I wrote this text over a year ago, in Italian. Until a few months ago I was writing only in Italian, my English is bad enough to make me feel embarrassed every time I try to use it, and I struggle a lot to put together more or less sensible sentences. One day I saw someone suggest, in English, to read my blog with an automatic translator, because what I had written was interesting. Since then my readers have increased, and in most cases they are people who read in English, not Italian. It is for them that I started writing in English, despite the fatigue and mistakes.

Many posts are about skating judges, the technologies used to judge competitions or the ISU Judging Sustem. I’ve been spending so much time talking about what’s wrong with skating that I often overlook what’s beautiful. To neglect the programs and the athletes. Not that I don’t look at them, I just don’t write about them because I don’t have enough time to write about everything, and I’m forced to make choices.

Over a year ago I wrote a text about Hanyu, because I wanted to make him known to a specific person. Then, since I had written the text, I posted it on the blog. Now I have decided to translate it into English. I am lazy, I use the automatic translator, limiting myself to correcting those terms on which the translator has clearly made a mistake, and to add something about what happened after the publication of my original text. There is no shocking revolution in my text, everything I’ve written is something Yuzuru fans know perfectly well. However, for those who are referred to as BabyFanyu, it can be a useful summary. The best thing to do, however, is to watch videos.

Yuzuru Hanyu was born in Sendai, Japan, on December 7, 1994. When he was two years old, he was diagnosed with asthma. In 2004, at the age of nine, he won his first national championship in the Novice B category, on his first participation and against children three years older than him.

Soon after, the rink where he trained closes due to financial failure. He starts training on a more distant and crowded rink, with less time available, and the results suffer. In 2006 the compatriot Shizuka Arakawa (born in one of the Tokyo ward but raised in Sendai) won the Olympic gold and in Turin, in the press conference, she talks about the difficult situation of Sendai children, who cannot train. Within a few months Hanyu’s rink was reopened. In the autumn he comes third in the Novice A national championship, a result that allows him to participate in the junior national championship, where he is ranked seventh.

In 2007 he won the Novice A championship and finished third in the Junior category, setting a record for earliness. In theory, being on the podium would give him the right to participate in the senior championship, but he is too young to do so.

The following year, having just reached the age to participate in junior competitions on the international stage, he competes only in this category: he finishes fifth in a Grand Prix competition, wins the national title and finishes twelfth in the World Championship (where he is almost the youngest, just another boy, who places several positions below, is three months younger than him). He is eighth at the senior national championship.

The 2009-2010 season is a triumph. He wins all the junior competitions in which he participates: his two competition of the Junior Grand Prix, the final, the national championship and the World Championship. Only in the senior national championship he has to settle for sixth place. At 15, having no more goals among the kids, and having exceeded the minimum age by a few months, he passes into the senior category.

On his debut in a Grand Prix competition he landed his first quadruple jump, a toe loop, and finished in fourth place, in the following competition he had to settle for seventh, his worst career result in a senior competition. He finished fourth at the national championship, which is not easy given that at the time Japan had four skaters able of competing for a world medal. The result earned him participation in the Four Continents Championship, where he won silver at the age of 16, and if I’m not wrong this is a record of precocity still unbeaten.

The following month, March 11, 2011, there is the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, the one we all remember because it also damaged the Fukushima nuclear power plant. We could talk about it for a long time, here I will limit myself to saying that when it happened Hanyu was on the ice, that in the escape he destroyed the skates, that he and his family spent four days in an earthquake shelter, and that the ice rink itself it was damaged and was forced to close. Without a rink for the second time, to continue skating in the following months Hanyu performed in 60 ice shows.

In the Grand Prix competitions, in the autumn, he obtained a fourth place and his first victory (for only 0.03 points, sometimes it seems destiny that he should be able to obtain a certain result), results that earned him the last place among the qualified to the final. On the occasion he finished fourth, the third place in the next national championship gives him the opportunity to participate in his first World Championship. In the practice before the short program he sprained his right ankle, the one on which he land his jumps. He had already had ankle problems, an avulsion fracture as a child, several sprains over the years, this time he has to take painkillers to get on the ice. After the short program he is seventh.

He feels guilty for disappointing the expectations of those who helped him in the difficult months after the earthquake, and performs a free epic. Epic indeed, the highest technical score is his, the audience pays him a standing ovation, and none of those who have seen that performance can forget it. With the second free skate he climbs up to third place, winning the bronze medal in his debut World Championship.

Two months later, aware that he could not train properly at home, he moved to Canada, even if he does not speak English. The initial period is complicated: with the change in climate his asthma worsens, he struggles to eat – not that he previously ate a lot – communications are difficult, the training is very different and puts him more in difficulty than he thought. Over time he will build very solid human relationships with the team of coaches and with Javier Fernandez, training partner, for some years his greatest rival and great friend of him.

At Skate America he establish his first world record for the highest score in the short program.

In the free skate, in which he has entered a second quadruple, a Salchow, he does several mistakes and slips to second place. At the NHK Trophy he sets his second world record, again in the short program, and wins the competition. He remains in Japan, without a coach, to take the writings of the admission tests to the faculty of Human Sciences of Waseda University, one of the most prestigious Japanese universities, to which he enrolls without taking advantage of the facilities granted to athletes. From there he goes straight to Russia for the Grand Prix final, where he finishes second. The next day, in full food poisoning, he takes the oral exams via Skype.

Still weakened by intoxication, at the end of December he won his first Japanese senior championship. In February he returns to the Four Continents Championship. After the short program he is first, but on the morning of the free skate he stops to talk to some fans near a sliding door, the door closes and injures him in the right eye. In the videos of him you can see a patch on the eyelid, and in the gala the next day his face is swollen and there is a large bruise. He performs a bad free skate and slips to second place.

After a few days of rest he resumes training but falls ill and is forced to stop. When he gets back on ice he tries to make up for lost time, makes a wrong move in a change of direction and the twist causes him an injury to his left knee. He arrives at the World Championship in precarious physical condition and almost without training, and with a bad short program he temporarily places ninth. It is 2013, the pre-Olympic year, in skating this means that that World Championship is valid as a qualification not only for the next World Championship but also for the Olympic Games. He is ninth, Daisuke Takahashi fourth, for a nation to be entitled to three places the sum of the two best athletes must be equal to or less than 13. Japan is at the limit, they cannot afford to lose even a place and, as national champion, he feels he has to support the team. In training between short and free, trying to protect his knee, he sprains his right ankle. Since the word surrender is not part of his vocabulary, he resorts to painkillers again (under strict medical supervision, he has never had doping problems) and performs the third free. At the end of the program he collapses on the ice because he has no more energy and limps on the ice, but climbs up to fourth overall. With Takahashi sixth Japan gets the three places.

In the Olympic season the Japanese team is sponsored by a food company, which supports a dietician for each athlete. The dietician realizes that Hanyu has a gastrointestinal problem that prevents him from eating well and studies a targeted diet for him. If in the past too many times he had finished the competitions out of energy, the help of the dietician almost completely solves the problem. In the autumn he finished second bot at Skate Canada and at the Internationaux de France behind three-time world champion Patrick Chan, the favorite for the Olympics. He loses, but in the meantime he understands what he must do to win, and in fact in the December Grand Prix final he is the one who wins, complete with a third world record in the short program.

If the path culminated with overtaking Chan in this competition, there is a curious detail that in my opinion is worth highlighting. Hanyu chose to face Chan on the Grand Prix circuit because he was the one who wanted to study to figure out how to overcome him. The goal was the Olympic Games, not just any Grand Prix competition. If he had been satisfied with less significant victories he would have chosen other competitions. But why was he able to compete against Chan? Because he finished fourth at the World Championship. What might seem like a disappointing result, the only time he failed to get on the podium in a World Championship, was actually an advantage, because in doing so he (like Kevin Reynolds, fifth, and Daisuke Takahashi, sixth) had the second seed, against the first of Patrick Chan, Denis Ten and Javier Fernandez. If Hanyu had finished third in the World Championship, he would have had the first seed, and he would not have been able to face Chan either in Canada or in France.

He confirms himself as national champion, thus contributing to Japan’s fifth place in the team event of the Olympic Games with the best result among men. In the individual competition he sets his fourth world record, again in the short program.

In free skate he makes several mistakes but Chan makes more mistakes than him, and Hanyu makes the best free. Those who criticize Hanyu for this free skate forget that he was first in both the short and free program, and that the score, although lower than that of the Grand Prix Final, is one of the highest that had been achieved up to that moment. Hanyu takes gold at 19, the youngest skater to do so since Dick Button’s time in 1948. Button, however, won when everyone was rookie because the competitions had just restarted after World War II, he won by overtaking skaters much more experienced than him. In March he won his first World Championship, despite back problems (the hand gesture at the end of the program is rather indicative, even if he minimized the injury. After all, he will say “I’m fine” also in the autumn, in China, so for him probably the mere fact of being able to breathe is enough to make him say that he is fine).

The 2014-2015 season is the most suffered from a physical point of view. He was supposed to debut in September in a minor competition, but back problems – he is one of the few men who can perform movements that require great flexibility as the Biellmann – have made him postpone his debut to October, in the Grand Prix series. The competition in China that I’ve already mentioned. In the warm-up before the free skate he collides violently with Han Yan. Both of them are injured. After he will receive seven stitches under the chin and three above the ear (the head is visibly bandaged), and he has an injury to the sartorius muscle of his left leg and a sprained right ankle. The video is scary.

He shouldn’t compete, but since the rules does not explicitly prevent him from participating, he goes on the ice. He knows he won’t be able to complete the jumps but he does them all, even if he falls five times. It is the most incredible display of willpower I have ever seen from an athlete. With the rules of the time, what he does is enough to secure him the second place.

Three weeks later he took part at the NHK Trophy, far from recovered. He only finished fourth, and for just 0.15 points (his advantage over the one who finished fifth) he qualified for the Grand Prix Final. It is the last time he does not get on the podium in a competition: in the following 26 international competitions (to which four national and three team competitions must be added) he always finished on the podium, a streak still open.

He wins the final with two extraordinary programs. The free skate:

During the final he begins to feel stomach pains that evolve into a protruding lump above the navel. A few days later the lump bursts, emitting pus and blood. It is a remnant of the urachus, a connecting channel between the navel and the bladder existing in the fetal period which generally dissolves after birth giving rise to the median umbilical ligament. When, as in his case, it does not dissolve, various pathologies can arise, including cancer. He grits his teeth and on the 27th he wins the national championship, on the 30th he operates, with a whole series of complications related to alcohol used for disinfection before anesthesia, which causes him hives, and to antibiotics, which results allergic. When he gets back on the ice he trains madly, his classic mistake when he feels late in preparing, and sprains his ankle for the umpteenth time. At the World Championship, where he arrives with little training, he wins silver. The following month he participates in the World Team Trophy. He ranks first among men, overall Japan comes third. Immediately after, he must undergo a small operation to remove the residues of the stitches from the December operation that have not dissolved.

In the new season, after the second place at Skate canada, he is the protagonist of an epic performance. At the NHK Trophy he crumbles – he doesn’t just beat them, he literally crumbles them – all three world records, in the short program, in the free skate and in the sum of the two scores. The short program:

The free skate:

For him they are the records five, six and seven, for figure skating it is a competition that changes the discipline. The other skaters understand that if they want to beat him they have to completely change their way of skating, the ISU decides to change the rules, which will happen after the following Olympic Games. There are probably no single programs in the history of skating that have had a greater impact than the two he skated in those days. A few days later he wins the Grand Prix Final by tweaking all three records, even if his left foot hurts a little. Immediately after he win his fourth national championship, but his left foot gets worse, to the point that he is no longer able to perform even single jumps.

Gradually, with rest and care, he manages to partially recover. At the World Championship he leads with a short program with a slightly lower score than in December, then his foot gives way, he misses two jumps in the free skate and finishes second. Finally the diagnosis arrives: Lisfranc injury, a rather serious stuff, which if not treated can even lead to amputation. The problem is related to the movement he performs with a specific jump, the toe loop, and the impact of his foot on the ice.

After taking care of himself, Hanyu modifies his way of jumping to avoid repetition of the problem, and since another jump, the loop, had created fewer problems for him, he inserts the quadruple loop into his programs. In the fall he becomes the first skater capable of performing it in competition. Among his firsts there is also the fact that he was the first to perform different types of combinations in the competition, but this would be a long discourse, and I omit it. In the Grand Prix competitions he gets a second and a first place, then he wins his fourth consecutive final, and it is a record.

He misses the national championship because he is ill, at the Four Continents Championship he comes second for the third time. In the free program, where he completely changed the layout to make up for a few points after a mistake on the combination, he showed incredible clarity and determination. At the World Championship he won his second title, setting a new record with a stunning free skate. For him it is the eleventh, a record set forever because when, after the Olympic Games, the ISU changed the scoring system, set the old records as historical and started from scratch.

He closes the season by winning gold at the World Team Trophy with Japan.

Olympic season. In the Autumn Classic International he sets his twelfth world record, this one in the short program, then does a lot of mistakes in the free and finishes second. In the Rostelecom Cup he is still second, but manage to add to his jumps the quadruple Lutz. At the NHK Trophy he shows up with 39 ° of fever, in training he misses the landing of the quadruple Lutz and he destroys his right ankle. For almost two months he just takes care, when he returns to the ice, just over a month before the Olympic Games, his ankle does not hold, so he relies on painkillers, knowing that the risk of getting hurt and not even being able to walk very high. Ten days before the Olympic Games he manages to land the first two quadruples of the four he did before, the day before leaving for Korea he also lands the loop for the first time. The two programs he presents in PyeongChang are epic. The short is perfect.

The free skate contains a couple of landing errors – but not falls, only imbalances, even if with the first one he loses a combination – and on an emotional level it is enthralling. The gold belongs to him.

He is the first skater capable of winning two Olympic gold medals in the men’s category after Dick Button, who had succeeded 66 years earlier. His is the 1000th gold medal of the Winter Olympic Games. The following month he gives up defending the world title because his ankle has not yet healed.

Autumn 2018, with the new rules and the desire to make history once again landing the quadruple Axel, he arrives at the Autumn Classic International out of focus and wins by skating badly. Angry with himself, he arrives at the Grand prix of Helsinki (a competition held only in 2018) much more determined and sets three new world records. He also become the first (and even now he is the only) skater to do a quadruple toe loop-triple Axel sequence. In the short program of the Rortelecom Cup comes his sixteenth record. The morning of the free skate he falls badly and sprains his ankle again. He decides to skate anyway and wins the competition. On the podium, for an awards ceremony that takes place the next day, he goes up on crutches, because his ankle has swollen during the night.

After another forced break of a few months, he returns for the World Championship, and only after the end of the competition will he say that he is still taking painkillers. With the free guest his seventeenth and eighteenth world records, in the free and in total.

Nathan Chen, who skates right after him, beats both scores, breaks his records and relegates him to second place. For this result there are two problems. On the one hand, the new rules seems designed specifically to favor its main opponent, but here we enter the technician and again I will not dwell on it, on the other hand the marks assigned by the judges, which had begun to be strange for at least a couple of years, now have little correspondence with what has been done on the ice, but an explanation would be too long. I wrote about some problems in other posts on my blog, even if I never went into the specifics of this competition. However Hanyu decides to put the quadruple Lutz back in his program, a jump that he had not performed anymore because, since the injury in autumn 2017, he was afraid of it.

In the 2019-2020 season he won the first three competition in which he participated. At Skate Canada he was almost perfect. In free skate he became the first skater to land the quadruple toe loop-euler-triple flip combination.

In the Grand Prix Final, after a mistake in the short program, he presented a very difficult free skate, knowing that he would hardly be able to complete it. In fact, he missed the final Axels and he made a few more small imprecisions, but he completed five quads, which in the history of figure skating only two other skaters were able to do. There would be many things to say about this competition, and maybe sooner or later I will, but not now.

After the second place in the national championship (and here – in truth not only here – I censor all the curses I could write), at the Four Continents Championship he returns to the Olympic programs. The short program is extraordinary, and earns it the nineteenth world record.

The free skate is complicated, the ice of the rink was half destroyed and he skated fearing to get hurt. There are mistakes in this program, but those twenty seconds ranging from quadruple Salchow to triple flip are something no one else can do. Just to clarify, these are three jumps, including a quadruple and a triple Axel, interspersed with transition, in twenty seconds.

This success allowed him to become the first male skater to complete the Super Slam, i.e. to win all major competitions – Olympic Games, World Championship (J+S), continental championship and Grand Prix Final (J+S) – both junior and senior.

With the pandemic everything comes to a halt and the season ends prematurely. Hanyu returns to Japan in the spring, in September she graduates with a thesis that could revolutionize the judging system of skating. In December, after nine months in which he trains alone because his coaches are in another continent, he wins the fifth national championship by presenting two new programs. The free skate is breathtakingly beautiful.

There are two international competitions. At the World Championship he wins bronze, his seventh medal in eight competitions. After the WWII only he and Jan Hoffman were able to win so many. At the World Team Trophy he is the best of his team and contributes to third place for Japan.

There are so many other things that could be written. I have said nothing about the composition of the programs, and they are extraordinary programs, and I have said nothing about him as a person, and for how many results he has achieved, the man is more extraordinary than the skater. Willpower can be sensed from successes, from continually coming back stronger than before despite all the injuries; the talent, the beauty of his programs, can only be understood by admiring what he does on the ice; cheerfulness, generosity, empathy, attention to others, intelligence, emerge from countless small episodes that would take a long time to be told and that make him a special person.

This should have been only a short introduction, and by my standards it is short, especially in the final part, which I have added now, since the old text stopped before the Four Continents Championship 2020. I just add the link to some exhibition programs, but for those who want to better understand who Yuzuru Hanyu is, on internet there are many sites, and videos, and interviews, thanks to the kindness of fans who know Japanese and who allow me and many other fans to know a little better an extraordinary person.