijote, Jack Sparrow, Elvis Presley, Figaro ... Any character he portrays, no matter their singularities, helps Javier Fernández to leave in the locker room the timid boy who barely raises his voice, with the shy look behind the glasses, and transform into a colossus capable of flying on the ice as soon as he puts on skates."
El Mundo: Legacy of a pioneer "This bronze will remain a milestone and will serve to continue promoting a discipline that tries to take flight in Spain. Those who now begin to take the ice and suffer their first falls will already have half of their work done and have a reference that he could not benefit from."
Antena 3: The superpowers of Javi Fernández, the artist who gifted us with figure skating "He has travelled a long road to arrive where he is today: the reinventor of ice skating. Ever demanding more of himself, what he has achieved is to dignify the sport he loves so much, to give it a new essence, to make it more spectacular and at the same time more simple in the eyes of the audience. These are the superpowers of Javi Fernández."
Revista DEAR: We love you, Super Javi "A meticulous choreography highlighting every single movement, without improvization, and with a masterful technique worthy of beautiful angels whose talent enables them touch the sky with their fingers or the ice with their feet."
 
Will miss Javi whenever he retires. He was the skater who I first saw, and liked, when I started to follow FS seriously after Vancouver. Will feel odd if he's not in the competitive season next year. :cry:
 
Visit to EFE headquarters where he gave another interview. All of its 15 minutes are on video: https://twitter.com/EFEdeportes/status/965960636717875201 Here he spoke about Worlds again and said something like he personally doesn't think he will go, he will speak with his coaches, but he is satisfied with the Olympics result and something about being very tired mentally

Here is the translation of the video. He gave too many interviews that day so, in many aspecs he is repeting a lot of things that we have already seen. But I think this is the first time that I see some of the questions (and the answers) in an interview with Javi.

Javier Fernández, Bronze in Pyeongchang Olympic Games in figure skating.
When you arrived there, you manifested that you wanted to make many people and yourself happy. Goal achieved?
Yes, goal achieved, the work we have done, for so long, so many years and the effort of the coaches, family, friends and mine own, I believe that is the challenge we wanted to achieve, that medal in the Olympic Games that we could not get in the past games of Sochi, that little thorn that we had stuck and that's why we like this medal so much, it is neither gold nor silver but, for us, it is the mere fact of having won a medal, the challenge to bring that Olympic medal to Spain.

Imagine that Atlético de Madrid and Real Madrid share a coach, it would be inconceivable. How is it possible that Javier Fernández and Yuzuru Hanyu share a coach and everything goes so well?
I believe that we help each other, as skaters and as athletes to push ourselves and improve our own skating, to be better skaters and to compete better. When one, perhaps, limps some day or some season, I think that seeing the other rival, direct rival, I think it helps mentally, to continue striving, to continue working and to get the best out of you.

And what about studying the failure of the rival to know how to overcome?
Not to the point of studying the failures ... it is the day to day, we are watching each other in training, that is clear, we know how strong we are, we know what we can give of ourselves, even if the competitions are not all the same. In each competition we do our work and then our rival also has to do his own work, although we know how we have been training, how we have been working and if we have improved a lot or not. I believe that in a competition everyone must do his work.

Two very different skaters, in physical complexion, even in the costume style or the music you choose in competitions. How can you compare two skaters like that when judging an exercise?
We have totally different styles, both as skaters and as people, the differences can be seen when we are skating, when we are performing. For tastes there are many colors and for judges too, the judges are those who at the end of each competition choose which was the best of that competition or that day. I think that's the beauty too, that not all people are the same, that each one has his style and that the winner is the one that did it better. I really like how Yuzuru skates, I think he has a style that sells a lot and people like it, he puts a lot of strength (intensity)in his skating and I prefer to play a character or a story, while Yuzuru skates a single song, he skates it with intensity and skates well.

Plushenko, the Olympic champion said he remembers Javier Fernández as a child at some distant training in Jaca, a little clumsy but working to conquer the ice. Do you recognize yourself in that description?
Yes, I do and I have talked a lot with him and I remember that he told me, once, that when he saw me jumping and every jump was going in a different direction he said it was horrible to see me and that he had a terrible time, this guy is going to kill himself, but then he saw me little by little and year after year improving. It surprised me a lot that a skater with his career would notice me and my career. Of course, now that we know each other is normal but, years ago, it was not so normal and it shocked me.

Plushenko has proposed to add more time to the long program, 15-20ss more, to give more importance to the artistic elements. What do you think about this proposal?
I think so too, I think it could be a good proposal, by they were going to do the opposite, they were going to remove 30ss from the long program and I think that, what they should have done is give the program a little more time so that the obligatory elements are not all together, so you can have a more open space to interpret the music or the story you are telling. That’s why so many times the skating has remained, I would say embedded in the technical elements, in the quads; right now everyone talks about the quads and what it needs to be seen is that the skaters also have to be complete skaters and they have to know how to skate well, interpret well, listen to the music ... they are many things, yes but that is what makes a skater the best.

In this so called "quads battle", we have seen up to 6 quads in an exercise in these games. What is the limit? How far can skaters go?
Well there is no limit, that is one of the problems, as they have not set limits, the boys are making more quads. What happens? When you make an element that is as complicated as a quad, you lose much(time) before, in the preparation of a jump, you lose choreography, you lose interpretation and, if you have 6, the program becomes nothing. When they become nothing, the judges would have to punish that section of the skating in which the interpretation enters, and they do not do it, because as 6 quads is already very complicated, they help them raise those notes where the artistic part would have to be. If the judges do not sanction that, then there will be no change and the skating will continue to be so. That's why there are many skaters like me who are trying to fight to create a rule where only 2, 3 or 4 quads can be done in a long program, they need to put a limit for people to keep in mind that skating is not only jumping, but there are other things too.

Let's talk about the Pyeongchang programs. In the short program, you finished in second place, 4 points behind Yuzuru and 3.4 over Uno. Reasonable differences? Were they fair?
I think that in the short program yes, also in these Olympics, almost all the skaters skated very well, that's why we have seen quite high scores and very close to each other. I believe that the short program was perfect, my program’s score as the two Japanese (1st and 3rd), I think they were correct.

In the long, I understand, that you are not so satisfied, right?
In the long not so satisfied because ... I do not regret anything and I am satisfied with my place, that’s true, but Shoma Uno, the skater who was second, did not have the correct penalty in all his elements, in a program where he did not executed all of them perfectly. Each judge can judge each element with positive or negative (GOE) and he had positives in elements that should have been negatives. That would have changed the points of the competition. But I'm not complaining either, I'm really happy with my medal and it's true that they skated very well and that's really what I want to stay with.

That quad that turned into double in your program, is still in your mind?
No, the truth is no, because as I said, I'm happy with my result, I'm happy with my medal, I haven’t think any more about it. It was a mistake, but it is normal, I am in an Olympic Games, I am in a season that has been very complicated for me and there are times when failures happen, it can happen to all of us. I did not want to give it more thoughts, on the contrary, I wanted to enjoy the moment, enjoy the medal and forget if it could have been better or not.

You said no to another Olympic cycle, that it would be an agony to arrive there. Does the medal change that perspective or not? What plans do you have?

No, no changes. The medal gives me another reason to be grateful, to be happy with my competitions and my sporting career but it has not changed my idea, to continue another four years, it’s a lot, it's a long time. In this sport, 30 years old in the Olympic Games is crazy at this moment that we are living in skating. Maybe 15 or 20 years ago I would have told you something different but, right now, it would be unfeasible. I prefer to leave my sports career at the right time, than to hold on much longer and see how I go down at the competitions and in the ranking.

This sport does not give rest, we are at the Olympic Games now and next month Worlds. Will Javier Fernández be in that world championship?
And we had Europeans before the Olympics, we have no rest. Every year European, every year Worlds ... Is there going to be a Worlds? I have spoken with my coach and we don’t think so, because this season we have worked very hard for the preparation of the European and the Olympics and we think that we will not go, we do not need it personally, we are happy with the result of the Olympics. We do not want to begin the training again in agony, to end even more tired mentally.

An Olympic medal does not come easy. How is it going to change your life professionally, economically, personally?
I haven´t really think about it, I don’t know how my life is going to be after the Olympics… I do know that I’ll have more projects in my mind, more busy, a lot of things to do, but what the future will bring? Still in the air but let’s hope that the future will bring a lot of good things and all the projects in my mind can come to life little by little. I don’t know if I can ask for anything more.

Any project in your mind that you can talk about?
A beautiful project is the show that we had a couple of years ago in Palacio de Vistalegre, named RevolutionIce, that we want to repeat in November and December this year. We want to go to more places, though we still don’t know the cities, but we want to give continuity to this skating and live music show, so more people can enjoy the beauty of this sport and the show.

In the middle term, do you want to be a coach?
Yes, in the middle term I would love to be a coach and I want to coach here, in Spain, Madrid or any other place in the country. That’s something I always wanted to do and I know I can, but I have to see if I can create a good project with enough support. I think it will be possible but everything is still in the air, there are a lot things that need to happen to create a Ice Skating High Performance Centre and make it possible for young people to achieve high levels of quality without leaving the country.

The best program of your career?
All of them are special for some reason. I skated some of them better than others but all of them, at some point, gave me joy and I do not take any merit from any program, any music or any costume. They are all part of me, I have taken them with a lot of love, they have made me sweat a lot too, but I could not choose any.

You have done El Quijote, Chaplin, Elvis… Are all inside Javier Fernández?

Everyone is inside me, because I have learned a lot from the choreography, from the music. I have suffered them in training and I think they have also taught me a lot, just as they made me win in many important moments, that is why I say that they are part of me.

Thank you very much and congratulations.
 
did anyone see javi at the closing ceremony? I couldn't even spot the Spanish flag with everything going on, but then nbc's coverage hasn't been great.
 
Javi´s Aerobics, that´s such a fantastic program and it fit´s his person so wonderfully. Kurt Browning did such an enjoyable program for Javi and it has been great to see that it got noticed in sooo many different countries as something really special!!!
 
Back
Top