We all know that I completely suck at talking about/understanding technical details, so you better not expect anything but a fluff report here.
(and a lot of it, for which I apologize in advance)
I spent last night sifting through photos and videos, but I'm afraid I'm never gonna catch up
you spend just one week at a competition and suddenly you can't keep up anymore...... But what a great week it was. I had a fabulous time meeting some of you guys from here, and also people from the facebook group or just other fans at the arena. It was really nice to just randomly run into people and meet up after the competitions to chat. (and to run into so many lovely people who give you pretty stuff just because you're a fellow Yuzu fan :luv17: thanks to everyone who gave me my
new pretties, I will treasure them all)
After the SP the mood was obviously a bit subdued, but I think we still managed pretty well to cheer each other up. Me personally, I needed to convince myself that I'm going to be OK with any kind of outcome so long as he skates a decent FS. I'm just terrible that way
there wasn't a doubt in my mind that he has the ability to come back and still medal or even win this, but I just couldn't tell myself that it will all be fine and he would definitely win. Seeing a competition live is just so different, in many good but also bad ways. For me it's just way more intense, even more than usual, and if something really bad had happened in the FS, I'd probably have gotten crushed by my own expectations.
Not counting all those points he left on the ice thanks to the combo from hell, the SP performance was otherwise completely amazing! He was in full rock star mode and skated the heck out of that thing. He had a big mistake there, but for me it wasn't a huge distraction in the performance, so this one definitely goes on the pile of "can re-watch until computer catches fire"
I was so nervous when the last group of the FS was about to come out, it's not even funny. I already squished my poor Pooh to pulp during the warm-up, and it would only get worse from there. I can get excited about some skaters or certain programs, but with this guy there's always just this "frizzle" sound between my ears and then all logic goes to hell. I've been to Barcelona both times, and you could always feel the tension and excitement in the entire arena, but this was just different. Don't know if it was the size of the event, or the fact that he had to catch up big time or whatever else, but the entire place seemed to go "OMG OMG OMG OMG". From the very beginning you could see that he meant business here and wasn't going to let someone else easily run away with the medal he wanted. And then he actually nailed his elements one after the other, and then he nailed that dreaded combo..... maybe not
everyone in the arena knew that this was a big deal, but those of us who knew had a collective "holy crap,
finally!!" moment and I think each of us screamed for another dozen people because we friggin' blew the roof off this place. By the time he got to the choreo sequence a whole bunch of people just kept cheering all the time for no reason other than sheer excitement. The whole place exploded before he even hit his ending pose, and when his scores came up the whole place went
boom again. It was complete and utter insanity.
I know that jumps are not everything, but they're pretty darn important to gather points, and points are sorta what you need to win, so him going into a jump meant that I was either practicing to live without oxygen, or I was muttering to myself like a crazy person. But during the other parts I was telling myself to just breathe and enjoy the pretty because dear me :luv17: so pretty, so gorgeous, love his moves, love his spins, love his costume, love his everything and will probably need heavy medication if I ever want to get over this.... no scratch that, I'll never get over this and I seriously
do not want to anyway! (and for the love of god he needs like a license to show that face in public because one day someone's just gonna die from pretty-overload or something)
After Javier's scores had come up, I feel like there was a bit of an awkward moment at first. We all knew that he had probably made enough mistakes and wouldn't hang on to first place (sounds kinda mean saying it like that, but you know what I mean), but when we saw that he had actually bombed himself off the podium... there was just a weird moment. At least in the section where we were. For a second everyone seemed more shocked about Javier's result than we were happy about Yuzu's win. Kind of like "that dude just got crushed, can we just all jump up and cheer for the other one now?" Only lasted a minute but yeah, sorta awkward at first.
The happy fan meetings in the hallway later were quite hilarious, though. I was told we weren't the only large group of Yuzu fans that met up. And every group seemed to follow the same pattern: whenever a new person came to the group, everyone went
:hap93:and the screaming and happy dances started all over again.
That gala..... well
if there is ever a time to constantly sit your butt down onto the ice, then the gala is a way better place for it than competition. Poor boy seemed so ridiculously embarrassed, it was hilarious. But at least he could still laugh about himself (we're not laughing at you, baby, we were laughing with you
). And that EX... our baby swan is so ridiculously beautiful it makes you wanna weep. He's just too precious to be real.
tl;dr: craziest week ever. The whole competition was ridiculously good and he was the glittering, sparkling, adorable and perfect little cherry on top of this fabulous sundae. I still cannot quite believe that all this really happened and that I was lucky enough to actually witness it with my own eyes.
side note: I'm really glad my video experiment seems to have worked out OK
I usually don't even take pictures or videos at events (because they usually turn out crappy anyway), so I was basically just throwing stuff out there without knowing what I'm actually doing
but I wanted to share at least a little bit this time, and it appears it wasn't a waste of time, so I'm quite happy with that.
(man that really did get long. sorry.)
yet still delivers the best-loved performance of all:luv17:
