sportlandia

Italian version.

On the internet you can find all kinds of absurd comments. In most cases, I decide they’re not worth wasting time on and ignore them, but sometimes, when the absurdities pile up, it’s worth making a few clarifications. The most absurd comment concerns the claim that, outside of the Olympics, Yuzuru Hanyu supposedly won almost nothing, because at the World Championships he has a record of two victories and six defeats, and at the Four Continents Championships he has a record of one victory and three defeats. That comment goes hand in hand with another one I saw a few days earlier, claiming that every time we mention Hanyu’s two consecutive Olympic victories, Malinin’s fans can point to his three consecutive World Championship titles, as if the two competitions carried the same importance.

Does the person who listed Hanyu’s “defeats” really think they wrote something serious? “Other than the Olympic Games.” And does the other person really think that three World Championship gold medals can be compared to two Olympic gold medals? Even though this isn’t true for every sport, in figure skating the Olympic Games are by far the most important competition. Just to understand the difference in the level of interest in figure skating during the Olympic Games compared with other periods, I checked Google Trends.

It is clear that interest in figure skating increases exponentially every four years. In figure skating, an Olympic gold medal is not just a detail—it makes all the difference, and anyone who does not recognize that is either biased or knows nothing about figure skating. An Olympic gold medal is indispensable. Two Olympic gold medals instead of just one? Well, that’s an entirely different category, a category that includes a very small number of skaters.

Let’s go back to that comment for a moment. Whoever wrote the comment about Hanyu’s few victories is clearly biased, as also confirmed by the fact that among the competitions he listed, he included the Four Continents Championships but not the Grand Prix Final. If the tweet had not absurdly downplayed the Olympic Games, I would have called it a curious oversight, since the Grand Prix Final always features all the strongest skaters, whereas this is sometimes not the case at the continental championships. In Olympic seasons, almost all the strongest skaters skip the Four Continents Championships. And even in not Olympic seasons, Ilia Malinin has never competed there. Nathan Chen went only once, in 2017. Shoma Uno stopped competing there after his victory in 2019, and Yuma Kagiyama after his victory in 2024. None of them has ever declined to compete in a Grand Prix Final for which they had qualified. As far as I remember, the only skater who withdrew from a Grand Prix Final for which he had qualified was Hanyu, in 2018, and not because he was uninterested in the competition but because of an injury. That person’s decision to ignore the Grand Prix Final—a competition Hanyu won four times—is clearly the choice of someone who wants to downplay Hanyu and therefore decided to pretend that those four victories do not exist, while instead citing a less important competition because Hanyu won it only once.

Okay, now let’s broaden the perspective a bit. Despite what that person wrote—that at the World Championships Hanyu won twice and lost six times—although Hanyu would have always wanted to finish first, a World Championship medal is not exactly a defeat. In the postwar era, Hanyu is the skater who has won the greatest number of World Championship medals alongside Jan Hoffmann: seven, in eight appearances (Hoffmann competed at the World Championships ten times). But Hanyu did not remain at the top only for the 7–8 seasons in which he competed at the World Championships. He did so for 12 seasons, considering that in the 2010–11 season he won a medal at the Four Continents Championships, and in 2022 he came close to the Olympic podium by finishing fourth overall, with the third free skate.

For 11 consecutive seasons, Hanyu won at least one major international medal:

• 2010–11 silver at the Four Continents Championships
• 2011–12 bronze at the World Championships
• 2012–13 silver at the Grand Prix Final and the Four Continents Championships
• 2013–14 gold at the Grand Prix Final, the Olympic Games, and the World Championships
• 2014–15 gold at the Grand Prix Final and silver at the World Championships
• 2015–16 gold at the Grand Prix Final and silver at the World Championships
• 2016–17 gold at the Grand Prix Final, silver at the Four Continents Championships, and gold at the World Championships
• 2017–18 gold at the Olympic Games
• 2018–19 silver at the World Championships
• 2019–20 silver at the Grand Prix Final and gold at the Four Continents Championships
• 2020–21 bronze at the World Championships

Eleven seasons with at least one medal. In the twelfth, he “only” finished fourth at the Olympic Games with a score of 283.21 points, which would have been worth the silver medal at the 2026 Olympic Games. And this after losing about 14 points in the short program because of a hole in the ice that prevented him from performing the quadruple Salchow, and despite skating the free program with a sprained ankle. As we can see on SkatingScores, in the 2021–22 season only five skaters managed to achieve a higher score than a Hanyu hampered by an unfortunate incident and competing while injured.

I’d say that at 27 years old, Hanyu was still competitive at the very highest level. Not only that. In 2022, Kagiyama won the Olympic and World silver medals, while Uno won the Olympic bronze and the World gold. Throughout their entire careers, neither of them has ever surpassed the score Hanyu achieved that season at the National Championships.

Uno and Kagiyama never reached the level of Hanyu at his best. A Hanyu without physical problems and without the hole in the ice would have made the Olympic podium. And, despite all the problems, the score Hanyu earned at the Olympics would have been enough to make the World Championship podium (Vincent Zhou won the bronze with 277.38 points); it’s just that Hanyu didn’t compete at that World Championship because he had a sprained ankle. This is to say that fourth place is considered disappointing only because it was Hanyu who achieved it, and everyone expected Hanyu to win a medal. But for anyone else, with the sole exception of Chen, that fourth place would have been a significant result.

Hanyu’s 12 high-level seasons include 49 individual international competitions, with 42 medals. On only one competition, when he was 15 years old, in his second senior competition, Hanyu finished seventh, and that was because he broke the Zayak rule. He unintentionally turned what was supposed to be his opening 4T into a 3T, forgot about it, and repeated three triple jumps two times, losing the points for the 3Lz+2T combination. It was the second and last time Hanyu broke the Zayak rule in a free skate. If, during the program, he had realized his mistake and, shortly before, had performed the 3A+2T combination instead of the planned 3A+3T combination, the 3Lz would not have become the third triple jump in his program to be repeated three times, it would not have been invalidated, and he would have finished the competition in fourth place.

The only competition in which Hanyu finished seventh, he had that result because, at the age of 15, he made a mistake that even skaters far more experienced than he was at the time have made (see Javier Fernandez at the 2014 Olympics, or Patrick Chan, the silver medalist at the previous two World Championships, at the same 2010 Rostelecom Cup, and again at the 2012 Grand Prix Final, or Michal Brezina at the 2015 World Championships. As for Nobunari Oda, a violation of the Zayak rule cost him a medal at the 2006 World Championships and again at the 2011 World Championships).

Then, among Hanyu’s results, there is a fourth-place finish when he was 15, in his first senior competition, and another fourth-place finish when he was 16. Three weeks later, Hanyu would become one of only three skaters (the others being Evgeni Plushenko and Patrick Chan) to win a Grand Prix competition before turning 17. In that same season, Hanyu also placed fourth at the Grand Prix Final (while his peers were competing in the junior category), finishing behind, aside from Chan, Daisuke Takahashi, who scored 11.62 more PCS points than he did and finished 3.30 points ahead of him, and Javier Fernandez, who scored 5.12 more PCS points than he did and finished 1.73 points ahead of him. Had he skated in the junior category, as other skaters did at his age, he would have not missed the podium. Hanyu earned another fourth-place finish at the 2013 World Championships when, despite competing with an injured left knee and right ankle, he was the highest-placed Japanese skater in a competition that also served as qualification for the following Olympic Games and in which, as the reigning national champion, the pressure on him was extremely high. His other two fourth-place finishes came at the 2014 NHK Trophy, when Hanyu had not yet recovered from the injuries sustained in his collision with Han Yan three weeks earlier, and at the 2022 Olympic Games.

Six fourth-place finishes and one seventh over 12 years, and each time that result, viewed in the context in which it occurred, is linked to issues independent of Hanyu’s abilities, with the sole exception of a violation of the Zayak rule when he was very young. No sixth or ninth place at World Championships, or 8th place at the Olympic Games. In all the competitions Hanyu participated in after turning 16 (and this includes the National Championships which he entered just days after turning 16 and the 2011 Four Continents Championships), at least one between the short program and the free skate was one of the three best programs in the competition, with a 9th place finish as the worst result in a competition program. He never skated the 17th short program or 15th free skate. Twelve senior seasons at an extremely high level.

For Patrick Chan, the high-level seasons were 9 (including his final season as well, in which he won Team Event gold, a competition I will start taking seriously the day Misato Komatsubara/Tim Koleto will win a medal at an ISU Championship); for Shoma Uno 8 seasons (including the 2019–20 season, in which his Grand Prix events were a horror show and he did not compete at ISU Championships); for Javier Fernández 7 (including the 2019 European Championship win, even though we knew Fernández would not continue, and that for him the season would consist of that single event); for Nathan Chen 6; for Yuma Kagiyama currently 6, to be seen in the future; for Ilia Malinin currently only 4; for Mikhail Shaidorov currently only 2.

If we look at all Olympic gold medalists since the postwar era, none remained at the top for 12 seasons from the moment they won their first major medal. The closest is Evgeni Plushenko, at the top for 9 consecutive seasons, then he completely stopped to compete for three seasons, was back at the top for his tenth season when he won European gold and Olympic silver, and later competed only at one European Championship two years later and at one Olympic Team Event two years after that. Dick Button literally dominated figure skating, but for only 5 seasons, with an international career lasting 6 seasons. The only ones who, from their first major medal, remained at the top for more than 8 years—two full Olympic cycles—are skaters who won World gold, sometimes multiple times, in some cases also Olympic medal(s), but never Olympic gold: Alain Giletti, Jan Hoffmann, Elvis Stojko, Todd Eldredge and Brian Joubert. In the postwar era, no one has been at the top of figure skating for as long as Hanyu.

Hanyu’s competitive career ended in 2022 with a sprained ankle. Unfortunately, this was not an isolated incident; already in 2018, fresh off winning his second Olympic gold medal, Hanyu did not attend the World Championships due to a sprained ankle. I will leave out the competitions he took part in despite the sprained ankle, as well as the asthma attack before the free skate at the 2021 World Championships, and mention another event Hanyu was unable to attend, the 2020 World Championships, which were not held due to covid, and in both cases Hanyu would almost certainly have won a medal (I should note that from December 2014 to December 2021 Hanyu reached the podium in every competition he entered).

Speaking of competitions Hanyu missed due to physical issues, the list includes the 2018 Grand Prix Final, for which he had qualified by winning both of his events, and almost certainly the 2017 one as well (he had placed second in his first event; to qualify for the final he would only have needed to finish fourth in the second, with a score of 245.96 points, a score for him so low that he had always surpassed by a lot in his the last 19 competitions). As for the 2021–22 season, what was effectively his only international score of the season would have been enough to earn him a silver medal at the NHK Trophy and a gold at the Rostelecom Cup, and thus to qualify for another Grand Prix Final (even though that event would also have been cancelled), but he had to withdraw from those competitions because he had sprained his ankle.

Looking at the Four Continents Championships, and assuming his absence in Olympic seasons, Hanyu could have participated in it in 2015 if he had not undergone stomach surgery a little more than a month earlier, in 2016 if he had not had problems with the Lisfranc injury, in 2019 if he had not had an ankle sprain, and in 2021 if the event had not been canceled due to covid. Hanyu has won a lot; he could have won more if only he had been able to take part in numerous competitions that, due to circumstances beyond his control, he was unable to attend. As for the competitions he did participate in, I am aware that until autumn 2013 Patrick Chan was stronger than Hanyu, but what happened after that?

In 2015 Hanyu placed second at the World Championships, less than three months after stomach surgery. I would like to know how many athletes, in any sport, have won a world medal under these conditions. Are there others? If so, congratulations to them for what they managed to achieve, because it is an extraordinary result. Because that is the silver Hanyu won in 2015: an extraordinary result. Even Javier Fernandez, if he is willing to be honest with himself, knows he only won because Hanyu had physical problems (and moreover, it is always physical problems that caused Hanyu to miss the podium at the NHK Trophy in November 2014; otherwise he would not have won medals in 26 consecutive individual international competitions, but in 34). In 2016 Hanyu again placed second at the World Championships. On that occasion Fernandez skated an extraordinary free program, congratulations to him, but here too, we all knew that the strongest was Hanyu. Hanyu did not lose because the other was better or because he was unable to handle the competition, but because he was fighting an injury that could have ended his career.

Hanyu has won only two World gold medals. Sure, that’s how it went. We know very well who was the strongest, but we also know that the strongest doesn’t always win, even when the strongest has fought at the best level that, at that moment, his body allowed him to do.

A thing often mentioned is the last four years of his competitive career, with Hanyu never able to win against Nathan Chen. I am deliberately not getting into the scoring discussion. We should look at how the judges assigned their marks, but I know many people are not able to accept this kind of analysis, so (here) I’ll leave it aside. Let’s look at something else. For example, did Hanyu really need to compete between the 2018–19 season and the 2021–22 season?

In February 2018 Hanyu had already won two Olympic golds, two world golds, two silvers and one bronze at the World Championships, and four golds and one silver at the Grand Prix Final. He was 23 years (and 2 months) old. Nathan Chen retired after winning one Olympic gold, three world golds and three Grand Prix Final golds, at 22 (and 9 months). So when he retired, he was a bit younger than Hanyu, and with one less Olympic gold. What’s more difficult, stopping after winning the most important competition once, or continuing to compete after winning it twice? Continuing to compete at the highest level, as proven by Hanyu’s results, and always adding something new, given that in 2018 he became the first skater to perform the 4T+3A sequence (a sequence first performed by another skater only 6 seasons later by Rio Nakata, in a regional competition and under a rule that did not penalize sequences as it did when performed by Hanyu, while the first quadruple+triple sequence performed by another skater, 4S+3A was performed by Ilia Malinin 5 seasons later than Hanyu’s sequence), in 2019 Hanyu became the first skater to complete the 4T+1Eu+3F combination, and in 2022 he performed what is still the only 4A ever attempted at the Olympic Games. Stopping after winning the most important medal is easier. Hanyu had no need to compete for the last four season. He chose to do so, and this is another sign of his greatness.

Let’s look at two of the skaters who competed in the last Olympic Games. Kagiyama, at 23, felt the need to take a season off, and this after already missing the entire 2022–23 season due to injury. To his name: two Olympic silvers, four silvers and one bronze at the World Championships, and two silvers and one bronze at the Grand Prix Final, and under the pressure of having spent only two seasons as the number 1 of the Japanese team (for Hanyu it had been 6 up to age 23, 10 in total). The pressure is also felt by Malinin, at 21, with 4 years as number 1 in the United States, three world golds and one bronze at the World Championships, three golds and one bronze at the Grand Prix Final, and a colossal flop at the Olympic Games (Hanyu won his first Olympic gold at 19). I repeat it: the last four years of Hanyu’s competitive career are a bonus, something he did because he wanted to, but that were not necessary, because his career was already legendary. He was already the greatest figure skater of all time, the GOAT.

An accurate ranking of the greatest athletes of all time, in any sport, is impossible to make because so many things have changed over time. Results must be compared to the era in which they were achieved and to the impact they had. Knowing this, and knowing that nothing is comparable to the Olympic Games, we can try to look at some details. The only skaters who won more than an olympic gold in the Men’s competition were Gillis Grafström (1920, 1924, 1928, and a silver in 1932), Karl Schäfer (1932 and 1936), Dick Button (1948 and 1952) and Yuzuru Hanyu (2014 and 2018).

Until the Second World War, skating was almost exclusively a European sport. Even in what are called the World Championships, there were no Asians (with only two exceptions: two Japanese skaters in the Men’s event in 1932, and four men and one woman, all Japanese, in 1936), no Africans, and no skaters from Oceania. The few Americans, who nevertheless took part in a limited number of competitions, were only from the United States and Canada (at the 1908 Olympics, an Argentine participated, but Horatio Torromé’s family had moved to Great Britain when he was very small, and in several competitions Torromé represented Great Britain). Even among European nations, those where skating was practiced were few (for example, the first Spaniard, Dario Villalba, who competed at the Olympics and the World Championships in 1956, was the son of a consul and had discovered figure skating while living in the United States. After him, there were no more Spaniards at a World Championship until Gloria Mas’s participation in 1979).

Without diminishing the achievements of Ulrich Salchow, Gillis Grafström, Karl Schäfer, or the skaters who at the time won Olympic and world medals, there was less competition. Those who were truly strong had fewer rivals to face. Who would have expected, in 1920, or even more than eighty years later, in 2002, that there could be a strong Spanish skater? Spain had almost no rinks and no tradition. Let’s try removing the results of Spanish skaters from the competitions of this millennium, and see how Hanyu’s results change. And it is not just a single Spaniard who has come to compete for the most important medals, because for a long time Asia did not exist in the figure skating world. It is not only a matter of long and expensive travel, which not everyone could afford, or a lack of rinks in one’s own country. It is also a matter of lack of knowledge. The Japanese present at the 1932 Olympics had no coaches, and were self-taught, studying by reading some manuals. How could they be competitive? And Japan was the first Asian nation to have strong skaters, but the first world medal won by an Asian skater only came in 1977 thanks to Minoru Sano. Now there are strong Asian skaters from different nations, the competition is greater. Winning is more difficult.

Let’s move on to the post-war period. In 1948 Dick Button won the Olympic Games for the first time, and in 1952 he won them for the second time. Well done, no one disputes that. Of the 16 skaters who competed in 1948, 12 began taking part in international competitions after the Second World War. Of those who had competed in the World Championships before the war, the twenty-five-year-old Austrian Edi Rada had taken part in two World Championships, finishing fourth once. The Austrians had not been allowed to participate in the European Championships or the World Championships in 1947, so for them 1948 was the first competitive year, while for Button it was the second.

The thirty-year-old British skater Graham Sharp had competed in six World Championships, winning one gold and three silver medals, and had taken part in the 1936 Olympics, finishing fifth. An important skater, who I doubt was able to train much between 1939 and 1945, given that he served in the Royal Army in France, North Africa, and Italy. The twenty-seven-year-old Austrian Hellmut May, 14th at the 1936 Olympics, forcibly conscripted, spent I don’t know how much time in a prisoner-of-war camp. As for the thirty-five-year-old Dane Per Cock-Clausen, he had competed in two World Championships, with his best result being ninth place in 1939. Freddie Tomlins, world silver medalist in 1939 at 19 years old, and described in contemporary articles as very talented, had died in 1943, shot down while serving in the RAF. The other World Championship medalists before the war did not return to competition.

Both Button and Hanyu won at their first Olympic appearance, but the difference between being an inexperienced skater who is facing equally inexperienced skaters or who is facing the three-time reigning world champion and three other skaters who, in the two previous seasons, had been on the World podium and were more experienced than him, is considerable. And another detail helped Button: in Europe during the war many rinks had been destroyed, making it difficult to train, but it was difficult also to buy things essentials for skating such as… a pair of skates.

Perhaps, for a strong American, winning twice in a row in 1948 and 1952 was easier than for anyone in this early part of the millennium. What Hanyu did is more significant than what Button did not because Hanyu completed the Super Slam and Button did not—both achieved victories the other did not (but both won everything that could be won in their respective eras)—but because Hanyu defeated much more competitive opponents, and without being advantaged by being able to train whenever he wanted while others could not.

There is another thing to consider: pressure. How much could there have been in the immediate post-war period? Live television broadcasts began in 1960, and several editions were needed before the number of viewers became truly large. In 1972, the growing importance of television led to a change in the rules and the introduction of the short program. In 1994, with the Kerrigan–Harding assault, viewership increased dramatically. With the internet and social media, attention on skaters has become even greater. The media pressure that skaters faced in 2002 is higher than that of… for example, fifty years earlier, in 1952. The pressure faced by Hanyu is much greater than the pressure faced by Button, and as we know, pressure can have devastating effects. Ilia Malinin collapsed under this pressure. He is a strong skater; he is not the greatest of all time because he was unable to handle the difficulty and literally melted down, delivering the fifteenth free skate and finishing the competition in eighth place.

Was there extremely high pressure on Malinin? Sure. He had won the last two World gold medals, and two months earlier he had completed a program containing 7 quads. However, already in the team event he had realized he was struggling to manage the pressure. He could have simplified the program, especially after the not exactly perfect programs skated by Yuma Kagiyama, Adam Siao Him Fa and Daniel Grassl, and with Mikhail Shaidorov, Shun Sato, Stephen Gogolev and Petr Gumennik having already lost ground after the short program. To win, he would have needed to do much less than what he had done a couple of months earlier to win the Grand Prix Final. Easy to say from home? Of course, easy to say. I am not a champion, but I can observe how champions behave. Malinin at the Olympics was 21 years old, he was clearly the favorite, with two new world records set this season in the free program, and already four appearances at the World Championships and three at the Grand Prix Final as major competitive experiences.

Many people have pointed out that for Malinin it was his first Olympic participation. It was also Hanyu’s first Olympic participation in 2014, but he was 19 years old, not 21, and he did not fall apart. Hanyu had also participated in three Grand Prix Finals, but only two World Championships, so his experience was smaller. Hanyu had set world records in the short program, one in December and the other in the Olympic short program, the first time a skater had surpassed 100 points, and this detail caused a great sensation. Malinin had the expectations of his nation on his shoulders, just as Hanyu had the expectations of his nation on his shoulders. When the Tōhoku earthquake occurred, Hanyu was 16 years old. He was nicknamed the “hope of Tōhoku.” How heavy is it to carry such a title for years, since he was a teenager? And at the Grand Prix Final preceding the Olympics, Hanyu also delivered an extraordinary performance, drawing everyone’s attention to him. Did Hanyu make mistakes in the free skate? Yes, he felt the pressure too. However, instead of falling apart, he fought until the end. He had the highest TES and the second highest base value, and it was his the best free program of the day. Malinin’s was the 21st base value, with the 16th TES (of his negative GOEs, one came on a single jump, one on a double, so the effect of those GOEs on the score was not significant). Feeling the pressure, making mistakes, and still delivering one of the best programs ever performed up to that point is not the same as feeling the pressure and making all the mistakes that Malinin made.

Ok. Hanyu won in 2019, at 19 years old. In 2023, at 23 years old, he won again. Of course, he was older and more experienced, but how much pressure was there on him at that moment? After Plushenko missed his second Olympic gold in 2010, by 2018 Hanyu had become the first skater who could repeat the double achievement, 66 years after Dick Button. The pressure was enormous; he had only one functioning ankle, while the other was held together by willpower and painkillers, and he won. Best short program, free skate with a couple of imperfections, still the second-best of the day. And unlike Button, Hanyu continued competing even after his second Olympic victory, despite the enormous pressure that weighed on him.

Most skaters stop competing after an Olympic gold medal. This was the case for Hayes Alan Jenkins (1956), David Jenkins (1960), Manfred Schnelldorfer (1964), Wolfgang Schwarz (1968), Ondrej Nepela (1972, he actually continued for another season because the 1973 World Championships would be held in his hometown, Bratislava), John Curry (1976), Robin Cousins (1980), Scott Hamilton (1984), Brian Boitano (1988, he came back after 6 seasons, when he was by then a former champion and no longer the reigning Olympic champion, and retired again immediately after finishing 6th at the Olympics), Viktor Petrenko (1992, he came back after one season, retiring again immediately after finishing 4th at the Olympics), Ilia Kulik (1998), Alexei Yagudin (2002), Evan Lysacek (2010) and Nathan Chen (2022). Some of them did not even compete in the post-Olympic World Championships. Exceptions to retirement from competition are very few. Mikhail Shaidorov won this year, has decided to continue competing; only in the future will we find out whether he will be able to defend his title. Alexei Urmanov (1994) continued competing for four seasons without winning any more World Championship medals. Dick Button (1948 and 1952) retired at the end of his second Olympic season. As for Evgeni Plushenko, he skated for nine seasons at a very high level, winning Olympic silver in 2002, in his fifth senior season, and gold in 2006, in his ninth season. Then he stopped, without even participating in the World Championships. He did not continue competing under the pressure of being the reigning Olympic champion. After a three-season break he returned for a Grand Prix event, the European Championships and the Olympics, where he won a silver medal. And then he stopped again. Partly due to some injuries, in the following four seasons he took part in only two international competitions, three national championships and the Olympic team event. Hanyu never stopped. He missed some competitions due to injury; he always participated in at least the most important competition of the season and another event. How many competitions did Hanyu participate in while carrying the burden of being the reigning Olympic champion?

The difference is striking. Being able to handle pressure and continue achieving results, as Hanyu has done, for so many competitions and for such a long time, is not normal. As Scott Russell noted, Hanyu is able to give his best in the most important moments. Something that only champions can do, and which he has done competition after competition, year after year.

There would be many other things to say: the completeness in all aspects of figure skating, in jumps, spins, steps, interpretation, the fundamental role played by Hanyu in shaping the era of quadruple jumps, the world records, his impact on those who witnessed his performances, and what he is doing now after retiring from competition. I have already written too much; for now I will stop here, reserving the right to return to these topics in the future.

Almost every four years we have a new Olympic champion, but if the Olympic title is essential to being the GOAT, one Olympic title is not enough. Those 12 seasons, illuminated by the two Olympic gold medals, tell us that Hanyu is the GOAT.

English text.

Su internet si trovano commenti assurdi di tutti i tipi. Nella maggior parte dei casi decido che non vale la pena perderci tempo e li ignoro ma a volte, quando le assurdità si accumulano, vale la pena fare qualche precisazione. Il commento più assordo riguarda il fatto che, al di fuori delle Olimpiadi, Yuzuru Hanyu non avrebbe vinto quasi nulla, perché al Campionato del mondo ha un bilancio di due vittorie e sei sconfitte e al Campionato dei Quattro continenti ha un bilancio di una vittoria e tre sconfitte. Il commento fa il paio con un altro che avevo visto qualche giorno prima secondo cui, ogni volta che noi citiamo le due vittorie olimpiche consecutive di Hanyu, i fan di Malinin possono citare i suoi tre Campionati del mondo consecutivi, come se le due gare avessero la stessa importanza.

Ma davvero la persona che ha elencato le “sconfitte” di Hanyu pensa di aver scritto una cosa seria? “A parte i giochi olimpici“. E davvero l’altra persona pensa che tre ori mondiali possano essere paragonati a due ori olimpici? Anche se non per tutti gli sport è così, nel pattinaggio i Giochi olimpici sono l’obiettivo più importante. Giusto per capire la differenza di interesse che c’è sul pattinaggio durante i Giochi olimpici e quella che c’è negli altri periodi, ho fatto un controllo su Google trends.

È evidente che l’interesse sul pattinaggio aumenta in modo esponenziale ogni 4 anni. Per il pattinaggio l’oro olimpico non è un dettaglio, ma fa la differenza, e chi non lo riconosce è prevenuto oppure di pattinaggio non sa nulla. L’oro olimpico è imprescindibile. Due ori olimpici e non uno solo? Ecco, qui siamo in un’altra categoria ancora.

Chi ha scritto il commento sulle poche vittorie di Hanyu è chiaramente prevenuto, come confermato anche dal fatto che nelle gare da lui elencate c’è il Campionato dei Quattro continenti ma non la finale del Grand Prix. Se il tweet non avesse sminuito in modo assurdo i Giochi olimpici, avrei parlato di una curiosa dimenticanza, visto che alla finale del Grand Prix partecipano sempre tutti i pattinatori più forti, mentre a volte questo non succede ai Campionati continentali. Quasi sempre nelle stagioni olimpiche i pattinatori più forti evitano il Campionato dei Quattro continenti. Ilia Malinin non vi ha mai partecipato. Nathan Chen vi è andato una sola volta, nel 2017. Shoma Uno ha smesso di parteciparvi dopo la sua vittoria nel 2019, Yuma Kagiyama dopo la sua vittoria nel 2024. Nessuno di loro ha mai rinunciato a partecipare a una finale del Grand Prix per la quale si era qualificato. Da quel che ricordo, l’unico che ha rinunciato a una finale del Grand Prix per la quale si era qualificato è stato Hanyu, nel 2018, e non perché non era interessato alla gara ma a causa di un infortunio. La scelta fatta da quella persona di ignorare la finale del Grand Prix, gara che Hanyu ha vinto quattro volte, è evidentemente la scelta di qualcuno che vuole sminuire Hanyu e che quindi ha deciso di far finta che quelle quattro vittorie non esistano, citando invece una gara meno importante perché Hanyu l’ha vinta una volta sola.

Ok, ora allarghiamo un po’ lo sguardo. Hanyu ha vinto 7 medaglie in 8 partecipazioni mondiali. Malgrado ciò che quella persona ha scritto, che Hanyu avrebbe vinto due volte e perso sei, anche se Hanyu avrebbe voluto arrivare primo, una medaglia mondiale non è esattamente una sconfitta. Nel Dopoguerra, è Hanyu il pattinatore che ha vinto il maggior numero di medaglie mondiali insieme a Jan Hoffman, sette, in otto partecipazioni (Hoffmann ha partecipato al Mondiale 10 volte). Ma Hanyu non è rimasto al vertice solo per 7-8 stagioni, quelle in cui ha partecipato al Campionato del mondo. Lo ha fatto per 12 stagioni, visto che nella stagione 2010-11 ha vinto una medaglia al Campionato dei Quattro continenti e nel 2022 ha sfiorato il podio olimpico piazzandosi al quarto posto, e con il terzo libero.

Per 11 stagioni di fila Hanyu ha vinto almeno una medaglia internazionale importante:

• 2010-11 argento al Campionato dei Quattro continenti
• 2011-12 bronzo al Campionato del mondo
• 2012-13 argento alla finale del Grand Prix e al Campionato dei Quattro continenti
• 2013-14 oro alla finale del Grand Prix, ai Giochi olimpici e al Campionato del mondo
• 2014-15 oro alla finale del Grand Prix e argento al Campionato del mondo
• 2015-16 oro alla finale del Grand Prix e argento al Campionato del mondo
• 2016-17 oro alla finale del Grand Prix, argento al Campionato dei Quattro continenti e oro al Campionato del mondo
• 2017-18 oro ai Giochi olimpici
• 2018-19 argento al Campionato del mondo
• 2019-20 argento alla finale del Grand Prix e oro al Campionato dei Quattro continenti
• 2020-21 bronzo al Campionato del mondo

Undici stagioni con almeno una medaglia. Nella dodicesima si è piazzato “solo” quarto ai giochi olimpici con un punteggio, 283.21 punti, che ai Giochi olimpici del 2026 sarebbe valso la medaglia d’argento. E questo dopo aver perso circa 14 punti nel programma corto a causa di un buco nel ghiaccio che gli ha impedito di eseguire il quadruplo salchow, e pur avendo pattinato il libero con una caviglia slogata. Come possiamo vedere su SkatingScores, nella stagione 2021-22 sono stati solo cinque i pattinatori capaci di ottenere un punteggio più alto di un Hanyu danneggiato da un episodio sfortunato, e pure infortunato.

Direi che a 27 anni Hanyu era ancora competitivo ad altissimi livelli. Non solo. Nel 2022 Kagiyama ha vinto gli argenti olimpico e mondiale, Uno ha vinto il bronzo olimpico e l’oro mondiale. Nella loro intera carriera nessuno dei due ha mai superato il punteggio ottenuto da Hanyu quella stagione al Campionato nazionale.

Uno e Kagiyama non sono mai arrivati al livello del miglior Hanyu. Un Hanyu senza problemi fisici e senza buco nel ghiaccio sarebbe salito sul podio olimpico. E, nonostante tutti i problemi, il punteggio ottenuto da Hanyu alle Olimpiadi sarebbe stato sufficiente per salire sul podio mondiale (Vincent Zhou ha vinto il bronzo con 277.38 punti), solo che a quel Campionato del mondo Hanyu non è andato perché aveva una caviglia slogata. Questo per dire che quel quarto posto viene ritenuto deludente solo perché lo ha ottenuto Hanyu, e da Hanyu tutti si aspettavano una medaglia, ma per chiunque altro, con la sola eccezione di Chen, vincitore degli ultimi Campionati del mondo, sarebbe stato un risultato importante.

Le 12 stagioni ad alto livello di Hanyu comprendono 49 gare internazionali individuali, con 42 medaglie. In una sola occasione, quando aveva 15 anni, nella sua seconda gara senior, Hanyu è arrivato settimo, e questo perché ha infranto la Zayak rule. Ha involontariamente trasformato quello che sarebbe dovuto essere il 4T iniziale in un 3T, non se ne è ricordato, e ha ripetuto un salto di troppo, perdendo il valore della combinazione 3Lz+2T. È stata la seconda e ultima volta che Hanyu ha infranto la Zayak rule in un programma libero. Se durante il programma si fosse reso conto del suo errore e, poco prima, avesse eseguito la combinazione 3A+2T, invece della pianificata combinazione 3A+3T, il 3Lz non sarebbe diventato il terzo triplo del suo programma a essere ripetuto tre volte, non sarebbe uscito dal punteggio e lui avrebbe terminato la gara al quarto posto.

Una sola gara in cui Hanyu è arrivato settimo, a 15 anni, e a causa di un errore che anche pattinatori più esperti di come era lui in quel momento commettono (vedi Javier Fernandez alle Olimpiadi del 2014 o Patrick Chan, vincitore degli ultimi due argenti mondiali, in quella stessa gara, e di nuovo alla finale del Grand Prix 2012, o ancora Michal Brezina al Campionato del mondo 2015. Quanto a Nobunari Oda, l’infrazione alla Zayak rule gli è costata una medaglia al Campionato del mondo 2006 e ancora al Campionato del mondo 2011). E poi nei risultati di Hanyu ci sono un quarto posto quando aveva 15 anni, nella sua prima gara senior e un altro quarto posto quando aveva 16 anni. Tre settimane più tardi Hanyu sarebbe diventato uno dei soli tre pattinatori (gli altri sono Evgeni Plushenko e Patrick Chan) a vincere una gara del Grand Prix prima di aver compiuto 17 anni. In quella stessa stagione Hanyu si è piazzato quarto anche nella finale del Grand Prix (i suoi coetanei gareggiavano nella categoria juniores), un piazzamento ottenuto alle spalle di, a parte Chan, Daisuke Takahashi, che ha ottenuto 11.62 punti più di lui nei PCS e che lo ha preceduto di 3.30 punti, e Javier Fernandez, che ha ottenuto 5.12 punti più di lui nei PCS e che lo ha preceduto di 1.73 punti. Un altro quarto posto Hanyu lo ha ottenuto al Campionato del mondo 2013 quando, pur gareggiando con il ginocchio sinistro e la caviglia destra infortunati, Hanyu è stato il migliore dei giapponesi, in una gara che fungeva anche da qualificazione per i successivi Giochi olimpici e in cui su di lui, campione nazionale in carica, la pressione era altissima. Gli altri due quarti posti sono arrivati all’NHK Trophy 2014, quando Hanyu non era ancora guarito dalle ferite riportate nello scontro con Han Yan che si era verificato tre settimane prima, e ai Giochi olimpici del 2022.

Sei quarti posti e un settimo, in 12 anni, e ogni volta quel risultato, guardato nel contesto in cui si è verificato, è legato a problemi indipendenti dalle capacità di Hanyu, con la sola eccezione di un’infrazione alla Zayak rule quando era giovanissimo. Nessun sesto o nono posto mondiale, un piazzamento al 9° posto come peggior risultato in un programma di gara, nessun 17° programma corto o 15° programma libero. Dodici stagioni senior ad altissimo livello. Per Patrick Chan le stagioni ad alto livello sono state 9 (contando anche la sua ultima stagione, in cui ha vinto l’oro nel Team Event, una gara che io inizierò a prendere sul serio il giorno in cui Misato Komatsubara/Tim Koleto vinceranno una medaglia in un Campionato ISU), per Shoma Uno 8 (contando anche la stagione 2019-20, in cui le sue gare del Grand Prix sono state il festival degli orrori e non ha partecipato a Campionati ISU), per Javier Fernandez 7 (contando anche il successo al Campionato Europeo 2019, anche se sapevamo che Fernandez non sarebbe andato avanti e che per lui la stagione sarebbe consistita in quell’unica gara), per Nathan Chen 6, per Yuma Kagiyama al momento sono 6, in futuro si vedrà, per Ilia Malinin al momento solo 4, per Mikhail Shaidorov al momento solo 2. Se guardiamo tutti i vincitori dell’oro olimpico dal Dopoguerra, nessuno è rimasto al vertice per 12 stagioni dal momento in cui ha vinto la sua prima medaglia importante. Chi ci è andato più vicino è Plushenko, al vertice per 9 stagioni consecutive, quindi totalmente fermo per tre stagioni, di nuovo al vertice per la sua decima stagione, quando ha vinto l’oro europeo e l’argento olimpico, e in seguito presente solo a un Campionato europeo, dopo due anni, e a un Team Event olimpico, dopo altri due anni. Button ha letteralmente dominato il pattinaggio, ma per sole 5 stagioni, con una carriera internazionale durata 6 stagioni. Gli unici che dalla loro prima medaglia importante sono stati al vertice per un periodo superiore a 8 anni, due cicli olimpici completi, sono pattinatori che hanno vinto l’oro mondiale, magari anche più volte, in qualche caso che hanno vinto anche una medaglia olimpica, ma mai l’oro olimpico: Alain Giletti, Jan Hoffmann, Elvis Stojko, Todd Eldredge e Brian Joubert. Nel Dopoguerra nessuno è stato al vertice del pattinaggio tanto a lungo quanto Hanyu.

La carriera agonistica di Hanyu è finita nel 2022, con una caviglia slogata. Purtroppo non è stato un episodio isolato, già nel 2018, da fresco vincitore del secondo oro olimpico, Hanyu non era andato al Campionato del mondo a causa di una caviglia slogata. Tralascio le gare a cui ha partecipato nonostante la caviglia slogata, e pure l’attacco d’asma prima del libero al Campionato del mondo del 2021, e cito un’altra gara a cui Hanyu non ha potuto partecipare, il Campionato del mondo del 2020, che non è stato disputato a causa del covid, e quasi certamente in entrambe le gare Hanyu avrebbe vinto una medaglia (ricordo che da dicembre 2014 a dicembre 2021 Hanyu è salito sul podio in tutte le gare a cui ha partecipato). Parlando di gare a cui Hanyu non ha partecipato per problemi fisici, l’elenco comprende la finale del Grand Prix 2018, a cui si era qualificato vincendo entrambe le sue gare, e quasi certamente quella del 2017 (era arrivato secondo nella prima gara, per qualificarsi per la finale gli sarebbe bastato arrivare quarto nella seconda, con un punteggio di 245.96 punti, un punteggio per lui assolutamente banale). Quanto alla stagione 2021-22, quello che di fatto è il suo unico punteggio internazionale stagionale sarebbe stato sufficiente a fargli vincere un argento all’NHK Trophy e l’oro alla Rostelecom Cup, e quindi a qualificarsi per un’altra finale del Grand Prix (anche se poi pure quella gara sarebbe stata annullata).

Guardando il Campionato dei Quattro continenti, e dando per scontata la sua assenza nelle stagioni olimpiche, Hanyu avrebbe potuto parteciparvi nel 2015 se non si fosse operato allo stomaco poco più di un mese prima, nel 2016 se non avesse avuto problemi con la lesione di Lisfranc, nel 2019 se non avesse avuto la caviglia slogata, e nel 2021 se la gara non fosse stata annullata a causa del covid. Hanyu ha vinto tanto, avrebbe potuto vincere di più se solo avesse potuto partecipare a numerose gare a cui, per cause indipendenti dalla sua volontà, non ha potuto partecipare. Per quanto riguarda le gare a cui ha partecipato, sono consapevole che fino all’autunno del 2013 Patrick Chan era più forte di Hanyu, ma cosa è successo dopo?

Nel 2015 Hanyu si è piazzato secondo al Campionato del mondo, meno di tre mesi dopo un’operazione allo stomaco. Io vorrei sapere quanti atleti, in qualsiasi sport, hanno vinto una medaglia mondiale in queste condizioni. Ce ne sono altri? Se sì, complimenti a loro per ciò che sono riusciti a fare, perché si tratta di un risultato straordinario. Perché questo è l’argento ottenuto da Hanyu nel 2015: un risultato straordinario. Pure Javier Fernandez, se è in vena di essere onesto con se stesso, sa di aver vinto solo perché Hanyu aveva problemi fisici (e fra l’altro sono sempre i problemi fisici quelli che hanno fatto sì che Hanyu mancasse il podio all’NHK Trophy di novembre 2014, altrimenti non avrebbe vinto medaglie in 26 gare internazionali individuali consecutive, ma in 34). Nel 2016 Hanyu si è nuovamente piazzato secondo al Campionato del mondo. Nell’occasione Fernandez ha pattinato un libero straordinario, complimenti a lui, ma anche qui, sapevamo tutti che il più forte era Hanyu. Hanyu non ha perso perché l’altro è stato più bravo o perché lui non è stato capace di gestire la gara, ma perché stava combattendo con un infortunio che avrebbe potuto stroncare la sua carriera.

Hanyu ha vinto due soli ori mondiali. Certo, è andata così. Sappiamo benissimo chi era il più forte, ma sappiamo anche che non sempre vince il più forte, anche quando il più forte ha lottato al meglio di quello che, in quel momento, il suo fisico gli consentiva di fare.

Una cosa citata spesso sono gli ultimi quattro anni della sua carriera agonistica, con Hanyu che non ha mai superato Nathan Chen. Non entro per scelta nel discorso punteggi. Bisognerebbe guardare in che modo i giudici hanno assegnato i loro voti, ma so che molte persone non sono in grado di accettare questo tipo di analisi, perciò lascio stare. Guardiamo altro. Per esempio, Hanyu aveva davvero bisogno di gareggiare fra la stagione 2018-19 e la stagione 2021-22?

Nel febbraio del 2018 Hanyu aveva già vinto due ori olimpici, due ori, due argenti e un bronzo mondiali e quatto ori e un argento alla finale del Grand Prix. Aveva 23 anni e 2 mesi. Nathan Chen si è ritirato dopo aver vinto un oro olimpico, tre ori mondiali e tre ori alla finale del Grand Prix, a 22 anni e 9 mesi. Avevano più o meno la stessa età. Cosa è più difficile, fermarsi dopo aver vinto una sola volta la competizione più importante, o continuare a gareggiare dopo averla vinta due volte? Hanyu ha continuato a gareggiare ad altissimo livello, come provato dai suoi risultati, e aggiungendo sempre qualcosa di nuovo, visto che nel 2018 è diventato il primo pattinatore a eseguire la sequenza 4T+3A (una sequenza eseguita per la prima volta da un altro pattinatore solo 6 stagioni più tardi, da Rio Nakata in una gara regionale, e con un regolamento che non penalizzava le sequenze come le penalizzava quando a eseguirla è stato Hanyu, mentre la prima sequenza quadruplo+triplo, 4S+3A è stata eseguita da Ilia Malinin 5 stagioni più tardi), nel 2019 è diventato il primo pattinatore a completare la combinazione 4T+1Eu+3F e nel 2022 ha eseguito quello che è ancora l’unico 4A mai provato ai Giochi olimpici. Fermarsi dopo aver vinto la medaglia più importante è più semplice. Hanyu non aveva alcun bisogno di competere nelle ultime quattro stagioni. Ha scelto di farlo, e questo è un altro segno della sua grandezza.

Guardiamo un paio dei pattinatori presenti agli ultimi Giochi olimpici. Kagiyama, a 23 anni, ha sentito il bisogno di fermarsi per una stagione, e questo dopo che già aveva perso l’intera stagione 2022-23 a causa di un infortuno. Al suo attivo due argenti olimpici, quattro argenti e un bronzo mondiali e due argenti e un bronzo alla finale del Grand Prix, e con la pressione di due sole stagioni disputate da numero 1 della squadra giapponese (per Hanyu erano state 6 fino ai 23 anni, 10 in tutto). La pressione la sente anche Malinin, a 21 anni, con 4 anni da numero 1 degli Stati Uniti, tre ori e un bronzo al Campionato del mondo, tre ori e un bronzo alla finale del Grand Prix e un flop colossale ai Giochi olimpici (Hanyu ha vinto il suo primo oro olimpico a 19 anni). Gli ultimi 4 anni della carriera agonistica di Hanyu sono un di più, qualcosa che lui ha fatto perché aveva voglia di farli, ma che non erano necessari, perché la sua carriera era già leggendaria. Lui era già il pattinatore più grande di tutti i tempi, il GOAT (Greatest of All Time).

Una classifica precisa degli atleti più grandi di sempre, in qualsiasi sport, è impossibile da fare, perché nel tempo sono cambiate tante cose. I risultati vanno rapportati all’epoca in cui sono stati ottenuti e all’impatto che hanno avuto. Sapendo questo, e sapendo che nulla è paragonabile ai Giochi olimpici, possiamo provare a guardare qualche dettaglio.

Fino alla Seconda guerra mondiale il pattinaggio era uno sport quasi esclusivamente europeo. Anche in quelli che vengono definiti Campionati del mondo, non c’erano asiatici (due sole eccezioni: due soli pattinatori giapponesi nella gara maschile del 1932, e quattro uomini e una donna, tutti giapponesi, nel 1936), non c’erano africani, né pattinatori dell’Oceania, e i pochi americani, presenti comunque in un numero limitato di competizioni, erano solo statunitensi e canadesi (alle Olimpiadi del 1908 ha partecipato un argentino, ma la famiglia di Horatio Torromé si era trasferita in Gran Bretagna quando lui era piccolissimo, e a diverse gare Torromé ha rappresentato la Gran Bretagna). Anche fra le nazioni europee, quelle dove si praticava pattinaggio erano poche (per esempio il primo spagnolo, Dario Villalba, presente alle Olimpiadi e al Campionato del mondo del 1956, era figlio di un console, e aveva scoperto il pattinaggio quando viveva negli Stati Uniti. Dopo di lui non ci sono più stati spagnoli in un Campionato del mondo fino alla partecipazione di Gloria Mas nel 1979).

Senza sminuire i risultati dei vari Ulrich Salchow, Gillis Grafstrom, Karl Schafer, o dei pattinatori che all’epoca hanno vinto medaglie olimpiche e mondiali, c’era meno concorrenza. Chi era davvero forte, aveva meno rivali da affrontare. Chi si sarebbe aspettato, nel 1920, o anche oltre ottant’anni più tardi, nel 2002, che potesse esserci un pattinatore spagnolo forte? La Spagna era quasi senza piste e senza tradizione. Proviamo a togliere i risultati dei pattinatori spagnoli dalle gare di questo millennio, e vediamo come cambiano i risultati di Hanyu. E non è solo un unico spagnolo a essere arrivato a lottare per le medaglie più importanti, perché per tanto tempo l’Asia non è esistita nel mondo del pattinaggio. Non è solo un discorso di viaggi lunghi e costosi, che non tutti si potevano permettere di fare, o di mancanza di piste nel proprio paese. È anche un discorso di mancanza di conoscenza. I giapponesi presenti alle Olimpiadi del 1932 non avevano allenatori, e avevano studiato da autodidatti leggendo alcuni manuali. Come potevano essere competitivi? E il Giappone è stata la prima nazione asiatica ad avere pattinatori forti, ma la prima medaglia mondiale vinta da un pattinatore asiatico è arrivata solo nel 1977 grazie a Minoru Sano. Ora ci sono pattinatori asiatici forti provenienti da diverse nazioni, la concorrenza è maggiore.

Passiamo al Dopoguerra. Nel 1948 Dick Button vince per la prima volta i Giochi olimpici, nel 1952 li vince per la seconda volta. Bravo, nessuno lo mette in dubbio. Dei 16 pattinatori che hanno gareggiato nel 1948, 12 hanno iniziato a partecipare alle gare internazionali dopo la Seconda guerra mondiale. Di quelli che avevano partecipato al Campionato del mondo prima della guerra, il venticinquenne austriaco Edi Rada aveva partecipato a due Campionati del mondo, piazzandosi una volta al quarto posto. Nel 1947 agli austriaci non era stato concesso di partecipare al Campionato europeo e al Campionato del mondo, perciò per loro il 1948 è stato il primo anno di gare, per Button era il secondo. Il trentenne britannico Graham Sharp aveva partecipato a sei Campionati del mondo, vincendo un oro e tre argenti, e alle Olimpiadi del 1936, piazzandosi al quinto posto. Un pattinatore importante, che però dubito sia riuscito ad allenarsi molto fra il 1939 e il 1945, visto che ha prestato servizio nella Royal Army in Francia, nord Africa e Italia. Il ventisettenne austriaco Hellmut May, 14° alle Olimpiadi del 1936, forzatamente arruolato, ha trascorso non so quanto tempo in un Campo di prigionia. Quanto al trentacinquenne danese Per Cock-Clausen, aveva partecipato a due Campionati del mondo, piazzandosi come miglior risultato al nono posto nel 1939. Freddie Tomlins, argento mondiale nel 1939, a 19 anni, e descritto dagli articoli dell’epoca come molto talentuoso, era morto nel 1943, abbattuto mentre era al servizio della RAF. Gli altri vincitori di medaglie mondiali prima della guerra non erano tornati a gareggiare. Sia Button che Hanyu hanno vinto alla loro prima partecipazione olimpica, ma la differenza fra affrontare pattinatori ugualmente inesperti o affrontare il tre volte campione del mondo in carica e altri tre pattinatori che, nelle due stagioni precedenti, erano saliti sul podio mondiale ed erano più esperti di lui, è notevole. E ad aiutare Button c’era stato un altro dettaglio: in Europa molte piste erano state distrutte, ed era difficile allenarsi, ma anche reperire cose necessarie per pattinare come… un paio di pattini. Forse, per un americano forte, vincere due volte di fila nel 1948 e nel 1952 era più semplice che per chiunque in questo inizio di millennio. Quello che ha fatto Hanyu è più significativo di quel che ha fatto Button non perché Hanyu ha completato il Super Slam e Button no, entrambi hanno vinto gare che l’altro non ha vinto (ma entrambi hanno vinto tutto ciò che potevano vincere nell’epoca in cui hanno gareggiato), ma perché Hanyu ha vinto superando avversari molto più competitivi, e senza essere avvantaggiato dal fatto di potersi allenare quando voleva mentre gli altri non lo potevano fare.

C’è un’altra cosa da considerare: la pressione. Quanta poteva essercene nell’immediato Dopoguerra? Le dirette televisive sono iniziate nel 1960, e sono servite diverse edizioni perché il numero di spettatori diventasse davvero elevato. Nel 1972 la crescente importanza della televisione ha portato a cambiare il regolamento e a introdurre il programma corto. Nel 1994, con la vicenda Kerrigan-Harding, l’audience è cresciuta a dismisura. Con internet, e con i social media, l’attenzione sui pattinatori è diventata ancora più elevata. La pressione mediatica che i pattinatori hanno affrontato nel 2002 è superiore rispetto a quella di… per esempio, cinquant’anni prima, nel 1952. La pressione affrontata da Hanyu è molto superiore rispetto alla pressione affrontata da Button, e come ben sappiamo la pressione può avere effetti devastanti. Ilia Malinin è crollato sotto questa pressione. È un pattinatore forte, non è il più grande di sempre perché non è stato capace di gestire la difficoltà e si è letteralmente sciolto, presentando il quindicesimo libero e concludendo la gara all’ottavo posto.

C’era una pressione altissima su Malinin? Certo. Aveva vinto gli ultimi due ori mondiali, e due mesi prima aveva completato un programma contenente 7 quadrupli. Però già nella gara a squadre si era reso conto di faticare a gestire la tensione. Avrebbe potuto semplificare il programma, oltretutto dopo i programmi non esattamente perfetti di Yuma Kagiyama, Adam Siao Him Fa e Daniel Grassl, e con Mikhail Shaidorov, Shun Sato, Stephen Gogolev e Petr Gumennik che avevano perso terreno già dal programma corto, per vincere gli sarebbe bastato fare molto meno di quello che aveva fatto un paio di mesi prima per vincere la finale del Grand Prix. Facile da dire stando a casa? Certo, facile da dire. Io non sono un campione, però posso guardare come si comportano i campioni. Malinin alle Olimpiadi aveva 21 anni, era nettamente il favorito, con due nuovi record del mondo stabiliti questa stagione nel programma libero, e già quattro partecipazioni al Campionato del mondo e tre alla finale del Grand Prix come esperienze di gara importanti.

In molti hanno fatto notare che per Malinin si trattava della prima partecipazione olimpica. Anche per Hanyu quella del 2014 era la prima partecipazione olimpica, però lui di anni ne aveva 19, non 21, e lui non si è sciolto. Anche Hanyu aveva partecipato a tre finali del Grand Prix, ma solo a due campionati del mondo, perciò la sua esperienza era minore. Hanyu i record del mondo li aveva stabiliti nel programma corto, uno in dicembre e l’altro nel programma corto olimpico, la prima volta che un pattinatore ha superato i 100 punti, e questo dettaglio ha fatto molto clamore. Malinin aveva su di sé le aspettative della sua nazione, così come Hanyu aveva su di sé le aspettative della sua nazione. Quando si è verificato il Terremoto del Tohoku, Hanyu aveva 16 anni. Lo hanno soprannominato la “speranza del Tohoku”. Quanto è pesante portare un titolo così per anni, da quando era un adolescente? E alla finale del Grand Prix che precedeva le Olimpiadi, anche Hanyu aveva proposto una prestazione straordinaria, attirando su di sé le attenzioni di tutti. Hanyu ha fatto errori nel libero? Sì, ha sentito pure lui la pressione. Però, invece di sciogliersi ha lottato fino in fondo. È stato lui ad avere il TES più alto e il secondo valore base, ed è stato il suo il miglior programma libero della giornata. Quello di Malinin è stato il 21° valore base, con il 16° TES (dei suoi GOE negativi, uno è arrivato su un salto singolo, uno su un doppio, perciò l’effetto sul punteggio di quei GOE non è stato elevato). Sentire la tensione, fare errori, e comunque presentare uno dei migliori programmi mai presentati da chiunque fino a quel momento, non è la stessa cosa che sentire la tensione e fare tutti gli errori fatti da Malinin.

Ok. Hanyu ha vinto nel 2019, a 19 anni. Nel 2023, a 23 anni, ha vinto di nuovo. Certo, era più grande e più esperto, ma quanta pressione c’era su di lui in quel momento? Dopo che nel 2010 Plushenko aveva mancato il secondo oro olimpico, nel 2018 Hanyu era diventato il primo pattinatore a poter ripetere il doppio successo, a 66 anni di distanza da Dick Button. La pressione era enorme, lui aveva una sola caviglia funzionante, l’altra era tenuta assieme da forza di volontà e antidolorifici, e ha vinto. Miglior programma corto, libero con un paio di imperfezioni, comunque il secondo della giornata. E, a differenza di Button, Hanyu ha continuato a gareggiare anche dopo il secondo successo olimpico, nonostante la pressione enorme che gravava su di lui.

La maggior parte dei pattinatori si ferma dopo un oro olimpico. Lo hanno fatto Hayes Alan Jenkins (1956), David Jenkins (1960), Manfred Schnelldorfer (1964), Wolfgang Schwarz (1968), Ondrej Nepela (1972, lui in realtà è andato avanti ancora una stagione perché il Campionato del mondo del 1973 si sarebbe svolto nella sua città natale, Bratislava), John Curry (1976), Robin Cousins (1980), Scott Hamilton (1984), Brian Boitano (1988, lui è tornato dopo 6 stagioni, quando ormai era un ex campione e non più il campione olimpico in carica, e si è ritirato di nuovo subito dopo il 6° posto olimpico), Viktor Petrenko (1992, lui è tornato dopo una stagione, ritirandosi di nuovo subito dopo il 4° posto olimpico), Ilia Kulik (1998), Alexei Yagudin (2002), Evan Lysacek (2010) e Nathan Chen (2022). Alcuni di loro non hanno neppure partecipato al Campionato del mondo postolimpico. Le eccezioni all’addio alle gare sono pochissime. Mikhail Shaidorov ha vinto quest’anno, ha deciso di continuare a gareggiare, solo in futuro scopriremo se riuscirà a difendere il suo titolo. Alexei Urmanov (1994) ha continuato a gareggiare per 4 stagioni senza più vincere medaglie mondiali. Dick Button (1948 e 1952) si è ritirato al termine della sua seconda stagione olimpica. Quanto a Evgeni Plushenko, ha pattinato per nove stagioni ad altissimo livello vincendo l’argento olimpico nel 2002, alla sua quinta stagione senior, e l’oro nel 2006, alla nona stagione. Quindi si è fermato, senza neppure partecipare al Campionato del mondo. Non ha continuato a gareggiare con la pressione di essere il campione olimpico in carica. Dopo una pausa di tre stagioni è tornato per una gara del Grand Prix, il Campionato europeo e le Olimpiadi, dove ha vinto un argento. E si è fermato di nuovo. Complici anche alcuni infortuni, nelle quattro stagioni successive ha partecipato a sole due gare internazionali, tre campionati nazionali e il team Event olimpico. Hanyu non si è mai fermato. Ha saltato alcune gare per infortunio, ha sempre partecipato almeno alla gara più importante della stagione e a un’altra gara. A quante gare ha partecipato Hanyu con il peso di essere il campione olimpico in carica?

La differenza è impressionante. Riuscire a gestire la pressione e a continuare a ottenere risultati, come ha fatto Hanyu, per così tante gare e così tanto tempo, non è normale. Come ha notato Scott Russell, Hanyu è in grado di dare il meglio di sé nei momenti più importanti. Qualcosa che solo i campioni sanno fare e che lui ha fatto gara dopo gara, anno dopo anno.

Ci sarebbero tante altre cose da dire, la completezza in tutti gli aspetti del pattinaggio, nei salti, nelle trottole, nei passi, nell’interpretazione, il ruolo fondamentale ricoperto da Hanyu per la nascita dell’epoca dei quadrupli, i record del mondo, il suo impatto in coloro che hanno assistito alle sue prestazioni, e quello che sta facendo ora, dopo aver lasciato le gare. Ho già scritto troppo, per il momento mi fermo qui, riservandomi di tornare su queste cose in futuro.

Quasi sempre ogni quattro anni abbiamo un nuovo campione olimpico, ma se il titolo olimpico è imprescindibile per essere il GOAT, un titolo olimpico non è sufficiente. Quelle 12 stagioni, illuminate dai due ori olimpici, ci dicono che Hanyu è il GOAT.

English

Nearly four years ago, Yuzuru Hanyu decided to pursue his career as a professional figure skater. Since his announcement, he has performed in numerous shows:

• Prologue (2022), 5 shows
• Gift (2023), 1 show
• Notte stellata 2023, 3 shows
• Stars on Ice Japan Tour 2023, 10 shows
• Fantasy on Ice 2023 Tour A and B. 12 shows
• Re_Pray Tour (2023-24), 8 shows
• Notte stellata 2024, 3 shows
• Fantasy on Ice 2024 Tour A, 6 shows
• Challenge (2024), 1 show
• Echoes of Life Tour (2024-25), 7 shoes
• Notte stellata 2025, 3 shows
• The First Skate (2025), 1 show
• Notte stellata 2026, 3 shows
• Realive (2026), 2 shows.

There are 14 different shows or tours, for a total of 65 performances. In Stars on Ice and the two editions of Fantasy on Ice in which he participated, Hanyu was “just” one of the cast members. Challenge, which took place without an audience because the Kenmin Spo-Rec Plaza in Ishikawa, where Hanyu and the other skaters performed it’s a small structure (even the rink is small, 50×22 meters), and couldn’t accommodate spectators, and The First Skate, which took place at the inauguration of Xebio Arena, an arena small by Hanyu’s standards, are special events. For Notte stellata, Hanyu isn’t the producer but merely the chairperson, the person around whom the show is structured, but it has now become an annual show that is important in Hanyu’s professional career. The show is tied to the arena in which it takes place: in the days following the earthquake of March 3, 2011, the Seikisui Heim Super Arena in Rifu was used as a morgue, so a commemorative show dedicated to that event held there has much greater impact, especially for those who experienced it firsthand.

For the solo shows, Hanyu isn’t just the performer, or the one who writes the story. He’s also the producer. Of course, there’s a staff that works with him, there are people he collaborates with on the creative side, first and foremost Mikiko, but also musicians and composers—for the second half of Realive, the music was composed by Marihiko Hara—and new technology artists like Geek Pictures for the videos and m7kenji for the pixel art, both of whom collaborated with Hanyu again after Re_Pray. And there are countless people who work with him and for him to put on the shows, taking care of all the practical aspects. The official Gift photobook lists around 500 people, including carpenters, stagehands, sound and lighting technicians… a huge organizational task, which includes selecting the arenas where Hanyu performs.

For fans, it’s important for arenas to be large. The higher the number of seats, the greater the chance of winning one or more lottery tickets. Chances are, because there’s never a guarantee. For every solo show date, and for every Notte stellata date, I’ve always seen comments on social media from fans who are sad because they didn’t win a ticket. It happened to me too; I won two tickets for Echoes of Life in Chiba, but only after failing the Echoes of Life lotteries in Saitama and Hiroshima. Others have won more tickets than me, or have failed at a higher number of lotteries. For Hanyu, the difficulty is finding an arena not already booked for the number of days needed for his shows. I assume the Notte stellata organizers book the Rifu arena on the dates of the earthquake anniversary well in advance, perhaps from one year to the next. Hanyu, on the other hand, has stated that he wants to be sure he has a show to perform, and so he moves with less advance notice because he only does it when he has a project. And this is a problem, because he needs the arenas for several days, much more than a singer.

Rifu Arena publishes a monthly booking calendar, so you can see which spaces have been rented, and for how long, for each event held there. These are the spaces rented at Sekisui Heim Super Arena in April 2026.

For Realive, Hanyu rented the entire arena—not just the main space but also all the areas of the sub-arena, and as we can see, there are many different spaces. Not only that, he rented those spaces for a very long period of time. The two shows took place on April 11th and 12th, but Hanyu rented the arena for eight days. Four days to set everything up, especially to build the ice rink, with the inevitable downtime needed to freeze the water after each 1-millimeter layer was added. One day dedicated to on-site rehearsals, the only time he could make all the necessary adjustments. Two days dedicated to the show, without even a day’s intermission. One day to dismantle everything. Eight days of rental for two days of performance. If we compare this with the artists who performed in the same arena in April, we see that they didn’t rent the entire arena, and for two shows, they only needed to rent the spaces for four days.

When Hanyu rented the same arena for Re_Pray in 2024, the situation was very similar. The two shows took place on April 7th and 9th, and with a day between them, April 8th, Hanyu had to rent the arena for nine days.

The rent problem affects Hanyu in two ways. One is the number of days needed to do everything: if he finds an arena not yet booked for six days straight, it’s as if he hasn’t found anything, because six days aren’t enough for him. Either he moves well in advance, or his choice of arenas is very limited. The other is the costs. Let’s assume that for lighting, sound systems, sets, the people who work for him, everything needed to put on his shows, he spends similar amounts to those of major Japanese artists. His rent lasts longer. You can see the table with the rates on the Pia Arena MM website. Other smaller arenas, located in less sought-after locations—Hachinohe, Saga, Miyagi, Hiroshima—will likely have lower rates; others, such as the Tokyo Dome and the Saitama Super Arena, will have higher rates. I assume the LaLa Arena in Chiba has similar rates, but I don’t know for sure.

Prologue took place on November 4 and 5, 2022. The eight-day rental fee is:

• October 30, set-up and rehearsals, holiday rate: 3,500,000 yen
• October 31-November 2, set-up, weekday rate: 2,500,000 yen per day, total 7,500,000 yen
• November 3, set-up, holiday rate (November 3 is the Culture Day, a public holiday in Japan): 3,500.000 yen
• November 4, performance, weekday rate: 4,000,000 yen
• November 5, performance, holiday rate: 6,250,000 yen
• November 6, dismantling, holiday rate: 3,500,000 yen
• Total for eight-day rental (two performances, 7,900 spectators per day, total 15,800 spectators): 28,250,000 yen

Re_Pray took place on February 17 and 19, 2024. In this case There was a one-day break between the first and second performances, so the rental amount is nine days:

• February 12-16, set-up and rehearsals, weekday rate: 2,500,000 yen per day, total 12,500,000 yen
• February 17, performance, holiday rate: 6,250,000 yen
• February 18, intermission (rehearsals?), holiday rate: 3,500,000 yen
• February 19, performance, weekday rate: 4,000,000 yen
• February 20, dismantling, weekday rate: 2,500,000 yen
• Total for nine days’ rental (two performances, 7,000 spectators per day, total 14,000 spectators): 28,750,000

Additionally, Hanyu has to have an ice rink built—I know singers have a stage, but it’s not as if Hanyu’s shows are completely free of anything outside of the rink—and he also has to pay for water and electricity, because the ice has to stay solid even at night, when no one is using it. Perhaps he also has to rent another place for rehearsals—for Gift, he rented the Makuhari Messe, which may not cost as much as the Tokyo Dome, but it’s certainly pricey. He also has to pay royalties for the music he uses, since unlike singers, the songs on which he skates aren’t his own. Hanyu’s shows are incredibly expensive.

Hanyu can’t even fit the same number of spectators into an arena as the singers, because the ice rinks are so big. The one for Gift was Olympic-sized, 30×60 meters, the one for Prologue was a little smaller, 55×24 meters. The others… he probably has to adapt to the arena. In Saga, the steps on the moving platform he used for Gate of Living and Haru yo, koi were steeper than the steps in the other arenas due to space constraints. I don’t know if he managed to have the same size rinks for the entire Re_Pray tour. On the Echoes of Life tour, the Chiba rink was definitely shorter than a regular rink, a problem related to the arena’s square, rather than rectangular, shape.

It’s no coincidence that when he performed Ballad No. 1, he started not from the center of the rink but from… two-thirds? Three-quarters? This gave him more space to pick up speed before the quadruple salchow.

We don’t know the exact number of people who attended Hanyu’s shows live, as information about the Hiroshima shows has never been released. The total number certainly exceeds 200,000 spectators. Let’s see where he performed. In the list which you can find below, I also check the four editions of Notte stellata. The different numbers of paying spectators for the same arena are related to the type of setup. Hanyu typically occupies one of the short sides with a giant screen, and this eliminates the possibility of having spectators on that side of the arena. In the Tokyo Dome, this didn’t make a big difference because the arena is structured so that almost all spectators are on just two sides. The image on the left shows the official map of the Tokyo Dome; on the right, the simplified map published on the Gift website, which shows which areas the tickets available for the show referred to.

For events like concerts, the Tokyo Dome has a very high capacity because organizers can decide to open up part of the playing field to the public. Obviously, this isn’t possible for baseball games, and Hanyu didn’t do so, using the space around the rink for his stage setup. For Prologue in Hachinohe and for Realive, Hanyu used the central giant screens, attached to the ceiling, and thus had all sides of the arena available to the public. However, there are also changes within the arena itself. The platform on which Kohei Uchimura performed in Notte stellata 2023 is longer than the stage on which Mao Daichi performed in Notte stellata 2024, so in 2024 it was possible to accommodate a few more spectators on the long sides near the stage. For Realive, in the same arena, some standing room tickets were also sold. For Megalovania program (Re_Pray only, not for the Echoes of Life encores or for Realive) Hanyu placed giant screens in various spots inside the arena that allowed him to teleport, but obviously using those giant screens forced him to sacrifice some seating, resulting in the number of spectators who watched Prologue in Yohohama’s Pia Arena being higher than the number who watched Re_Pray inside the same arena.

The following is a list of the main shows Hanyu performed in over the past four seasons: the solo shows and Notte stellata. For each of these shows, I’ve listed, from left to right, the name of the show, followed by the location where it took place and the year, then the name of the arena, the arena’s capacity (which sometimes varies depending on the type of setup; with skating rinks usually the capacity is lower because the rinks take up so much space and it’s not possible to add movable seats), the official number of spectators who attended the show, the number of shows held in that city, the total number of spectators for each show in each city, and the percentage of spectators compared to the arena’s maximum capacity. To calculate the number in this last column, when I’ve listed more than one number in the third column, I’ve used the underlined number as the arena’s maximum capacity. This means that if the arena website listed two different maximum capacities, one related to an ice rink and the other not, I used the one related to the ice rink (Flat Hachinohe and Saga Arena). Otherwise, I used the higher number considering only seating, not standing room or additional space in the “playing field” (Pia Arena, Tokyo Dome, and Saitama Super Arena).

Hanyu filled between 69.60% and 100% of the available seats. Without official numbers, we can only speculate for Echoes of Life in Hiroshima. How many spectators were there? On the left is the official arena map; on the right is the simplified map found on the show’s official website.

Officially, there are 4,750 fixed seats. Hanyu used the two long sides and part of one of the short sides. We can assume that this represents 65% of the available seats, if not more. This equates to 3,087 spectators per day. To this must be added the spectators in the S and A sections. Hanyu doesn’t usually add seats in this area, but in Hiroshima he did, and it’s several rows of seats. So, on each of those two days, around 4,000 people probably entered the Hiroshima arena.

Stars on Ice and Fantasy on Ice are shows independent of Hanyu. Hanyu attracted spectators, but the cast included numerous other prominent skaters, and the shows, albeit in a smaller format, continue to this day. Challenge was held without spectators, except for the children who attended the skating lesson given the day before by Hanyu and Satoko Miyahara, and one of their parents. Hanyu’s shows alone, 23 shows over four seasons, attracted approximately 205,000 spectators. Adding Starry Night brings the number to 279,550. With The First Skate, the total (approximate) is 282,928, as the Xebio Arena accommodated 3,378 spectators, a higher number than the 2,150 normally possible when the ice rink is used because movable seats were added, reducing the rink’s size, and standing room tickets were sold.

Stars on Ice and Fantasy on Ice are shows independent of Hanyu. Hanyu attracted spectators, but the cast included numerous other prominent skaters, and the shows, albeit in a smaller format, continue to this day. Challenge was held without spectators, except for the children who attended the skating lesson given the day before by Hanyu and Satoko Miyahara, and one of their parents. Hanyu’s shows alone, 23 shows over four seasons, attracted approximately 205,000 spectators. Adding Notte stellata brings the number to 279,550. With The First Skate, the total (approximate) is 282,928, as the Xebio Arena accommodated 3,378 spectators, a higher number than the 2,150 normally possible when the ice rink is used because movable seats were added, at the cost of a smaller skating rink, and standing room tickets were also sold.

The economic impact of Hanyu’s performances is enormous. According to Yamaguchi University, Hanyu’s first year as a professional had an economic impact on Japan of 17.623 billion yen, with a 9.405 billion yen increase in GDP. The two shows he held in Saga in January 2024 had an impact on the local economy of 480 million yen. Despite the extremely high costs, Hanyu is achieving extraordinary results, moving countless people, even from outside Japan, and bringing enormous benefits to the economies of the places he visits. And while we don’t yet know the details, with the fourth Ice Story already announced, we know these numbers are destined to rise.

Italiano

Quasi quattro anni fa Yuzuru Hanyu ha deciso di proseguire la sua carriera come pattinatore professionista. Dal giorno dell’annuncio si è esibito in numerosi show:

• Prologue (2022), 5 spettacoli
• Gift (2023), 1 spettacolo
• Notte stellata 2023, 3 spettacoli
• Stars on Ice Japan Tour 2023, 10 spettacoli
• Fantasy on Ice 2023 Tour A e B, 12 spettacoli
• Re_Pray Tour (2023-24), 8 spettacoli
• Notte stellata 2024, 3 spettacoli
• Fantasy on Ice 2024 Tour A, 6 spettacoli
• Challenge (2024), 1 spettacolo
• Echoes of Life Tour (2024-25), 7 spettacoli
• Notte stellata 2025, 3 spettacoli
• The First Skate (2025), 1 spettacolo
• Notte stellata 2026, 3 spettacoli
• Realive (2026), 2 spettacoli.

Sono 14 spettacoli o tour differenti, per un totale di 65 performances. In Stars on Ice e nelle due edizioni di Fantasy on Ice a cui ha preso parte, Hanyu era “solo” uno dei membri del cast. Challenge, che si è svolto senza pubblico perché il Kenmin Spo-Rec Plaza di Ishikawa in cui Hanyu e gli altri pattinatori si sono esibiti è una struttura piccola (anche la pista è piccola, 50×22 metri) e non poteva ospitare spettatori, e The First Skate, che si è svolto in occasione dell’inaugurazione della Xebio Arena, un’arena piccola per gli standard di Hanyu, sono eventi particolari. Per Notte stellata Hanyu non è il produttore ma solo il chairperson, la persona intorno alla quale è strutturato lo show, ma ormai è diventato uno show che si svolge ogni anno e che è importante nella carriera professionistica di Hanyu. Lo show è legato all’arena in cui si svolge: nei giorni successivi al terremoto del 3 marzo 2011 la Seikisui Heim Super Arena di Rifu è stata usata come obitorio, perciò uno show commemorativo dedicato a quell’evento che si svolge lì ha una forza molto maggiore, soprattutto per coloro che quell’evento lo hanno vissuto in prima persona.

Per i solo show Hanyu non è solo l’interprete, o colui che scrive la storia. Lui è anche il produttore. Certo, c’è uno staff che lavora con lui, ci sono persone con cui collabora per l’aspetto creativo, prima fra tutti Mikiko, ma anche musicisti e compositori – per la seconda metà di Realive la musica è stata composta da Marihiko Hara – e artisti delle nuove tecnologie come Geek Pictures per i video e m7kenji per la pixel art, entrambi tornati a collaborare con Hanyu dopo Re_Pray. E ci sono un’infinità di persone che lavorano con lui e per lui per realizzare gli show, occupandosi di tutti gli aspetti pratici. Il photobook ufficiale di Gift comprende un elenco di circa 500 persone inclusi carpentieri, addetti alla pista, tecnici del suono e delle luci… un lavoro organizzativo enorme, che comprende la selezione delle arene in cui Hanyu si esibisce.

Per i fan è importante che le arene siano grandi. Più alto è il numero dei posti, maggiore è la probabilità di vincere uno o più biglietti alla lotteria. La probabilità, perché la certezza non c’è mai. Per ogni data dei solo show, e per ogni data di Notte stellata, ho sempre visto sui social media commenti di fan tristi perché non avevano vinto il biglietto. È successo anche a me, io ho vinto due biglietti per Echoes of Life in Chiba, ma solo dopo aver fallito le lotterie di Echoes of Life in Saitama e in Hiroshima. Altri hanno vinto più biglietti di me, o hanno fallito a un più alto numero di lotterie. Per Hanyu, la difficoltà è trovare un’arena libera per il numero di giorni necessari ai suoi show. Suppongo che gli organizzatori di Notte stellata prenotino l’arena di Rifu nelle date dell’anniversario del terremoto con largo anticipo, magari da un anno all’altro. Hanyu invece ha dichiarato di voler essere sicuro di avere uno show da proporre, e quindi si muove con un anticipo minore perché lo fa solo quando ha un progetto. E questo è un problema, perché le arene gli servono per parecchi giorni, molti di più di quanto servano a un cantante.

L’arena di Rifu pubblica ogni mese il calendario relativo alle prenotazioni, perciò è possibile vedere quali spazi sono stati affittati, e per quanto tempo, per ciascun evento che si è svolto lì. Questi sono gli spazi affittati alla Sekisui Heim Super Arena nell’aprile del 2026.

Per Realive Hanyu ha affittato l’intera arena, non solo lo spazio principale ma anche tutte le aree della sub arena, e come vediamo sono tanti spazi diversi. Non solo, ha affittato quegli spazi per un arco di tempo molto lungo. I due spettacoli si sono svolti l’11 e il 12 aprile, ma Hanyu ha affittato l’arena per 8 giorni. Quattro giorni per allestire tutto, soprattutto per realizzare la pista, con gli inevitabili tempi morti necessari per far congelare l’acqua dopo che ciascuno strato di 1 millimetro è stato aggiunto. Un giorno dedicato alle prove sul posto, l’unico momento in cui può fare tutti gli aggiustamenti necessari. Due giorni dedicati allo show, senza neppure un giorno di intervallo. Un giorno per smontare tutto quanto. Otto giorni di affitto per due giorni di spettacolo. Se facciamo il confronto con gli artisti che si sono esibiti nella stessa arena in aprile, vediamo che loro non hanno affittato l’intera arena, e che per due spettacoli hanno avuto bisogno di affittare gli spazi per soli quattro giorni.

Quando, nel 2024, Hanyu aveva affittato la stessa arena per Re_Pray, la situazione era molto simile. I due spettacoli si erano svolti il 7 e il 9 aprile, e con un giorno di intervallo, l’8, Hanyu aveva dovuto affittare l’arena per nove giorni.

Il problema dell’affitto si riflette su Hanyu in due modi. Uno è il numero dei giorni necessari a fare tutto: se trova un’arena libera per sei giorni di fila, è come se non avesse trovato nulla, perché per lui sei giorni non sono sufficienti. O si muove con molto anticipo, o la sua scelta per le arene è molto limitata. L’altro riguarda i costi. Supponiamo che per le luci, l’impianto audio, la scenografia, le persone che lavorano per lui, tutto quello che serve a realizzare i suoi spettacoli, spenda cifre simili a quelle dei principali artisti giapponesi. L’affitto per lui dura di più. Sul sito della Pia Arena MM è possibile vedere la tabella con le tariffe. Altre arene più piccole, site in località meno ambite, Hachinohe, Saga, Miyagi, Hiroshima, avranno probabilmente tariffe più basse, altre, il Tokyo Dome e la Saitama Super Arena, avranno tariffe più alte, suppongo che la LaLa Arena di Chiba abbia tariffe simili, ma non lo so per certo.

Prologue si è svolto il 4 e il 5 novembre 2022. Calcolando otto giorni sono:

• 30 ottobre, allestimento e prove, tariffa festiva: 3.500.000 yen
• 31 ottobre-2 novembre, allestimento, tariffa feriale: 2.500.000 yen al giorno, totale 10.000.000 yen
• 3 novembre, allestimento, tariffa festiva (il Culture Day, che cade il 3 novembre, è una delle feste nazionali giapponesi): 3.500.000 yen
• 4 novembre, spettacolo, tariffa feriale: 4.000.000 yen
• 5 novembre, spettacolo, tariffa festiva: 6.250.000 yen
• 6 novembre, disallestimento, tariffa festiva: 3.500.000 yen
• Totale per otto giorni di affitto (due spettacoli, 7.900 spettatori al giorno, totale 15.800 spettatori): 28.250.000 yen

Re_Pray si è svolto il 17 e il 19 febbraio 2024. In questo caso c’è stato un giorno di intervallo fra il primo e il secondo spettacolo, perciò i giorni di affitto sono nove:

• 12-16 febbraio, allestimento e prove, tariffa feriale: 2.500.000 yen al giorno, totale 12.500.000 yen
• 17 febbraio, spettacolo, tariffa festiva: 6.250.000 yen
• 18 febbraio, intervallo (prove?), tariffa festiva: 3.500.000 yen
• 19 febbraio, spettacolo, tariffa feriale: 4.000.000 yen
• 20 febbraio, disallestimento, tariffa feriale: 2.500.000 yen
• Totale per nove giorni di affitto (due spettacoli, 7.000 spettatori al giorno, totale 14.000 spettatori): 28.750.000 yen

In più, Hanyu deve far allestire una pista – lo so che i cantanti hanno un palco, ma non è che negli show di Hanyu non ci sia nulla al di fuori della pista – con anche spese per l’acqua e la corrente, perché il ghiaccio deve rimanere solido anche di notte, quando non lo usa nessuno, e a volte deve affittare un altro posto per le prove – per Gift ha affittato la Makuhari Messe, che non costerà quanto il Tokyo Dome, ma sicuramente ha un prezzo importante. Deve anche pagare i diritti d’autore per le musiche che usa, visto che a differenza di ciò che fanno i cantanti, i brani su cui si esibisce non sono brani suoi. Gli spettacoli di Hanyu hanno costi elevatissimi.

Hanyu non può neppure fare entrare in un’arena lo stesso numero di spettatori che vi fanno entrare i cantanti, perché le piste di pattinaggio sono grandi. Quella di Gift era di dimensioni olimpiche, 30×60 metri, quella di Prologue era un po’ più piccola, 55×24 metri. Le altre… probabilmente si deve adattare all’arena. A Saga i gradini della piattaforma mobile che usava per Gate of Living e Haru yo, koi, erano più ripidi rispetto ai gradini delle altre arene proprio per problemi di spazio, non so se sia riuscito ad avere piste delle stesse dimensioni per l’intero tour Re_Pray. Nel tour Echoes of Life la pista di Chiba era sicuramente più corta di una pista regolamentare, problema legato alla forma quadrata e non rettangolare dell’arena.

Non per nulla quando ha interpretato la Ballata n. 1 ha iniziato non dal centro della pista ma da… due terzi? Tre quarti? In questo modo aveva a disposizione uno spazio maggiore per prendere velocità prima del quadruplo salchow.

Non conosciamo il numero preciso di persone che hanno assistito dal vivo agli show di Hanyu, perché non sono mai state diffuse informazioni relative agli show che si sono svolti a Hiroshima. Il numero complessivo supera certamente i 200.000 spettatori. Vediamo comunque dove si è esibito. Nella lista che potete trovare più in basso ho controllato anche le quattro edizioni di Notte stellata. I diversi numeri di spettatori paganti per la stessa arena sono legati al tipo di allestimento. In genere Hanyu occupa uno dei lati corti con un megaschermo, e questo gli fa perdere la possibilità di far andare spettatori su quel lato della pista. Nel Tokyo Dome questo non ha comportato una grande differenza perché l’arena è strutturata in modo da avere la quasi totalità degli spettatori su due soli lati. L’immagine mostra, a sinistra, la mappa ufficiale del Tokyo Dome, a destra la mappa semplificata pubblicata sul sito di Gift, nella quale vediamo a quali aree si riferivano i biglietti disponibili per lo spettacolo.

Per eventi come i concerti il Tokyo Dome ha una capienza molto alta perché gli organizzatori possono decidere di aprire al pubblico anche parte dello spazio del campo di gioco. Ovviamente questo non è possibile per le partite di baseball, e non è stato fatto da Hanyu, che ha usato lo spazio intorno alla pista per il suo allestimento di scena. Per Prologue in Hachinohe e per Realive Hanyu ha usato i megaschermi centrali, attaccati al soffitto, e quindi ha avuto a disposizione per il pubblico tutti i lati dell’arena. Ci sono comunque modifiche anche all’interno della stessa arena. La pedana su cui si è esibito Kohei Uchimura in Notte stellata 2023 è più lunga rispetto al palco su cui si è esibita Mao Daichi in Notte stellata 2024, perciò nel 2024 è stato possibile far andare qualche spettatore in più nei lati lunghi nei pressi del palco. Per Realive, nella stessa arena, sono stati venduti anche alcuni biglietti per posti in piedi. Per Megalovania (solo in Re_Pray, non nei bis di Echoes of Life o in Realive) Hanyu ha piazzato in vari punti dell’arena alcuni megaschermi che gli consentivano di teleportarsi, ma ovviamente l’uso di quei megaschermi lo ha costretto a sacrificare qualche posto a sedere, con la conseguenza che il numero di spettatori che ha assistito a Prologue nella Pia Arena di Yohohama è superiore rispetto al numero di spettatori che ha assistito a Re_Pray all’interno della stessa arena.

Quello che segue è l’elenco degli show principali in cui si è esibito Hanyu in queste quattro stagioni: i solo show e Notte stellata. Per ciascuno di questi show ho indicato, da sinistra, il nome dello show seguito dalla località in cui lo show si è svolto e dall’anno, quindi il nome dell’arena, la capienza dell’arena (che a volte varia a seconda del tipo di allestimento, di solito il pattinaggio ha una capienza bassa perché le piste occupano tanto spazio e non è possibile aggiungere i posti mobili), il numero ufficiale di spettatori che hanno assistito allo show, il numero di show che si è svolto in quella città, il numero totale di spettatori per ciascuno show in ciascuna città, e la percentuale di spettatori rispetto alla capienza massima dell’arena. Per fare il calcolo e ottenere il numero di quest’ultima colonna, quando nella terza colonna ho indicato più di un numero, ho usato come capienza massima dell’arena il numero che ho sottolineato. Questo significa che se il sito dell’arena ha indicato due capienze massime differenti, una legata a una pista di ghiaccio e l’altra no, ho usato quella legata alla pista di ghiaccio (Flat Hachinohe e Saga Arena). In caso contrario ho usato il numero più alto considerando solo i posti a sedere, non i posti in piedi o quelli aggiunti nel “campo di gioco” (Pia Arena, Tokyo Dome e Saitama Super Arena).

Hanyu ha sfruttato fra il 69,60% e il 100% dei posti a sua disposizione. Senza numeri ufficiali, per Echoes of Life a Hiroshima possiamo solo fare ipotesi. Quanti spettatori erano presenti? A sinistra vediamo la mappa ufficiale dell’arena, a destra la mappa semplificata presente sul sito ufficiale dello show.

Ufficialmente i posti a sedere sono 4.750. Hanyu ha sfruttato i due lati lunghi e parte di uno dei lati corti. Possiamo ipotizzare che siano il 65% dei posti disponibili, se non di più. Questo significa 3.087 spettatori al giorno. Ai quali vanno aggiunti gli spettatori presenti nei settori S e A. Di solito Hanyu non aggiunge posti in quest’area, a Hiroshima lo ha fatto, e sono diverse file di poltroncine. Probabilmente in ciascuno di quei due giorni nell’arena di Hiroshima sono entrate circa 4.000 persone.

Stars on Ice e Fantasy on Ice sono show indipendenti da Hanyu. Hanyu ha attirato spettatori, ma il cast comprendeva numerosi altri pattinatori importanti e gli show, magari in forma ridotta, continuano a svolgersi anche ora. Challenge si è svolto senza spettatori, se eccettuiamo i bambini che hanno partecipato alla lezione di pattinaggio tenuta il giorno prima da Hanyu e da Satoko Miyahara, e uno dei loro genitori. I solo show di Hanyu, 23 spettacoli nell’arco di quattro stagioni, hanno attirato circa 205.000 spettatori. Se aggiungiamo Notte stellata, il numero sale a 279.550. Con The First Skate, il totale (approssimativo) è 282.928, visto che la Xebio arena che ha accolto 3.378 spettatori, un numero superiore rispetto ai 2.150 normalmente possibili quando viene adoperata la pista di pattinaggio perché sono stati aggiunti posti mobili riducendo le dimensioni della pista e sono stati venduti biglietti per posti in piedi.

L’impatto economico delle prestazioni di Hanyu è enorme. Secondo l’Università di Yamaguchi, il primo anno da professionista di Hanyu ha avuto sul Giappone un impatto economico di 17.623 miliardi di yen, con un aumento di 9.405 miliardi di yen del PIL. I due show da lui tenuti a Saga nel gennaio del 2024 hanno avuto sull’economia locale un impatto di 480 milioni di yen. Nonostante i costi elevatissimi, Hanyu sta ottenendo risultati straordinari facendo muovere tantissime persone, anche da fuori del Giappone, e portando enormi benefici all’economia delle località in cui si reca. E anche se ancora non conosciamo i dettagli, con la quarta Ice Story già annunciata sappiamo che questi numeri sono destinati a salire.

English / Italian

Next month, Yuzuru Hanyu will return to the ice to perform Realive, his fifth solo show. We’ve become accustomed to saying it: Hanyu will perform in a solo show. But how revolutionary was this concept in 2022? If a free program—four and a half minutes until the PyeongChang season, four minutes in subsequent competitive seasons—was already draining him of energy, how would Hanyu skate an entire show? Would he change costumes? How would he connect the programs? Would he be able to hold the spectators’ attention for such a long time? There were many doubts, but then we saw the show, and all doubts melted away.

Let’s see what Hanyu’s journey has been in solo shows.

Il prossimo mese Yuzuru Hanyu tornerà sul ghiaccio per interpretare Realive, il suo quinto solo show. Ormai ci siamo abituati a dirlo, Hanyu farà un solo show. Ma quanto era rivoluzionario questo concetto nel 2022? Se già un programma libero – quattro minuti e mezzo fino alla stagione di PyeongChang, quattro minuti nelle successive stagioni agonistiche – prosciugava tutte le sue energie, come avrebbe fatto Hanyu a pattinare per un intero show? Si sarebbe cambiato? Come avrebbe collegato fra loro i programmi? Sarebbe riuscito a catturare l’attenzione degli spettatori per un tempo così lungo? I dubbi erano tanti, poi abbiamo visto lo show e tutti i dubbi si sono sciolti come neve al sole.

Vediamo qual è stato il percorso di Hanyu nei solo show.

Prologue

Two cities, five shows in total: Pia Arena in Yokohama, November 4 and 5, 2022, and Flat Hachinohe, December 2, 3, and 5, 2022. Tickets were sold via lottery, with the second Yokohama show and the third Hachinohe show broadcast live in Japan on CS Asahi 2; the others were broadcast on a delayed basis. All shows were sold out, with 7,900 spectators per day in Yokohama and 3,000 per day in Hachinohe. A livestream was also organized for these two dates in Japanese movie theaters. There were 81 theaters in November and 77 in December, but during the last Hachinohe show, Hanyu provided two specific numbers: 77 theaters, but a total of 100 screens. The lineup was more or less fixed, meaning that most of the programs were the same across all shows, but the third and fourth programs changed from one show to the next. The third program was chosen by the spectators in the arena from a list of five programs, while the fourth was chosen by Hanyu based on fan comments on his YouTube channel. And, at the final Hachinohe show, Hanyu performed not just one encore, but two, adding From Russia With Love to the set list.

Here are the technical data of the latest Hachinohe show:

Due città, cinque spettacoli in tutto: Pia Arena a Yokohama, 4 e 5 novembre 2022, Flat Hachinohe, 2, 3 e 5 dicembre 2022. Biglietti venduti tramite lotteria, diretta in Giappone su CS Asahi 2 del secondo show di Yokohama e del terzo di Hachinohe, gli altri sono comunque stati trasmessi in differita. Tutti gli show hanno fatto registrare il tutto esaurito, 7.900 spettatori al giorno a Yokohama, 3.000 al giorno a Hachinohe. Per queste due date è stato organizzato anche un livestream nelle sale cinematografiche giapponesi. I cinema sono stati 81 in novembre, 77 in dicembre, ma durante l’ultimo spettacolo di Hachinohe Hanyu ha fornito due numeri precisi: 77 cinema, ma un totale di 100 sale, perché evidentemente alcuni cinema hanno trasmesso lo show in più di una sala. La scaletta era più o meno fissa, nel senso che la maggior parte dei programmi sono stati gli stessi in tutti gli show, ma il terzo e il quarto programma cambiavano da uno spettacolo all’altro. Il terzo programma veniva scelto dagli spettatori presenti nell’arena da una lista di cinque programmi, il quarto veniva deciso da Hanyu sulla base dei commenti che avevano scritto i fan sul suo canale YouTube. E, nell’ultimo show di Hachinohe, Hanyu non ha fatto un solo bis ma due, aggiungendo alla scaletta From Russia With Love.

Questi sono i dati tecnici dell’ultimo show di Hachinohe:

The show features a new program, Itsuka owaru yume (officially translated as A Fleeting Dream, although the correct translation is A Dream That Will End Someday), choreographed by Hanyu. For this program, and for Haru yo, koi, Hanyu collaborated with Mikiko and the Rizomatiks.

Hanyu posted two videos related to the show on his channel. The first one, uploaded before Prologue, contains Change, a gala program of his junior years that he skated again in Prologue, and Dreamy Aspiration, a new program choreographed by Hanyu, aired on the giant screen during Prologue.

Lo show contiene un programma nuovo, Itsuka owaru yume (ufficialmente tradotto come A Fleeting Dream, anche se la traduzione corretta sarebbe A Dream That Will End Someday), coreografato da Hanyu. Per questo programma, e per Haru yo, koi, Hanyu si è avvalso della collaborazione di Mikiko e dei Rizomatiks.

Hanyu ha pubblicato sul suo canale due video legati allo show. Il primo, caricato prima di Prologue, contiene Change, un programma di esibizione che ha iniziato a interpretare quando gareggiava nella categoria juniores, e Dreamy Aspiration, un programma nuovo coreografato dallo stesso Hanyu e trasmesso sul megaschermo durante Prologue.

The second, Sasanqua, is a new program Hanyu uploaded to his channel on Christmas Eve. The music, and some of the images accompanying the program in the video montage, had already been used by Hanyu in Prologue.

Il secondo, Sasanqua, è un programma nuovo caricato da Hanyu sul suo canale la vigilia di Natale. La musica, e alcune delle immagini che nel montaggio del video accompagnano il programma, erano già stati usati da Hanyu in Prologue.

Gift

With Gift, Hanyu created the Ice Story genre. In Prologue, there was a narrative, but it was tied to Hanyu’s competitive career. Something that made sense at the time, that was wonderful, but that couldn’t be retold in that way without becoming repetitive. Gift still follows Hanyu’s career but does so differently, addressing the dreams and aspirations of one person, of all people, and how there are difficult moments, setbacks, but also how it’s possible to move forward. Hanyu’s story is universalized; it’s the story of all of us. The narrative level grows, and so does the way the show is constructed. Directed by Mikiko, with live musicians—the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra and a modern band led by Satoshi Takebe—a dance troupe, and a host of special effects. At the Tokyo Dome on February 26, 2023, in front of 35,000 spectators, obviously sold out, with live viewing in 84 theaters in Japan and 12 in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea, and a delayed broadcast the following day in 78 theaters in Japan. The show was broadcast live in Japan on Disney+ and worldwide on Globe Coding with subtitles in several languages. After, Gift would have been added to the Disney+ catalog, and is still available outside of Europe. And with the arena and everything related to the show being larger than Prologue, the set list has also become more demanding, in a show that is composed of two parts and encores.

Con Gift Hanyu ha creato il genere dell’Ice Story. In Prologue c’era una narrazione, ma era una narrazione legata alla carriera agonistica di Hanyu. Qualcosa che aveva senso in quel momento, che era meravigliosa, ma che non poteva essere riproposta a quel modo senza diventare ripetitiva. Gift segue ancora la carriera di Hanyu ma la fa in modo diverso, parlando dei sogni e delle aspirazioni di una persona, di tutte le persone, e di come ci siano momenti difficili, battute d’arresto, ma anche di come sia possibile andare avanti. La storia di Hanyu viene universalizzata, è la storia di tutti noi. Il livello narrativo cresce, e cresce anche il modo in cui è costruito lo spettacolo. La regia di Mikiko, musicisti che suonano dal vivo – la Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra e una band moderna guidata da Satoshi Takebe – un corpo di ballo e una serie di effetti speciali. Al Tokyo Dome, il 26 febbraio 2023, davanti a 35.000 spettatori che assistono dal vivo, ovviamente un altro tutto esaurito, con il liveviewing in diretta in 84 sale in Giappone e 12 fra Hong Kong, Taiwan e Corea del Sud e in differita il giorno dopo in 78 sale in Giappone, la diretta televisiva in Giappone su Disney+ e nel resto del mondo su Globe Coding con sottotitoli in diverse lingue. In seguito Gift sarebbe entrato nel catalogo di Disney+, e al di fuori dell’Europa è ancora disponibile. E con un’arena e tutto ciò che riguarda lo show realizzato più in grande rispetto a Prologue, anche la scaletta è diventata più impegnativa, in uno spettacolo che è composto da due tempi e dai bis.

There are two new programs: One Summer’s Day, choreographed by David Wilson, and Ashura-chan, choreographed by Hanyu. Hanyu also uploaded two videos to his channel for Gift. The first, The Final Time Traveler, is a performance program Hanyu began performing in 2014, which he skated at Ice Rink Sendai for this occasion.

I programmi nuovi sono due: One Summer’s Day, coreografato da David Wilson, e Ashura-chan, coreografato da Hanyu. Anche per Gift Hanyu ha caricato sul suo canale due video. Il primo, The Final Time Traveler, è un programma di esibizione che Hanyu ha iniziato a interpretare nel 2014, e che per l’occasione ha reinterpetato all’Ice Rink di Sendai.

The second, Boku no Koto (About Me), is a new program created by Hanyu and used as the closing credits for Gift, before the encores that begin with Haru yo, koi. The membership section of Hanyu’s channel also features an unedited version of the program, which shows Hanyu having completed the layout, which includes five quads, two triple axels, and three more triples performing continuously, without any interruptions.

Il secondo, Boku no koto (About Me), è un programma nuovo ideato da Hanyu e usato come titoli di coda di Gift, prima di quei bis che iniziano con Haru yo, koi. Nella sezione per abbonati del canale di Hanyu esiste anche una versione non editata del programma, in cui si vede che Hanyu ha completato il layout, che comprende cinque quadrupli, due tripli axel e altri tre tripli eseguendolo in modo continuativo, senza nessuna interruzione.

Re_Pray

With Gift, Hanyu created the Ice Story. He demonstrated all the grandeur a solo show can have. But the story was still tied to his personal experience. With Re_Pray, Hanyu demonstrated storytelling skills that were completely unexpected for someone who became famous as an athlete. We knew his intelligence, his ability to analyze things; we’d seen it in countless interviews, or in his thesis. But creating a story from scratch is a whole different story. Of course, Mikiko is still at his side, with a team of creatives who helped him develop his idea to the fullest. But the idea is his, as is the performance on the ice.

This time it’s a tour; it was supposed to be three cities, two shows per city, but it has become four cities, eight shows in total. Saitama on November 4th and 5th, 2023, with 14,00 viewers per day. Saga on January 12 and 14, 2024, with 5,500 viewers per day. Yokohama on February 17 and 19, 2024, with 7,000 viewers per day. Miyagi on April 7 and 9, 2024, with 5,800 viewers per day. Each show was sold out by lottery, with live broadcasts on CS Asahi 2 on the first day in Saitama and on the second day in the other cities, and international live broadcasts on Beyond Live on the same days, with subtitles in several languages. Asahi subsequently broadcast the other shows on a delayed basis. On the days of the live broadcasts, live viewing in theaters was also organized: 113 theaters in Japan for the Saitama show (plus 12 in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea), 64 for Saga (plus 8 in Hong Kong and Taiwan), 75 for Yokohama, and 71 for Miyagi. The set list is almost identical. The only difference is related to the third program, Hope and Legacy on the first day of each city, Ashura-chan on the second, for reasons related to the show’s plot. These are the data from Miyagi’s first day (remember that Ashura-chan, while difficult, does not contain any jumps or spins).

Con Gift Hanyu ha creato l’Ice Story. Ha mostrato tutta la grandiosità che può avere un solo show. La storia però era ancora legata alla sua vicenda personale. Con Re_Pray Hanyu ha mostrato doti di narratore assolutamente insospettabili per una persona diventata famosa come atleta. Conoscevamo la sua intelligenza, la sua capacità di analizzare le cose, l’avevamo vista nelle numerosissime interviste, o nella tesi di laurea. Ma ideare dal nulla una storia è tutta un’altra cosa. Certo, al suo fianco c’è ancora Mikiko, con un team di creativi che lo ha aiutato a sviluppare al meglio la sua idea. Ma l’idea è sua, così come lo è la prestazione sul ghiaccio.

Stavolta si tratta di un tour, sarebbero dovute essere tre città, due show per ogni città, sono diventate quattro città, otto show in tutto. Saitama il 4 e il 5 novembre 2023, 14.00 spettatori al giorno. Saga il 12 e il 14 gennaio 2024, 5.500 spettatori al giorno. Yokohama il 17 e il 19 febbraio 2024, 7.000 spettatori al giorno. Miyagi il 7 e il 9 aprile 2024, 5.800 spettatori al giorno. Ogni volta biglietti venduti tramite lotteria e tutto esaurito, dirette su CS Asahi 2 il primo giorno a Saitama, il secondo giorno nelle altre città, e diretta internazionale gli stessi giorni su Beyond Live, con sottotitoli in diverse lingue. In seguito Asahi ha trasmesso gli altri spettacoli in differita. Nei giorni delle dirette è stato organizzato anche il live viewing cinematografico, 113 sale in Giappone per lo show di Saitama (più 12 fra Hong Kong Taiwan e Corea del Sud), 64 per Saga (più 8 fra Hong Kong e Taiwan), 75 per Yokohama e 71 per Miyagi. La scaletta è quasi identica. L’unica differenza è legata al terzo programma, Hope and Legacy nel primo giorno di ogni città, Ashura-chan nel secondo, per motivi legati alla trama dello spettacolo. Questi sono i dati del primo giorno di Miyagi (ricordo che Ashura-chan, per quanto difficile, non contiene salti né trottole).

There are three new programs this time: Gate of Living, choreographed by Mikiko, and Megalovania and The Darkness of Eternity, choreographed by Hanyu, and the warm-up is also partially choreographed. Hanyu has posted four videos related to the show on his channel. The first, Goliath, expresses the spirit that permeates the first half, that of the player fighting with all their might to win the game.

I programmi nuovi stavolta sono tre: Gate of Living, coreografato da Mikiko, e Megalovania e The Darkness of Eternity, coreografati da Hanyu, e anche il warm up è in parte coreografato. Hanyu ha pubblicato sul suo canale quattro video legati allo show. Il primo, Goliath, esprime lo spirito che permea la prima metà, quella del giocatore che combatte con tutte le sue forze per vincere la partita.

The second, Aqua’s Journey, is tied to the atmosphere of the second half of the show.

Il secondo, Aqua’s Journey, è legato alle atmosfere della seconda metà dello show.

The third, Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals (in Japan, the name of the game whose music Hanyu used is Estpolis Denki II), was created as the tour’s closing credits and edited by Geek Pictures. After the tour, Hanyu uploaded a slightly different video to his channel, which included some clips from videos shot during the tour.

Il terzo, Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals (in Giappone il nome del gioco di cui Hanyu ha usato la musica è Estpolis Denki II), è stato realizzato come titoli di coda del tour ed è stato montato da Geek Pictures. Finito il tour Hanyu ha caricato sul suo canale un video lievemente diverso, nel quale sono stati aggiunti alcuni spezzoni dei filmati realizzati durante il tour.

The fourth, Gate of Living, features the first of Hanyu’s new programs on tour, and was uploaded to Hanyu’s channel to coincide with the release of the DVD and Blu-ray of the show (Prologue and Gift are also available for purchase on DVD and Blu-ray).

Il quarto, Gate of Living, ripropone il primo dei nuovi programmi interpretati da Hanyu nel tour, ed è stato caricato sul canale di Hanyu in corrispondenza della pubblicazione del DVD e del Blu ray dello spettacolo (anche nel caso di Prologue e Gift è possibile acquistare DVD e Blu ray degli spettacoli).

Echoes of Life

With Re_Pray, it became clear that, as long as he could come up with a new story and had the desire to skate, Hanyu could continue with solo shows. The next event was Echoes of Life, a tour consisting of seven dates in three different cities: Saitama on December 7, 9, and 11, 2024; Hiroshima on January 3 and 5, 2025; and Chiba on February 7 and 9, 2025. Tickets were still sold by lottery, still sold out, 14,000 spectators per day in Saitama, 8,300 per day in Chiba; I’ve never found official data for Hiroshima. I’m afraid that if I summarized the liveviewing data in a text, it would become unclear. It’s better to use a table, dedicated to all the data from all the solo shows.

Edit: After I wrote this post, the number of theaters showing on Realive has increased. It’s now 81 theaters in Japan, and 15 theaters (actually 15 screens in 14 theaters) for the delayed screening in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Macau.

Con Re_Pray è diventato evidente che, fino a quando fosse riuscito a ideare un storia nuova e avesse avuto voglia di pattinare, Hanyu poteva andare avanti con i solo show. Il nuovo appuntamento è stato Echoes of Life, tour composto da sette date in tre città diverse: Saitama il 7, 9 e 11 dicembre 2024, Hiroshima il 3 e in 5 gennaio 2025, Chiba il 7 e il 9 febbraio 2025. Ancora biglietti venduti tramite lotteria, ancora tutto esaurito, 14.000 spettatori al giorno a Saitama, 8.300 al giorno a Chiba, non ho mai trovato dati ufficiali per Hiroshima. Temo che se riassumessi i dati del liveviewing in un testo, diventerebbe poco chiaro. Meglio usare una tabella, dedicata a tutti i dati di tutti i solo show.

Edit: Dopo che ho scritto questo post, il numero dei cinema che ha trasmesso a Realive è aumentato. Sono diventati 81 cinema in Giappone, 15 cinema (per la verità 15 sale in 14 cinema) per la differita fra Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore e Macau.

The first two Saitama shows, and the second Hiroshima and Chiba show, were broadcast live in Japan on CS Asahi 2; the others were broadcast on a delayed basis. The first Saitama show and the second Hiroshima and Chiba show were broadcast live worldwide on Beyond Live. The number of quads decreased, but the skating time increased as Hanyu increasingly focused on skating, interpretation, and the demands of the story. In my tables, I only list the step sequences and choreographic sequences present in the programs Hanyu performed in competition, because they are elements constructed following the requirements of the rules. However, all his programs are a continuous succession of turns, steps, moves in the field, and choreographic jumps, even if Hanyu doesn’t bother to count how many difficult turns he takes on each foot and how he combines them. And obviously, he doesn’t forget the athletic aspect, as the penultimate program of the first half was the short program with which Hanyu won his second Olympic gold medal in 2018. It followed a 10-minute program consisting of a succession of five different pieces of music, each with its own distinct interpretation. There are seven new programs: First Pulse, First Echo and Circulation, Utai IV: Reawakening (choreographed by Mikiko), Mass Destruction: Reload, Piano Collection (a sequence of five classical pieces choreographed by Jeffery Buttle), Eclipse/Blue, Gate of Steiner – Aestethics on Ice, and Hymn of the Soul. The technical elements are as follows:

I primi due show di Saitama, e il secondo di Hiroshima e Chiba, sono stati trasmessi in diretta in Giappone su CS Asahi 2, gli altri sono stati trasmessi in differita. Il primo show di Saitama e il secondo di Hiroshima e Chiba sono stati trasmessi in diretta mondiale su Beyond Live. I quadrupli diminuiscono, ma il tempo di pattinata diventa più lungo perché Hanyu dona sempre più spazio al pattinaggio, all’interpretazione, alle necessità della storia. Nelle mie tabelle indico solo le sequenze di passi e le sequenze coreografiche presenti nei programmi che Hanyu ha eseguito in gara, perché sono elementi costruiti seguendo le richieste del regolamento, ma tutti i suoi programmi sono una successione continua di passi, moves in the field e salti coreografici, anche se Hanyu non si preoccupa di contare quanti passi difficili fa su ciascun piede e come li combina insieme. E ovviamente non dimentica l’aspetto atletico, visto che il penultimo programma del primo tempo è il programma corto con cui nel 2018 Hanyu ha vinto il secondo oro olimpico. Eseguito dopo un programma di 10 minuti composto dalla successione di cinque brani musicali diversi, ciascuno con la propria diversa interpretazione. I programmi nuovi sono sette: First Pulse, First Echo and Circulation, Utai IV: Reawakening (coreografato da Mikiko), Mass Destruction: Reload, Piano Collection (successione di cinque brani di musica classica coreografato da Jeffery Buttle), Eclipse/Blue, Gate of Steiner – Aestethics on Ice e Hymn of the Soul. Questi gli elementi tecnici:

The second encore is different: on the first day in each city (and on the third in Saitama), Hanyu skates Ashura-chan, while on the second day in each city he skates Megalovania, excluding the initial part, where in Re_Pray he skated without any musical accompaniment. Hanyu posted a video dedicated to Echoes of Life on his official X account, with the music of First Pulse and excerpts from all the programs:

Il secondo bis cambia: nella prima giornata in ogni città (e nella terza a Saitama) Hanyu pattina Ashura-chan, nella seconda in ogni città pattina Megalovania, esclusa la parte iniziale, quella in cui in Re_Pray pattinava senza alcun accompagnamento musicale. Hanyu ha pubblicato sul suo account ufficiale su X un video dedicato a Echoes of Life, con la musica di First Pulse e frammenti di tutti i programmi:

プロ転向から3年を迎えました！
たくさんの応援が心強く背中を押してくださっています。
いつも、今までも、ありがとうございます！
これからも進み続けます🪽⛸️🧊 pic.twitter.com/WtMZTbn3hg

— 羽生結弦official_Staff 公式 (@YUZURUofficial_) July 18, 2025

Hanyu uploaded Mass Destruction: Reload to his YouTube channel:

Sul canale YouTube Hanyu ha caricato Mass Destruction: Reload:

Hanyu uploaded Danny Boy too to his official YouTube channel, both in its original version and a shortened version. Danny Boy was choreographed by David Wilson for the 2024 edition of Notte stellata, after Gen Hoshino told Hanyu he’d love to see him skate to this music. The videos he uploaded to his channel have nothing to do with Echoes of Life, even though Hanyu skated Danny Boy in Echoes of Life. Instead, they were made as a tribute to Gen Hoshino. The full version of the program is here:

Sul canale YouTube ufficiale Hanyu ha caricato anche Danny Boy, nella sua versione originale e in una versione ridotta. Danny Boy è stato coreografato da David Wilson per l’edizione 2024 di Notte stellata, dopo che Gen Hoshino aveva detto a Hanyu che gli sarebbe piaciuto vederlo pattinare su questa musica. I video da lui caricati sul suo canale non hanno nulla a che vedere con Echoes of Life, anche se Hanyu ha pattinato Danny Boy in Echoes of Life. Sono invece stati realizzati in omaggio a Gen Hoshino. La versione completa del programma è questa:

Realive

This is Hanyu’s fifth solo show. We have no idea what Hanyu will do. On his official website, Hanyu explained that he wants to breathe new life into the programs he’s created so far. We’ll find out exactly what Hanyu will do on April 11 and 12, 2026, during the only two dates of a show that will take place in Rifu, Miyagi. The first show will be broadcast live in Japan by CS Asahi, the second live in Japan by Telasa and internationally by Beyond Live, with subtitles in various languages. There will also be a liveviewing, organized for the second date. It will be shown in 81 theaters in Japan, and a delayed viewing in 63 theaters in Japan and another 15 theaters in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Macau.

After a period away from the arenas, Hanyu returned to perform in March at Notte stellata, offering an intense performance. Soon we will be able to witness Realive, a show whose official title does not include the words Ice Story, with an ordinal number, but An Ice Story Project. It is something different from the past, and a bridge to the future.

È il quinto solo show di Hanyu. Non abbiamo idea di ciò che Hanyu farà. Nel sito ufficiale Hanyu ha spiegato di voler donare nuova vita ai programmi che ha creato fino a questo momento. Cosa esattamente farà Hanyu lo scopriremo l’11 e il 12 aprile 2026, nelle uniche due date di uno spettacolo che si svolgerà a Rifu, Miyagi. Il primo show sarà trasmesso in diretta in Giappone da CS Asahi, il secondo in diretta in Giappone da Telasa e nel resto del mondo da Beyond Live, con sottotitoli in varie lingue. Anche in questo caso ci sarà un liveviweing, organizzato per la seconda data. 81 cinema in Giappone, e un delayed viewing in 63 sale in Giappone e in altre 15 fra Taiwan, Hong Kong. Singapore e Macau.

Dopo un periodo lontano dalle arene, Hanyu è tornato a esibirsi in marzo in Notte stellata, proponendo prestazioni intensissime. A breve potremo assistere a Realive, uno show il cui titolo ufficiale non comprende la dicitura Ice Story, con un numero ordinale, ma la dicitura An Ice Story Project. È qualcosa di diverso dal passato, e un ponte verso il futuro.

Over the past few days, I’ve seen the news that Ilia Malinin won Skate Canada with a record 76.60 points over second-place finisher Alexander Selevko. Malinin deserves credit for his ability to land his quads, performing a remarkable number of them, of all types (he’s currently the only skater to have landed six different quads in competition), and almost always managing to land on one foot.

That said, how significant is his accomplishment?

The numbers alone say a lot, but they only show a partial picture. To get a clearer picture, we need to broaden our perspective a bit. To do so, I used https://skatingscores.com/, starting with a table published by SkatingScores on his profile X, but then verifying a series of details. Any comments on possible overscoring—and there have been some, but this isn’t the place to discuss them, otherwise it would lead to a lengthy discussion—remain outside of this post. The post is long, but most of it consists of tables that anyone can easily ignore.

The SkatingScores table includes 25 competitions. I focused on the 19 men’s events. I’ll return to Skate Canada 2025, and another competition, later. I ran the same type of check on all the events, so if you’re not interested in looking at all the numbers, you can read what type of check I ran on the first event, and then scroll down until you find the “Skate Canada 2025” heading.

The first event on the list, aside from Skate Canada 2025, is the 2016 European Championships. Javier Fernandez had just won his second consecutive silver medal at the Grand Prix Final. Since that event, Fernandez had modified both layouts: he added a second quad in the short program, and replaced a triple toe loop with a triple axel in the free skate, raising both his base scores and improving his overall score by 9.82 points. At that European Championship Fernandez wasn’t perfect; he fell once in the free skate and made a few other mistakes. Despite this, he dominated. Why? Because at that moment, his strongest rivals weren’t European, but Asian and North American skaters, and all the Europeans present made mistakes.

The silver medalist, Alexei Bychenko, performed the fourth short program and the fourth free skate. He failed to win a small medal for either program, yet he still won the silver medal overall because the others failed in at least one of the two programs.

In fact, Fernandez did set what for many years was the largest lead over the runner-up in a major competition. He did so by improving his personal best by 9.82 points, but without achieving the highest score in history, given that the world record set by Yuzuru Hanyu the month before is higher than Fernandez’s score of 27.66 points. This means that his score had little impact on the figure skating world because, despite its high level, it didn’t show anything new.

Not only that. At the time of that European Championships, aside from Hanyu, 31 other skaters had personal bests higher than Bychenko’s score on that occasion. The advantage of the then-best Fernandez over the best skater (excluding Hanyu) was 7.50 points, not a small difference, but not a huge one either. Fernandez was good, but the huge gap was also due to the absence of strong rivals and the less-than-stellar performances of those who were present.

Skater	Event	Tot
Hanyu	GPF 15	330.43
Fernandez	EC 16	302.77
Chan	IdF 13	295.27
Fernandez	GPF 15	292.95
Ten	4CC 2015	289.46
Machida	WC 14	282.26
Uno	GPF 15	276,79
Takahashi	WTT 12	276.72
Jin	NHK 15	266.43
Brown	WTT 15	263.17
Plushenko	EC 12	261.23
Farris	4CC 15	260.01
Kozuka	WC 11	258.41
Lysacek	OG 10	257.67
Murakami	4CC 15	256.47
Oda	GPF 13	255.96
Mura	SC 14	255.81
Voronov	EC 14	252.55
Reynolds	4CC 13	250.55
Amodio	EC 13	250.53
Pitkeev	CoR 15	250.47
Miner	CoR 15	248.92
Rippon	CoR 15	248.63
Kolyada	CoR 15	247.97
Dmitriev	Ice Ch. 15	247.57
Kovtun	WC 14	247.37
Lambiel	OG 10	246.72
Abbott	WC 14	246.35
Gachinski	EC 12	246.27
Yan	OG 14	246.20
Buttle	WC 08	245.17
Joubert	WC 12	244.58
Brezina	EC 13	243.52
Nguyen	WC 15	242.59
Bychenko	EC 16	242.56

In italics I highlighted Fernandez’s previous personal best. In the other tables I do the same for the personal best of the winner of the silver if his score is not a personal best. In italics and blue I highlighted the scores of the competition I’m talking about.

From here on out, and up until the headline “Skate Canada 2025,” I’ll look at all the scores, just as I did with the 2016 European Championships.

The next highest win margin is the one Shoma Uno won the 2017 Lombardia Trophy with. Uno also set a personal best, improving by just 0.53 points and falling short of Hanyu’s world record of 10.59 points. Uno’s score is a very high one, but it wasn’t particularly surprising. As for Jason Brown, who finished second, he was 13.79 points below his personal best. Even without Hanyu, 16 skaters (including Brown) achieved a higher score than Brown that day.

Skater	Event	Tot
Hanyu	GPF 15	330.43
Uno	Lomb. 17	319.84
Uno	WC 17	319.31
Chen	4CC 17	307.46
Fernandez	WC 16	303.58
Chan	IdF 13	295.27
Ten	4CC 15	289.46
Machida	WC 14	282.26
Kolyada	GPF 17	282.00
Takahashi	WTT 12	276.72
Zhou	OG 18	276.69
Aliev	EC 18	274.06
Brown	WTT 17	273.67
Yan	4CC 16	271.55
Mura	4CC 16	268.43
Rippon	IdF 16	267.53
Kovtun	EC 17	266.80
Aaron	US Cl. 17	261.56
Plushenko	EC 12	261.23
Brown	Lomb. 17	259.88

In 2019, Hanyu won Skate Canada with a 59.82-point lead over Nam Nguyen. Recall that until the 2017-18 season, the scoring system used was +3/-3, but since the 2018-19 season, the scoring system has been +5/-5, so the world record and personal best are different in the two periods.

Compared to Fernandez and especially Uno, Hanyu significantly improved his personal best, a whopping 21.62 points. He still remained 0.38 points below the record set by Nathan Chen a few months earlier. Compared to previous cases, this time, the total score is not far from the maximum. However, one skater had achieved a higher score than Hanyu on that occasion, and nine skaters had achieved a higher score than Nguyen, who also achieved his personal best.

Skater	Event	Tot
Chen	WC 19	323.42
Hanyu	SC 19	322.59
Hanyu	WC 19	300.97
Zhou	WTT 19	299.01
Uno	4CC 19	289.12
Brown	Gold. Sp. 18	263.42
Kolyada	Nep. 18	274.37
Jin	4CC 19	273.51
Fernandez	EC 19	271.59
Samarin	EC 19	269.84
Messing	4CC 19	267.61
Cha	GPF 18	263.49
Nguyen	SC 19	262.77

In the next competition, Hanyu almost repeated his feat. His lead over the second-place finisher was slightly smaller, 55.03 points more than Kevin Aymoz, but this time he didn’t set a new personal best. And 16 skaters—aside from Chen and Hanyu himself—had a higher personal best than Aymoz.

Skater	Event	Tot
Chen	WC 19	323.42
Hanyu	SC 19	322.59
Hanyu	NHK 19	305.05
Zhou	WTT 19	299.01
Uno	4CC 19	289.12
Brown	Gold. Sp. 18	263.42
Kolyada	Nep. 18	274.37
Jin	4CC 19	273.51
Fernandez	EC 19	271.59
Samarin	EC 19	269.84
Messing	4CC 19	267.61
Cha	GPF 18	263.49
Nguyen	SC 19	262.77
Rizzo	WTT 19	260.53
Tanaka	WTT 19	258.84
Brezina	GP FIN 18	257.98
Voronov	NHK 18	254.28
Ignatov	CoR 19	252.87
Samsonov	JGP POL 19	250.51
Aymoz	NHK 19	250.02

Chen won the 2018 World Championships by a margin of 47.63 points over Uno. He set a personal best, but was 8.97 points shy of the world record held by Hanyu, who was absent. Uno, who was injured, was also 47.63 points shy of his personal best. Eight other skaters had previously achieved a higher score than Uno (plus Uno himself).

Skater	Event	Tot
Hanyu	GPF 15	330.43
Chen	WC 18	321.40
Uno	Lomb. 17	319.84
Chen	4CC 17	307.46
Fernandez	WC 16	303.58
Chan	IdF 13	295.27
Ten	4CC 15	289.46
Machida	WC 14	282.26
Kolyada	GPF 17	282.00
Takahashi	WTT 12	276.72
Zhou	OG 18	276.69
Aliev	EC 18	274.06
Uno	WC 18	273.77

Again Chen, but under the new scoring system, won Skate Canada in 2021 with a 47.63-point lead over Brown. He didn’t improve his personal best; that score wasn’t that high for him, and Hanyu also achieved a higher score than Chen on that occasion. Not that Brown improved his personal best—in fact, he was far from his best performance—but 13 other skaters achieved higher scores than Brown that day.

A note on the asterisks I placed next to Mikhail Kolyada and Boyang Jin’s names: the former achieved a higher score at the 2020 Rostelecom Cup, the latter at the Cup of China that same year. That year, however, the two competitions were held as local events only, with only Russian judges in the former and only Chinese judges in the latter. The ISU does not recognize scores achieved in these competitions as personal bests, and I, here as on other occasions, ignored them.

Skater	Event	Tot
Chen	GPF 19	335.30
Hanyu	SC 19	322.59
Chen	SC 21	307.18
Zhou	WTT 19	299.01
Kagiyama	WC 21	291.77
Uno	4CC 19	289.12
Aymoz	GPF 19	275.63
Brown	4CC 20	274.82
Kolyada*	Nep. 18	274.37
Jin*	4CC 19	273.51
Aliev	EC 20	272.89
Fernandez	EC 19	271.59
Messing	WC 21	270.26
Samarin	EC 19	269.84
Nguyen	SC 19	262.77
Cha	4CC 20	265.43
Rizzo	WTT 19	260.53
Brown	SC 21	259.55

Malinin had previously won Skate Canada by a huge margin. In 2023, he had 44.33 points separating him from Aymoz. A huge gap, in a competition where both were far from their personal bests. Malinin was 6.76 points below his personal best, while Aymoz was a whopping 45.60 points below his personal best. In essence, Aymoz’s personal best was higher than Malinin’s winning score. Malinin’s victory with this advantage was not only due to his own merit, but also to the demerits of those competing against him. Nine skaters—including Malinin and Aymoz—had a personal best score higher than Malinin’s, while 43 others had a score higher than Aymoz’s.

Skater	Event	Tot
Chen	GPF 19	335.30
Hanyu	SC 19	322.59
Uno	WC 22	312.48
Kagiyama	OG 22	310.05
Zhou	WTT 19	299.01
Cha	WC 23	296.03
Malinin	WC 22	288.44
Kondratiuk	EC 22	286.56
Aymoz	WC 23	282.95
Malinin	Aut. Cl. 23	281.68
Miura	4CC 23	281.53
Brown	OG 22	281.24
Grassl	OG 22	278.07
Messing	4CC 23	275.57
Rizzo	WTT 23	275.36
Kolyada*	Nep. 18	274.37
Yamamoto	GPF 22	274.35
Semenenko	OG 22	274.13
Jin*	4CC 19	273.51
Tomono	WC 23	273.41
Aliev	EC 20	272.89
Vasiljevs	EC 22	272.08
Kvitelashvili*	WC 22	272.03
Pulkinen	WC 22	271.69
Fernandez	EC 19	271.59
Samarin	EC 19	269.84
Siao Him Fa	IdF 22	268.48
Mozalev*	EC 22	265.69
Sato	IdF 21	264.99
Gumennik*	Ten 21	263.14
Nguyen	SC 19	262.77
Tanaka	WTT 19	258.84
Brezina	GP FIN 18	257.98
Britschgi	WC 23	257.34
Ignatov*	NHK 21	257.20
Voronov	NHK 18	254.28
Sadovsky	CoR 21	253.80
Litvintsev	WC 23	251.76
Ma	Gold. Sp. 21	250.97
Samsonov	JGP POL 19	250.51
Yan*	CoC 19	249.45
Frangipani	Nep. 22	244.57
Lazukin	WTT 19	249.33
Kovtun	Tall. 18	247.55
Shimada	GP GB 22	247.17
Danielian	EC 20	246.74
Tsuboi	GP FIN 22	244.90
Kerry	OG 22	244.80
Egadze	Lomb. 23	243.35
Lee S.Y	IdF 23	242.62
Hiwatashi*	4CC 20	240.78
Miyake	4CC 22	240.02
Selevko A.	Gold. Sp. 21	238.42
Aymoz	Aut. Cl. 23	237.35

Another huge gap, 44.00 points, was the one Chen beat Brown by at Skate America 2019. Both had higher personal bests, another skater, Hanyu, had a higher personal best than Chen’s score that day, while 11 others had higher personal bests than Brown’s. As with all the other competitions listed here, the huge gap is there, but it’s the result of circumstance.

Skater	Event	Tot
Chen	WC 19	323.42
Hanyu	WC 19	300.97
Chen	SA 19	299.09
Zhou	WTT 19	299.01
Uno	4CC 19	289.12
Brown	Gold. Sp. 18	263.42
Kolyada	Nep. 18	274.37
Jin	4CC 19	273.51
Fernandez	EC 19	271.59
Samarin	EC 19	269.84
Messing	4CC 19	267.61
Cha	GPF 18	263.49
Rizzo	WTT 19	260.53
Tanaka	WTT 19	258.84
Brezina	GP FIN 18	257.98
Brown	SA 19	255.09

There’s a lot to say about the 2019 Grand Prix Final scores, but let’s leave it at that. Chen set what is still the world record, improving his previous record by 11.88 points. His lead over Hanyu was 43.87 points, partly because Hanyu made some mistakes. In fact, if we look at Hanyu’s personal best, the difference is 12.71 points, large but not all that impressive. There’s also a third skater, Vincent Zhou, who had a higher personal best score than the score obtained by Hanyu that day.

Skater	Event	Tot
Chen	GPF 19	335.30
Chen	WC 19	323.42
Hanyu	SC 19	322.59
Zhou	WTT 19	299.01
Hanyu	GPF 19	291.43

For the 2006 Rostelecom Cup, the check was a bit more elaborate, because on two occasions the World Championships’ total scores were based on the performance of a qualifying program too, a program I excluded by recalculating the totals based solely on the short and free programs.

Brian Joubert set a personal best, improving by 1.05 points—a small improvement—beating Johnny Weir by 41.55 points, who, however, remained far from his personal best. Joubert’s score, however, wasn’t a particularly high one, considering Plushenko had set a much higher record a few months earlier. And between Joubert’s winning score and Weir’s second-place finish, there were the personal bests of 20 other skaters.

Skater	Event	Tot
Plushenko	OG 06	258.33
Joubert	CoR 06	237.83
Joubert	WC 06	236.78
Lambiel	WC 06	233.99
Oda	SA 06	231.39
Sandhu	GPF 03	228.29
Buttle	OG 06	227.59
Lysacek	SA 06	221.09
Weir	NHK 04	220.25
Takahashi	SA 05	218.54
Preaubert	SA 06	212.67
Li	CoR 03	210.94
Goebel	NHK 04	208.28
Honda	SC 03	207.78
Weiss	SA 03	206.94
Savoie	OG 06	206.67
Dambier	CoR 03	201.55
Griazev	CoC 06	200.60
Lindemann	EC 05	200.54
Ferreira	SC 06	200.46
van der Perren	WC 05	200.02
Davydov	CoC 06	199.11
Mabee	4CC 06	198.69
Klimkin	EC 06	197.42
Weir	CoR 06	196.28

In 2018, Chen won Skate America with a 41.06-point lead over Michal Brezina. Chen’s score that day was inevitably a personal best, as it was his first competition under the +5/-5 scoring system. Brezina, on his second competition, improved on his previous score. Seven Challenger Series events had already taken place, but Skate America was the first senior Grand Prix competition. With only a handful of top skaters competing, nine of them had already scored higher than Brezina.

Skater	Event	Tot
Chen	SA 18	280.57
Uno	Lomb. 18	276.20
Kolyada	Nep. 18	274.37
Hanyu	Aut. Cl. 18	263.65
Cha	Aut. Cl. 18	259.78
Messing	Neb. 18	257.16
Jin	Fin 18	252.60
Aliev	Lomb. 18	250.55
Zhou	Fin 18	250.01
Lazukin	Lomb. 18	243.45
Brezina	SA 18	239.81

At Skate Canada in 2024, the gap between Malinin and second-place finisher Shun Sato was also high, 40.66 points. Neither skater set a personal best; in fact, both were far behind. These scores, therefore, aren’t particularly significant, especially considering that five skaters in their careers had set personal bests higher than Malinin’s score that day (six skaters, if we count Malinin himself), and that 34 skaters (35 including Sato) had achieved scores higher than Sato’s score for second place.

Skater	Event	Tot
Chen	GPF 19	335.30
Malinin	WC 24	333.76
Hanyu	SC 19	322.59
Uno	WC 22	312.48
Kagiyama	OG 22	310.05
Siao Him Fa	IdF 23	306.78
Malinin	SC 24	301.82
Zhou	WTT 19	299.01
Cha	WC 23	296.03
Kondratiuk	EC 22	286.56
Sato	Lomb. 24	285.88
Aymoz	WC 23	282.97
Miura	4CC 23	281.53
Brown	OG 22	281.24
Grassl	OG 22	278.07
Messing	4CC 23	275.57
Rizzo	WTT 23	275.36
Kolyada*	Nep. 18	274.37
Yamamoto	GPF 22	274.35
Semenenko	OG 22	274.13
Britschgi	WC 24	274.09
Jin*	4CC 19	273.51
Tomono	WC 23	273.41
Aliev	EC 20	272.89
Vasiljevs	EC 22	272.08
Kvitelashvili*	WC 22	272.03
Pulkinen	WC 22	271.69
Fernandez	EC 19	271.59
Samarin	EC 19	269.84
Mozalev*	EC 22	265.69
Shaidorov	CoC 23	264.46
Gumennik*	Ten 21	263.14
Nguyen	SC 19	262.77
Tanaka	WTT 19	258.84
Brezina	GP FIN 18	257.98
Ignatov*	NHK 21	257.20
Selevko A.	EC 24	256.99
Voronov	NHK 18	254.28
Sadovsky	CoR 21	253.80
Memola	WC 23	253.12
Litvintsev	WC 23	251.76
Frangipani	CoC 23	251.59
Sato	SC 24	251.16

At the 2021 Nebelhorn Trophy, Zhou won by a significant margin over the second-place finisher, 40.45 points. Zhou remained below his personal best, while Adam Siao Him Fa improved on his previous competitions. This does not change the fact that four skaters other than Zhou had a higher personal best than Zhou’s score that day, and that 27 others had higher scores than Siao Him Fa.

Skater	Event	Tot
Chen	GPF 19	335.30
Hanyu	SC 19	322.59
Zhou	WTT 19	299.01
Kagiyama	WC 21	291.77
Uno	4CC 19	289.12
Zhou	Neb. 21	284.23
Aymoz	GPF 29	275.63
Brown	4CC 20	274.82
Kolyada*	Nep. 18	274.37
Jin*	4CC 19	273.51
Aliev	EC 20	272.89
Fernandez	EC 19	271.59
Messing	WC 21	270.26
Samarin	EC 19	269.84
Ngoyen	SC 19	262.77
Cha	4CC 20	265.43
Rizzo	WTT 19	260.53
Tanaka	WTT 19	258.84
Semenenko	WC 21	258.45
Brezina	GP FIN 18	257.98
Sato	JGPF 19	255.11
Voronov	NHK 18	254.28
Tomono	4CC 20	251.05
Samsonov	JGP POL 19	250.51
Yan*	CoC 19	249.45
Lazukin	WTT 19	249.33
Kvitelashvili*	CoR 18	248.58
Grassl	Lomb. 21	247.80
Kovtun	Tall. 18	247.55
Sadovsky	NHL 19	247.50
Danielian	EC 20	246.74
Mozalev	JWC 20	245.09
Pulkinen	SC 19	244.78
Siao Him Fa	Neb. 21	243.78

Malinin had already won a competition by a significant margin this season. At the Internationaux de France, he edged Siao Him Fa by 40.05 points. Neither of them achieved a personal best. Two skaters have a higher personal best than Malinin’s score that day, and the fact that neither of them competes anymore is not important to me. A score has a real impact when it surpasses what has already been achieved in the past; otherwise, it’s simply the best performance of the day. And 10 other skaters had previously achieved a score higher than the one Siao Him Fa achieved that day.

Skater	Event	Tot
Chen	GPF 19	335.30
Malinin	WC 24	333.76
Hanyu	SC 19	322.59
Malinin	IdF 25	321.00
Uno	WC 22	312.48
Kagiyama	OG 22	310.05
Siao Him Fa	IdF 23	306.78
Zhou	WTT 19	299.01
Cha	WC 23	296.03
Shaidorov	WC 25	287.47
Kondratiuk	EC 22	286.56
Sato	Lomb. 24	285.88
Aymoz	WC 23	282.97
Miura	4CC 23	281.53
Brown	OG 22	281.24
Siao Him Fa	IdF 25	280.95

Not long after dominating the 2017 Lombardia Trophy ahead of Brown, Uno dominated Skate Canada, also ahead of Brown. This time, the gap was 39.96 points, in a competition in which neither skater set a personal best. Three skaters, plus Uno himself, had previously scored higher than Uno. Another 13 skaters, plus Brown himself, had previously scored higher than Brown.

Skater	Event	Tot
Hanyu	GPF 15	330.43
Uno	Lomb. 17	319.84
Chen	4CC 17	307.46
Fernandez	WC 16	303.58
Uno	SC 17	301.10
Chan	IdF 13	295.27
Ten	4CC 15	289.46
Machida	WC 14	282.26
Kolyada	GPF 17	282.00
Takahashi	WTT 12	276.72
Zhou	OG 18	276.69
Aliev	EC 18	274.06
Brown	WTT 17	273.67
Yan	4CC 16	271.55
Mura	4CC 16	268.43
Rippon	IdF 16	267.53
Kovtun	EC 17	266.80
Aaron	US Cl. 17	261.56
Plushenko	EC 12	261.23
Brown	SC 17	261.14

Siao Him Fa also won a competition with a significant lead over second-place finisher Lukas Britschgi. At the 2024 Cup of Nice, the difference was 39.16 points. Neither skater set a personal best, and in fact, Britschgi’s personal best is higher than Siao Him Fa’s winning score. Twenty-two skaters (including Britschgi, plus Siao Him Fa) had a higher personal best than Siao Him Fa’s winning score. Another 41 skaters (including some juniors) had a higher personal best than Britschgi’s score. The difference between the two skaters is significant, but it’s the only notable aspect of a competition in which neither skater performed at their best and which doesn’t stand out for its high scores.

Skater	Event	Tot
Chen	GPF 19	335.30
Malinin	WC 24	333.76
Hanyu	SC 19	322.59
Uno	WC 22	312.48
Kagiyama	OG 22	310.05
Siao Him Fa	IdF 23	306.78
Zhou	WTT 19	299.01
Cha	WC 23	296.03
Kondratiuk	EC 22	286.56
Sato	Lomb. 24	285.88
Aymoz	WC 23	282.97
Miura	4CC 23	281.53
Brown	OG 22	281.24
Grassl	OG 22	278.07
Messing	4CC 23	275.57
Rizzo	WTT 23	275.36
Kolyada*	Nep. 18	274.37
Yamamoto	GPF 23	274.35
Semenenko	OG 22	274.13
Britschgi	WC 24	274.09
Jin*	4CC 19	273.51
Tomono	WC 23	273.41
Aliev	EC 20	272.89
Siao Him Fa	Nice 24	272.38
Vasiljevs	EC 22	272.08
Kvitelashvili*	WC 22	272.03
Pulkinen	WC 22	271.69
Fernandez	EC 19	271.59
Samarin	EC 19	269.84
Mozalev*	EC 22	265.69
Shaidorov	CoC 23	264.46
Gumennik*	Ten 21	263.14
Nguyen	SC 19	262.77
Tanaka	WTT 19	258.84
Brezina	GP FIN 18	257.98
Ignatov*	NHK 21	257.20
Selevko A.	EC 24	256.99
Voronov	NHK 18	254.28
Sadovsky	CoR 21	253.80
Memola	WC 23	253.12
Litvintsev	WC 23	251.76
Frangipani	CoC 23	251.59
Ma	Gold. Sp. 21	250.97
Samsonov	JGP POL 19	250.51
Yan*	CoC 19	249.45
Lazukin	WTT 18	249.33
Kovtun	Tall. 18	247.55
Shimada	Neb. 23	247.43
Danielian	EC 20	246.74
Broussard	Cranb. 24	246.48
Tsuboi	GP FIN 22	244.90
Kerry	OG 22	244.80
Egadze	Lomb. 23	243.35
Gorodnitsky	WAR 23	243.29
Lee S.Y.	IdF 22	242.62
Hiwatashi	4CC 20	240.48
Miyake	4CC 22	240.02
Torgashev	4CC 24	237.20
Economides	Cranb. 24	236.87
Lim	Ten 23	234.86
Selevko M.	WC 22	234.72
Kataise	JGP POL2 22	234.24
Gogolev	JGPF 18	233.58
Yoshioka	SA 23	233.56
Nakata	JGP CHN 24	233.53
Britschgi	Nice 24	233.22

The last competition in the table I posted at the beginning is the 2018 GP of Helsinki. Hanyu won by 30.13 points over Brezina, setting a new world record and improving his personal best by 33.47 points. Not that this improvement is truly significant; the GP of Helsinki was only Hanyu’s second competition under the new scoring system, and in the first he had made several mistakes, so despite winning, in the previsous competiton he still earned a low score. Here, he broke the previous world record by 6.52, thus achieving a high score that, throughout the entire season and the following season, only Hanyu and Chen would manage to surpass. Brezina delivered his best performance ever; the score he achieved that day would remain his personal best under this scoring system, but four skaters had achieved a higher score than Brezina’s.

Skater	Event	Tot
Hanyu	GP FIN 18	297.12
Chen	SA 18	280.57
Uno	SC 18	277.25
Kolyada	Nep. 18	274.37
Hanyu	Aut. Cl. 18	263.65
Cha	Aut. Cl. 18	259.78
Brezina	GP FIN 18	257.98

Skate Canada 2025

I looked at the scores of the top two finishers at the last Skate Canada, and the personal bests of all the skaters, following the same method I used for the other competitions.

Malinin set a new world record in the free skate, not in the total score of the competition; that still belongs to Chen. Malinin landed two quadruple jumps in the short program and six in the free skate, something he’d done several times in the past. In the free skate, he improved by 1.18 points, breaking a record he already held; in the total he improved by 0.05 points. Hats off to him for what he did, but what he did surprised no one. He’d already achieved similar scores; we knew he could reach them. And before he did, Chen had already achieved a higher score; we knew it was possible to reach that score. Hanyu’s personal best is 11.22 points lower; Malinin surpassed Hanyu (remember, I’m talking exclusively about higher scores; everything else isn’t relevant to this post), but the difference isn’t that big. Malinin’s huge advantage over Alexander Selevko is due to his high score, but also to the fact that certain strong skaters were missing, and those who were present did not perform to their full potential.

Skater	Event	Tot
Chen	GPF 19	335.30
Malinin	SC 25	333.81
Malinin	WC 24	333.76
Hanyu	SC 19	322.59
Uno	WC 22	312.48
Kagiyama	OG 22	310.05
Siao Him Fa	IdF 23	306.78
Zhou	WTT 19	299.01
Cha	WC 23	296.03
Shaidorov	WC 25	287.47
Kondratiuk	EC 22	286.56
Sato	Lomb. 24	285.88
Aymoz	WC 23	282.97
Miura	4CC 23	281.53
Brown	OG 22	281.24
Grassl	OG 22	278.07
Messing	4CC 23	275.57
Rizzo	WTT 23	275.36
Kolyada*	Nep. 18	274.37
Yamamoto	GPF 22	274.35
Semenenko	OG 22	274.13
Britschgi	WC 24	274.09
Jin*	4CC 2019	273.51
Tomono	WC 23	273.41
Aliev	EC 19	272.89
Vasiljevs	EC 22	272.08
Kvitelashvili*	WC 22	272.03
Pulkinen	WC 22	271.69
Fernandez	EC 19	271.59
Samarin	EC 19	269.84
Egadze	Ten 25	266.90
Mozalev*	EC 22	265.69
Memola	Lomb. 25	265.37
Gumennik*	Ten 21	263.14
Nguyen	SC 19	262.77
Tanaka	WTT 19	258.84
Brezina	GP FIN 18	257.98
Selevko A.	SC 25	257.21

Malinin won by a huge margin. He did so after years of gradually increasing his scores. No one could have known in advance how much of a lead he would have at Skate Canada, but we all expected him to win without difficulty. It’s not as if Malinin’s score was a surprise, or that it changed our perception of what a high score is. At the 2019 Grand Prix Final, Chen achieved a higher total score than Malinin had just achieved, and if Chen won by a smaller margin, it’s only because there were stronger skaters at that event than at Skate Canada 2025 (although Hanyu made mistakes there, at no event under the +5/-5 scoring system has Hanyu ever achieved a score as low as Selevko’s at the last Skate Canada, while Aymoz set what was then a personal best, scoring 18.42 points more than Selevko).

If Malinin completes clean programs, with his base value, this scoring system, and this way of award marks by the judges, he wins. Currently, no one can achieve the same scores. Once someone else manages to raise their BV enough and complete clean programs, things could change, but for now, Malinin’s win is not surprising. To get a better idea of ​​his margin, I checked SkatingScores for the highest BV in the free skate at major international competitions (including the WTT) from the 2018-19 season onward. The eight highest BVs, and 14 of the fifteen highest, belong to Malinin. The only infiltrator is Chen, who had the 9th and 16th highest BV, then gradually Shaidorov (17th), Zhou (18th), Siao Him Fa (19th), Kagiyama (25th), Uno (30th), Hanyu (32nd), Grassl (33rd) and Egadze (35th) begin to appear. You can find the rankings here.

In the short program too Malinin has the highest BV, and 7 of the 9 highest BVs. Chen took the second and third places, then Samarin is 10th, Grassl 19th, Zhou 20th, Jin 25th, Sato 32nd, and Siao Him Fa 33rd.

That said, knowing Malinin won, was anyone surprised by the result? Does Malinin’s score have any relevance to figure skating?

Earlier, when I looked at skaters’ personal bests at a time when a competition had a very large difference between the first-place and second-place scores, I left out one competition. I’m bringing it up now. That competition was the 2015 NHK Trophy. That day, Hanyu won ahead of Jin by what was then the largest margin ever recorded in a competition: 55.97 points. Of course, there were 6 skaters (besides Hanyu himself) who had already scored higher than Jin’s score, and that margin, 55.97 points, was later surpassed by four skaters, Fernandez a couple of months later, Uno almost two years later, Hanyu himself four years later, and now Malinin.

Skater	Event	Tot
Hanyu	GPF 15	330.43
Chan	IdF 13	295.27
Hanyu	GPF 13	293.25
Ten	4CC 2015	289.46
Machida	WC 14	282.26
Uno	GPF 15	276.79
Takahashi	WTT 12	276.72
Fernandez	WC 14	275.93
Jin	NHK 15	266.43

So, here too, am I repeating what I’ve written so far? Not really, because there’s something that hasn’t been overcome. That day, Hanyu set a new world record. And he surpassed the previous world record by a lot.

I’ve created a final table that includes all the events listed by SkatingScores, including the women’s, pairs, and ice dance events. I’ve highlighted these events by writing the data in red. In the first six columns, from left to right, I’ve listed the skater’s name, the event name, the winner’s score, the margin by which he won over the second-place finisher, that skater’s personal best updated to the previous event, and the difference between the score with which that skater won the event in question and their personal best. In some cases, the number is negative because, despite having won by a huge margin, the skater didn’t improve. There are two rows in gray. In this case, the skaters set a new world record, but he did so in the first season that a new scoring system was used. This is no small detail.

If we look at the lists of all those who have set a record in total points using the +3/-3 system and a record in total points using the +5/-5 system, we see that there were quite a few records at the beginning. Naturally, in the first competition (under either system), as soon as a skater who was slightly stronger than the previous skater, or who had a slightly better program that day, took to the rink, they set a new record. And, throughout the entire season, there were quite a few records. Setting a record in the first season under a new scoring system isn’t particularly difficult. Not that it’s easy, with the exception of the first skater to take to the rink in the first competition, but in the first season, whether 2003-04 or 2018-19, excluding the first competition, eight world records were set. In the subsequent 14 seasons in which the +3/-3 system was used, the record was broken seven times, on average once every two years. In the slightly more than six seasons in which the +5/-5 system was used, the record was broken only once. If we want, we can say that there were only five seasons, given the number of competitions cancelled between 2020 and 2021, but in fact only one record was set. Therefore, the two records in the gray rows are slightly less significant, with Chen’s lasting two weeks and Hanyu’s lasting four and a half months.

In the last two columns, I’ve indicated the world record in effect until the previous competition, and the difference between the skater’s score that day and the previous world record. The skaters are listed according to this column, from greatest to smallest difference.

Hanyu didn’t just win his competition, with a massive 55.97 points difference on the second-place finisher. Later that difference was surpassed. What makes this competition different, however, is that Hanyu literally shattered the previous world record. Hanyu didn’t just outscore Jin. Hanyu surpassed Patrick Chan’s two-year-old record by a whopping 27.13 points.

What Hanyu did it that day—and repeated two weeks later at the Grand Prix Final in Barcelona, ​​where Hanyu raised the record total to 330.43 points, outscoring by 37.48 points the reigning world champion (who that day set a personal best), not a skater who, at least until now, had never finished in the top 10 at a World Championships—scared Alexander Lakernik, then head of the ISU Technical Commission and, a few months later, ISU Vice President. It’s no coincidence that Lakernik declared that the ISU would change the scoring system. As far as I know, his interview is no longer available online, but a couple of mentions can still be found on Beverley Smith’s blog and on the Gazzetta dello Sport website. For the former, here’s the link:

Scoring changes afoot because of Hanyu

but, in case the page disappears, I took a screenshot of it.

For the second one, the link is this:

https://archiviostorico.gazzetta.it/2015/dicembre/28/Hanyu_oltre_limiti_PERFEZIONE_FATTA_ga_0_20151228_0b033502-ad30-11e5-b8a0-894f768b3b72.shtml.

For those who don’t know Italian, we could translate the passage that interests me like this:

The Russian guru Alexander Lakernik, head of the Technical Committee of the International Skating Union, in a recent interview with R-Sport, admitted that, at this rate, soon (but it will not be possible before the PyeongChang 2018 Games) the performance coefficients of the individual elements will have to be reviewed. Hanyu’s fault, of course. And of programs that have never been so successful

Malinin won by a huge margin, yet the ISU remained unmoved. Malinin’s actions bear no resemblance to the power of what happened on November 28, 2015. If we were to pinpoint a moment when the ISU was shaken and figure skating changed, it was undoubtedly this:

The first image is from the press conference on July 19th. That day, Hanyu later told us, was pitch black. The decision to step away from competition had matured in the preceding months, after years of questioning his future, longing to abandon a competitive circuit that was increasingly restricting him, yet still ensnaring him. There were medals to win, a nation to represent, a jump to conquer, the pride of always pursuing his own path. Until the moment he said enough.

What’s left of an athlete when he leaves his sport? Can he still call himself an athlete? And does he still have something to offer the public? Hanyu believed so. Deep down, he was convinced he still had so much left, and he wanted to share what was inside him with those who had followed his journey, but would his fans continue to follow him? He didn’t know that, he couldn’t know.

There had been signs. At the last Olympic Games, he had finished fourth. After eight years, he was no longer the reigning Olympic champion; after seven and a half years and 31 consecutive competitions—34 if we count team competitions—he had failed to reach the podium for the first time. Yet the fans hadn’t abandoned him; on the contrary, they had rallied around him even more. How would the fans react now? Would Hanyu see again those packed arenas where he had been a star during his competitive years? The sight of the packed Saitama Super Arena, just before the free skate that had won him his sixth national title, had brought him to tears. And now?

After the press conference and several interviews with specialized publications, Hanyu launched his YouTube channel, and the initial public response came from the hundreds of thousands of people who, within a very short time, began following his channel. A couple of short videos, one featuring three jumps and a spin, a training broadcast in front of the press and live online, with over 100,000 people watching. Then, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, skated for 24-hour TV, as per long-standing tradition, some television and entertainment engagements, and another video featuring two programs: Change, one of his classics, and Dreamy Aspiration, a new program choreographed by himself. And the announcement of his first solo show, Prologue.

His first solo show. I wondered how it was possible to put on a solo show. There certainly had to be a few minutes of intermission to allow him to change and catch his breath, probably a few minutes covered by video, but aside from imagining this solution, I had no idea what Hanyu could do. How he could sustain himself athletically for the length of a show. What could he say, all by himself, so that the show wasn’t just a succession of programs (even beautiful ones) disconnected from each other. How could he possibly think this was his first solo show? Why, did he intend to put on more? Really? What did he think he was doing? For me, it was a matter of waiting to find out. For him, it was different.

It was a gamble for him. Would the fans follow him? He booked two arenas, the Pia Arena in Yokohama and Flat Hachinohe. Two days in each city, although he later added a third show in Hachinohe because the demand for tickets was too high to accommodate all the fans. The Pia Arena is huge. How many shows don’t fill arenas with a capacity of a couple of thousand? He sold out both days with 7,900 people, but only because it wasn’t possible to let more people in, because many didn’t win tickets through the lottery he regularly uses to give everyone an equal chance of seeing one of his shows. The second doubt concerned his physical stamina. Hanyu always gives his all. Would he be able to make it through an hour-and-a-half show? Would he be able to do it in a much longer show like Gift? Because even if we didn’t know it, at the same time as Prologue he was working on Gift, and there were certainly many doubts running through his mind. Would viewers have appreciated the videos and the part where he stops to chat? And the six-minute warm-up?

I recently read an interview from the Continue with Wings era. It was 2018, he had just won his second Olympic gold medal, and to mark the occasion, he had decided to produce a celebratory show. Hanyu skated little, his ankle was still injured, and the performers were other skaters who had played a key role in his career in different ways. And, in an interview, Hanyu had stated that he would have liked to include a warm-up within a show. He would do so over four years later, but the idea was already there at the time. And who knows how long other ideas crossed his mind, and he toyed with them, reworking them, perhaps discarding them, or completely transforming them, before arriving at the formula we saw.

Looking back, Prologue seems like a simple show. But we only have this impression because after Prologue, Hanyu created Gift, Re_Pray, and Echoes of Life, shows that were all different, each a step forward on a journey that I hope will continue for many years to come.

Prologue is Hanyu’s story. I already commented the show at the time, although there’s so much more to say. The show begins with the press conference on July 19th. Then comes a step back, the reason why the press conference of an athlete bidding farewell to competition is so important: the second Olympic gold medal. Hanyu begins with the warm-up, because competitions began with the warm-up, and then presents the free program with which he wrote skating history. With that program, he had already destroyed the code of points in the fall of 2015. In 2018, he brought Seimei back to the Olympic Games and definitively established himself as the greatest skater of all time. Not only for the number of wins, but also for the way he won, for what he did on the rink. The Prologue version is slightly different; the program is a little shorter than the competition program and contains three triple axels, a deliberate violation of the Zayak rule, a declaration that he is no longer bound by the rules and that he alone is now the one who decides his own path. Only after presenting the two key turning points of his career does Hanyu return to the beginning and retrace his competitive history through a mix of programs performed on the ice and videos projected on the giant screen.

He spoke of some difficulties, the issues related to the rights to the music he used, working until the last minute to make the videos, the beginning of the collaboration with Mikiko and other professionals who would help him transform his projects into finished works. The tone is conversational, Hanyu and his fans, with whom he interacts via a luminous bracelet, but the technical content is important. And above all, what Prologue is is important. Prologue is a breaking point in many ways. It’s a new way of putting on an ice skating show. It’s not a path others can follow; there are no other skaters capable of filling arenas like Hanyu, and there are no other skaters capable of skating at such a high technical level for such a long time. To understand just how high the technical level was, at the last show in Hachinohe, Hanyu started with the six-minute arm up, landing a 3Lo, a 3A+2T combination, a 2T that was probably a planned 4T popped, and two 4S. He then skated ten programs, some in their entirety, others only in parts, executing these technical elements:

Above all, with Prologue Hanyu had the confirmation of being able to create, of being able to do something new. You have to be a visionary and work like hell to do it, but it’s possible. Prologue introduced the warm-up, the projections on the ice—real projections that interact with the athlete, not just colored spotlights—the unique story, the intertwining of video and live programs, the tension of the competitions that complements the artistic aspect, the role of the audience not as mere passive spectators but as part of the show. These are small seeds that will give life to the wonderful story that is unfolding in the Ice Stories.

Three years ago, Hanyu produced and performed an extraordinary show. Yet for him, it was only a prologue.

[lo stesso testo in italiano si trova qui – notice about the Italian text]

Yuzuru Hanyu has decided to enter a “maintenance” period to take care of his body and continue studying, with the goal of surpassing his past performances in future performances. As for his studies, we know he’s studying dance, but he also has very broad interests that include bioethics and philosophy.

In three years, Hanyu has created five different shows: Prologue, Gift, Re-Pray, Echoes of Life, and Notte stellata. He designed the structure of the shows himself, and for Re_Pray and Echoes of Life, he had to invent a story. He published it as a short story only for Echoes of Life, but Re_Pray also has its own very strong narrative that isn’t autobiographical, unlike Prologue and Gift (even though no one before him had ever thought it possible to create a single show, the creative aspect is important for Prologue and Gift too). Notte stellata is more traditional, with several skaters skating their programs one after the other, but the three collaborations, with Kohei Uchimura, Mao Daichi, and Mansai Nomura, are something significant on an artistic and creative level. And it doesn’t matter that the choreography was done by others—David Wilson, Shae-Lynn Bourne, Rino Masaki, as well as Uchimura and Nomura themselves (and Hanyu) for their parts. The idea of ​​creating something together already requires a considerable creative commitment, as does the idea of ​​collaborations on the big screen between Hanyu and four or five skaters on the rink for Dynamite and Permission to Dance. And then there are all the new programs choreographed by Hanyu over the past three years. I’m only counting those, not the new programs choreographed for him by Wilson, Bourne, or Mikiko. They are Dreamy Aspiration, A Fleeting Dream, Sasanqua, Ashura-chan, All These Things That I’ve Done, If…, Glamorous Sky, Megalovania, The Darkness of Eternity, Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals, Goliath, Aqua’s Journey, Meteor, Last Ambient, First Pulse, First Echo + Circulation, Mass Destruction: Reload, Eclipse/Blue, Gate of Steiner – Aestetics on Ice, Hymn of the Soul, Bow and Arrow. There are 21 programs in all, a significant creative effort spanning three years. And then there are the other new choreographies he had to learn, the old programs he continued to skate, the presence in several traditional shows, the appearances on numerous television and radio programs, the photo shoots, the interviews, the work with sponsors… It’s normal for anyone, after three years like this, to feel the need to take a break to study, improve, and calmly develop new projects. In fact, a normal person wouldn’t even have been able to keep up with Hanyu’s pace. Probably no one else could have maintained that pace for just one year, let alone three. And to all the public appearances, to all the work we see, are added the training sessions, of which we’ve only seen a few snippets. Training sessions in which, in addition to honing his expressive abilities, he has to work on both the stamina needed to complete his shows and the explosiveness required by the jumps.

The explosiveness required by the jumps, yes. Because Hanyu continues to make numerous jumps. He doesn’t always manage to execute them as he would like, just as he didn’t always managed to do so during competitions. We’ve seen several falls over the years, and several jumps with imprecise landings, missing part of the rotation, or resulting in a step-out. Most of the jumps we’ve seen in these three years, if they had been performed in competition, would have deserved a +5 GOE. And this demands a lot from his body. To understand how much, to understand whether the jumps he has made are very few, I looked at his entire career. The first seven tables show all the jumps Hanyu has performed in detail, the last one summarizes them for a better overview. I only looked at the main activity of each season, not to everything else.

What do I mean by main activity? During his time competing, I’m referring to competitions and only competitions. He almost always skated both short program and free skate, although some youth competitions were based on just one of the two programs, and in the Sochi Team Event Hanyu skated only the short program. No training, which is obviously crucial but about which we know almost nothing, and no galas either. The result was based on the jumps in competitions, not those at galas, which he almost always participated in but occasionally skipped without any relevance for the result of the competition (two famous examples are the 2014 Cup of China and the 2018 Rostelecom Cup, competitions in which he was clearly injured). The exclusion of galas from my tables is linked to a practical reason: videos don’t always exist, so it’s impossible to know what he did (and no, knowing which program he performed isn’t enough: at the gala of the 2017 Four Continents Championships, he skated Notte stellata, but instead of the usual 3A, he performed a 3T; at the 2022 Olympic Games, he skated Haru yo, koi, and instead of the usual 3Lo, he performed a 3A). And then there are the jumps competitions he performed so many times at the end of the galas, and the shows he started participating in since he was a child… No. His main activity. He competed to win, and to do that, he had to present one or two programs depending on the type of competition: short program and free skate. This is what I watched.

Hanyu began skating at the age of 4. Little is known about his early years. In February 2000, when he was 5 years old and had been training for about six months, Hanyu participated in his first competition, the Miyagi Prefectural Competition. The minute-long program, set to the music of Ultraman Gaia, was choreographed by his coach, Mami Yamada. The technical elements included a waltz jump (the take-off is an axel, the jump consists of a half-rotation), a three turn, and a upright spin. Hanyu placed second behind Jun Suzuki.

In the 2001-02 season, he won the Shin-Matsudo Daiei OSC Cup, performing his first double salchow in competition. Not only his first in competition, but literally his first landed correctly, as Hanyu himself explained in the Prologue booklet. This means he started performing double jumps between the ages of 6 and 7. In the same season—perhaps earlier, perhaps later, the booklet lists the seasons but not the exact dates—Hanyu also won the UHB Cup. The title of the program, choreographed by Mami Yamada, is something like Grass Horse Race or Amateur Horse Race.

During this period, Yamada left Sendai, and Shoichiro Tsuzuki became Hanyu’s new coach. We know nothing about the 2002-03 season, except that his program was From Russia with Love, choreographed by Tsuzuki and that he performed it again in the following season. At unspecified times during these years, Hanyu passed several Badge tests, as only those who pass them can participate in certain competitions. To participate in Novice B competitions, you must have passed at least the Level 3 Badge Test, which requires at least one single axel, a double-jump-single-jump combination, and three different spins—two of at least five rotations and one of at least six rotations—as well as certain steps.

Since the 2004-05 season, the JSF website has begun listing the results of competitions Hanyu participated in. These may not be all his competitions; it’s possible that the results of some local competitions weren’t posted online. We don’t have the protocol for some competitions, but we do have the scores, because they were judged using the 6.0 system. I looked at the existing protocols and added the layout from the National Novice B Championships in October 2004 and the short program from the Asian Novice Championships in Spring 2005, because we have videos of those programs, so we can see which elements Hanyu performed. I looked at the type of jump, with the corresponding number of rotations, indicated on the protocol, not the quality of execution. What interests me is the type of physical effort, and regardless of whether a 4T is a +5 GOE or a 4T<< with a fall, the physical effort required is the same, even if the quality of execution couldn’t be more different. If the protocol says 1S, even if I know Hanyu wanted to perform a 4S, as happened in the short program at the Beijing Olympics, I count a single salchow as an execution, because considering what Hanyu wanted to do but didn’t do creates complications that aren’t always solvable. In this type of control, I followed what is written in the protocol.

To keep the screens manageable, I’ve divided Hanyu’s competitive career into four sections: the six seasons in which he competed in the novice and junior categories, and his senior career across the three Olympic quadrennials. These are 29, 27, 22, and 15 competitions, respectively. From a certain point on, the number of competitions was limited by a series of significant physical problems and by the pandemic, which, between the end of the 2019-20 season and the start of the next, effectively led to the cancellation of an entire season.

Hanyu began performing double jumps in the 2001-02 season, and the double Axel in the 2004-05 season. The triple Axel entered his program during his first junior season, the quadruple toe loop in his first senior season, and then gradually he introduced other quadruples. Obviously, all single jumps are errors; Hanyu wanted to perform a double or triple, but he only performed one single. The number of 2T is high because that jump is part of the combinations, with one to three 2T in the free skates; he occasionally performed a 2T in the short program as well (from his second junior season onward, he did a 2T in the short program when he popped a planned 3T).

Single jumps, with the exception of the euler used in three-jump combinations, have almost disappeared, and even doubles, in the 12 seasons Hanyu competed in the senior category, are very few, with the obvious exception of 2T. In the future, I will check how many and what quadruple jumps Hanyu and several other skaters performed during their competitive careers to better contextualize what Hanyu did. For now, I’ll look at what he did after turning professional.

Here too, I look at Hanyu’s main activity. What do I mean by this? As a professional, he performs in shows. His shows include the solo shows and also Notte stellata, but also one edition of Stars on Ice, two editions of Fantasy on Ice, the Major’s Cup, Challenge, and The First Skate. Fantasy on Ice, and when he went there, Stars on Ice, were previously a sideline for him, because the focus was on competitions (even though Hanyu always gave his all in his shows, too). Now they’re his main activity. To the shows, I add videos: those for his own channel, like Sasanqua or The Final Time Traveler, those made for others, like Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso for 24 Hour TV or Bow and Arrow for Kenshi Yonezu, but also the short videos featuring a training session or even a single jump posted by Hanyu on his official social media channels. This is because I consider those videos a way to communicate with fans and keep interest in his shows high. I don’t consider the training sessions we’ve seen in all the specials produced by Asahi or in broadcasts like the Switch Interview with Koichi Domoto, because those jumps are part of the training sessions, something necessary for public activity but which isn’t public activity, even when we have some images. I also don’t consider what Hanyu did in the commercials, which, while important, are a collateral activity, just as the shows were collateral until July 19, 2022.

I’ve kept the division into seasons, using the official date indicated by the ISU for the transition from one season to the next. This means that seasons begin on July 1st of one year and end on June 30th of the following year. Given the number of events Hanyu participated in, I’ve dedicated a different screen to each of the three seasons. In some cases, the name of the show is followed by an asterisk. This means I haven’t seen that show, so I’m not sure what Hanyu did. In Fantasy on Ice, Hanyu always performs a 4T in the opening program. I can imagine what he did there and in subsequent programs because I know which program he skated, so I know the layout (not the quality of execution, but the technical elements he performed), but I have no idea how the final part went, where anyone who wanted to perform an element of their choice. Hanyu always performs a 4T (almost always, sometimes he chose a more difficult quadruple), but sometimes after that 4T he performed other jumps, usually 3A and/or 3T. Not knowing what Hanyu actually did, I’ll just include the minimum in my table, a 4T. As for Stars on Ice, in the final presentation Hanyu often performed a sequence of steps, but sometimes he performed a 4T. How many times did he choose to do a quadruple? I don’t know; I only indicated it when I’m sure he did it.

The tables now also include the delayed single axel, a jump that makes no sense in competition due to its very low base value—although with the new rules it has become possible to do it in the choreographic sequence, without this creating problems with the other jumps—but which is one of the breathtaking elements of Hanyu’s programs. In this regard, I recall what Dick Button wrote in his Push Dick’s Button (pages 78-80):

A perfect jump lift up first; then the skater rotates for however many revolutions; and then a really good the skater will pause for a very short hang time and then land […]. Also, a good jump should not only have height, but distance as well.
[…] the jump should impact the audience. It should inspire a small burst of exhilaration in us.
[…]
Also look for ballon! Ballon is that effervescent nanosecond of movement that you see when a dancer jumps and at the peak of the jump there is a sudden and very slight added suspension, a split second of delay. […]
Ballon is an appearance as well as the feeling of weiightlessness. It’s French for hang time. Skaters attempt to achieve the extra effect of ballon in a variation called a “delayed Axel.” […]
Delayed Axels were seen more frequently during the time single Axels were still of value. In actuality, the delayed Axel is extremely difficult, require a greater level of control […]
For some of us, it isthe overall quality—the smooth entry, the height, the distance, the turns, any space or delay between the turns, and the landing—that remain the most valuable elements in a jump […].

In the 2024-25 season chart, the number of jumps with few rotations increases. This is a deliberate choice by Hanyu, who prioritized the expressive aspect of the jumps rather than the number of rotations in the Piano Collection of Echoes of Life, during which he deliberately performed a single loop and a double toe loop.

I’ve put an asterisk next to three dates. In Echoes of Life, between the Piano Collection and Chopin’s Ballade, for three minutes Hanyu skates in the dark while the Elevenplay dance. What the Elevenplay do is wonderful, but Hanyu is on the ice, before the spectators’ eyes, even when the cameras aren’t on him. I was in the arena in Chiba; both days he performed a perfect 4T+1Eu+3S combination; on the second day he also performed a salchow deliberately double. I assume he was thinking about the axis of rotation; in fact, everyone there saw it. Hanyu was performing at that moment too. Well, in all the shows Hanyu did the same kind of warm-up in the dark, but on three occasions I have no idea what jumps he performed, so I didn’t calculate anything for those minutes.

Below this table I added another one-line table in which I indicated the sum of all the jumps performed by Hanyu in these three seasons.

These are the complete figures. To better understand the scope of Hanyu’s accomplishments in his three professional seasons, I’ve compiled the numbers into a few broad categories. Three periods: novice and junior categories, senior category, and professional career. Jumps separated into single delayed axels, single jumps, double jumps, triple jumps, 3A, which is always a jump in itself (and anyone who’s unsure can ask Nathan Chen whether any of the four types of quadruple jumps he usually did or 3A were more difficult for him, or he can ask Alexandra Trusova the same question), and quadruple jumps. While I was at it, I also added the number of spins. Some are simple, but the Piano Collection includes a one-minute spin, and Megalovania, with its spins, is a program both difficult and tiring.

Yuzuru Hanyu has decided to enter a period of “maintenance.” I’d say he’s well deserved it. I don’t know when he’ll return or what he’ll do, but judging by everything he’s done in the past, I’m sure whatever he does will be extraordinary.

The ISU has officially recognized six types of jumps. In order of base value, they are toe loop, salchow, loop, flip, lutz, and axel. While jumps were initially not essential in figure skating competitions, rotations increased over time, with the transition from single jumps to doubles, triples, and quadruples, and their importance grew steadily. In men’s figure skating, now results are primarily tied to the number of quadruples successfully completed during competitions. But who was the first skater to land the various types of quadruples? And what impact did the quadruple jump have on their careers?

Toe loop (T)

The first quadruple to be officially recognized by the ISU was the quadruple toe loop landed by Kurt Browning at the 1988 World Championship. It’s not the first quadruple attempted in competition. In 1986, Jozef Sabovčík landed a quadruple toe loop at the European Championship, but the ISU didn’t recognize the jump because Sabovčík touched the ice with his free foot. Brian Boitano, the reigning world champion, attempted a quadruple toe loop at the 1987 World Championship, fell, and lost the title to Brian Orser. Would Orser still have won if Boitano hadn’t fallen? It’s possible. What’s certain is that Boitano took a huge risk that didn’t pay off.

Kurt Browning was a young and promising skater in 1988. The year before, he had competed in the World Championships for the first time, finishing fifteenth. No one expected him to achieve a major result. He wasn’t in contention for medals at the 1988 Olympic Games, when he attempted his quadruple toe loop and fell. He ultimately placed eighth (11th in the compulsory figures, 7th in the short program, 6th in the free skate). At the 1988 World Championships, he wasn’t in a better position after placing 12th in the figures and 7th in the short program. He attempted the quadruple toe loop again, and this time he completed it. With the third free skate, he climbed to sixth place. The following year, Browning would win the first of his four world gold medals. The quadruple toe loop was what brought him fame.

In this table, I’ve listed all of Browning’s Olympic and World Championship appearances, along with the results. I’ve highlighted in green the event where Browning landed the first quadruple toe loop. First came the jump, and then the champion.

Browning never landed a quadruple toe loop combination, he never even attempted it. The first to land a quadruple toe loop combination (4T+2T) was Elvis Stojko at the 1991 World Championship, his second appearance. Stojko finished that competition in sixth place. His first medal, a bronze, came a year later. He, too, built a reputation for his jumps before he started to win.

Salchow (S)

The first skater to land the quadruple salchow was Timothy Goebel. Once nicknamed “Quad King,” Goebel landed the jump for the first time in 1998 in a junior competition, the Junior Grand Prix Final. And, just to be sure, he immediately performed it in combination. After adding the quadruple toe loop to his program, in the fall of 1999 at Skate America Goebel became the first skater to complete three quadruple jumps in a free skate. His three most important medals, the Olympic bronze and two World Championship silvers, came between 2002 and 2003, so years after he landed his quads for the first time.

In the table I also decided to indicate other significant changes regarding the jumps, such as the increase in the number of quadruples included in the layout, another change Gobel made before winning the medals. For Goebel the quadruples were something he needed to compete with the best skaters (Goebel won his Olympic bronze behind Alexei Yagudin and Evgeni Plushenko, skaters who could perform the quadruple toe loop in combination).

Lutz (Lz)

How many people remember the name Brandon Mroz? As a lot of skaters of his era, Mroz landed the quadruple toe loop a few times, but that jump clearly wasn’t enough to get results. In his first senior season, Mroz won silver at the US National Championships, which earned him a spot at the World Championships. There Mroz placed eighth. The two following National Championships, however, didn’t go well; a sixth- and seventh-place finish prevented him to be sent to the major competitions. If Mroz wanted to get results, he had to change something. What did he do? He added the quadruple Lutz to his programs.

He landed the 4Lz with a positive GOE only at the Colorado Spring Invitational, a local competition of minimal importance with only three participants. However, after watching the video of the jump, the ISU ratified it. Mroz attempted the 4Lz three more times, at the 2011 NHK Trophy and at the 2011 Rostelecom Cup. The first time, he was a bit off-balance, nothing terrible, but he still had a negative GOE. The other two times, he fell on underrotated jumps. End of attempts. As for Mroz’s career, with three placings—14th, 9th, and 9th—at the National Championships, he never returned to the World Championships. It’s no coincidence that I listed a single World Championship and then a series of National Championships in my table, to explain why there aren’t other World Chanpionship results.

Mroz added a new quadruple jump to his program in an attempt to achieve some results, but all he got was a quick mention in the history of figure skating jumps. Better than nothing, but he was never a champion.

As for the 4Lz in combination, the first to try it (and, while he was at it, land it with a positive GOE) was Boyang Jin at the 2015 Cup of China, his first senior international competition. The combination was important for Jin’s reputation before the results arrived, two world bronze medals in 2016 and 2017.

Flip (F)

The first skater to land a quadruple flip was Shoma Uno, in a competition that felt much more like an exhibition than a real competition, even though the ISU sent judges and there is an official protocol: the 2016 Team Challenge Cup.

Up until that point, 18-year-old Uno, in his first senior season, had won a bronze medal at the Grand Prix final, but had also finished seventh in his only appearance at the World Championships. Even at the Four Continents Championships, where he had competed twice (the first time when he was still competing in the junior category), he had failed to reach the podium, finishing fifth and fourth. The quadruple flip put him on the figure skating map and gave him the chance to compete for major medals.

By becoming the first skater to complete the 4F Uno entered the medal contention, but despite of the increased number of quadruples, he could only gain prominence once stronger skaters of his era left the competitive stage.

The first skater to attempt (and complete) a 4F combination was seventeen-year-old Nathan Chen in 2017, in his third senior competition. For him, too, quadruples were essential to starting to achieve results.

Loop (Lo)

The first skater to complete a 4Lo was Yuzuru Hanyu in 2016. In 2014, Hanyu had won back-to-back Grand Prix Final, Olympic gold, and World Championship. What motivation could he have had to keep going? The number of skaters who retire immediately after the Olympic success is incredibly high, though I’ll get back to that another day. Hanyu kept going. In 2015, after overcoming a season in which he faced enormous physical problems, in two competitions, in the span of two weeks, he broke six world records. He didn’t just break them, he literally shattered them. What motivation could Hanyu have had to keep going, to learn difficult things, to risk injury, or to risk ruining his image as a champion with falls and—perhaps—inferior results compared to the past?

Hanyu was 21 at the time. How old were the skaters I’ve mentioned so far? Browning was 21, at a time when they were older when they won because it took years to learn how to correctly draw compulsory figures; Stojko was 19 (and he too started competing during the compulsory figures era); Mroz was 20; Goebel, Uno, and Chen were 17; and Jin was 18.

Hanyu found within himself the motivation to continue despite his extraordinary successes, and the courage to do so when everything, from his age to several very concrete reasons, told him it would be easier not to. We can’t know the future, but in 2015, with a free program that included only two quadruple toe loops and a quadruple salchow, Hanyu twice achieved a higher score than he would have needed to win Olympic gold in 2018. The 4Lo was not necessary for him to compete with the best. He was the best, and precisely because he was the best, he felt the desire to venture into uncharted territories and bring something to figure skating that hadn’t existed before, a new quadruple jump.

From the table, we see that Hanyu had already won about half of his total medals (including his first Olympic gold medal and his first World Championship gold medal) before landing that quadruple loop. But for him that wasn’t enough. Even before attempting the quadruple loop, but after his first Olympic and World Championship gold medal, Hanyu had added a quadruple loop to his free skate (and one to his short program), demonstrating a rare desire to improve even when he was already at the top.

After landing the quadruple loop, he added another quadruple loop to his free skate (actually, the two things should have happened simultaneously, but he made some mistakes in the first competition). Then he won his second World Championship gold medal and his second Olympic gold medal, learning a fourth type of quadruple jump between those two medals (I didn’t include the 4Lz, which Hanyu completed in the fall of 2017, in the table).

He could have retired. It would have been easier. Anyone else in his place probably would have done so. He kept going, continued to climb the world podium, and presented a program with five quadruples.
Is that enough? No, between the end of 2021 and February 2022, he attempted the quadruple axel. He couldn’t complete it, but he tried anyway. He was 27 years old.

How many skaters attempt a new jump—one that no one has ever landed before, by the way—at 27? There is Artur Dmitriev Jr., I haven’t forgotten about him. Dmitriev tried the 4A exactly at 27 (in fact, he made his first attempt in a Russian domestic circuit competition when he was still 26).

Dmitriev has never competed in the World Championship or the European Championship. The best result in his three Grand Prix competitions was a ninth place. Dmitriev knew that if he wanted to leave his mark on the history of figure skating, he could only do so by becoming the first skater to complete a certain jump. He was the first (and still is the only one) to complete the 3Lz+3F combination, but that wasn’t enough for him. In his case, the 4A was just to get people talking about him.

Hanyu could have landed a 4Lo or a 4Lz at the Olympic Games had he wanted to, and I’ll probably have to talk about his Olympic layout one day. A third gold medal was at stake, and, in the worst-case scenario, a third medal. Hanyu tried the 4A on the biggest stage. He had the courage to take the risk, because for him, discovery, trying something new, has always been more important than settling for the safe.

Daniel Grassl is currently the only skater to have landed a 4Lo combined with a positive GOE in international competitions. He did so twice in the 2021-22 season (4Lo+1Eu+3S). Grassl’s best results so far are two seventh-place finishes, at the Olympic Games and at one World Championship. Hanyu could have done it if he wanted to. During SharePractice, he landed a perfect 4Lo+3T combination, and on three occasions he posted videos of himself landing the 4Lo+3A sequence in the paid area of his channel.

However, in the 2018-19 season, after winning his second Olympic gold medal, when he no longer had to prove anything to anyone, Hanyu became the first skater to land the 4T+3A sequence (and is still the only one to have done so, although Ilia Malinin landed the 4S+3A sequence in the 2024-25 season). And, in the 2019-20 season, Hanyu became the first skater to land the 4T+1Eu+3F combination. Even after winning everything (twice), he continued to raise the bar. No one like him.

Axel (A)

The first skater to land the quadruple axel (and still the only one, even considering national competitions) was Ilia Malinin. Despite all the practice videos that some skater occasionally post, so far only two other skaters, Dmitriev (four times) and Hanyu (twice), have attempted the jump in competition.

When did Malinin first land a 4A? In a minor competition (a Challenger Series) in his first senior season, after finishing ninth in his only World Championship appearance. Malinin, like all skaters except Hanyu, stood out for his jumps, and only then did he start winning. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s important to note Hanyu’s exceptional career.

In his first World Championship, in 2011, Hanyu was the one who obtained the highest score from the jumps, ahead of Patrick Chan and Javier Fernandez. At the 2012 World Championship (at age 17), he not only obtained the highest score from the jumps, but he also had the highest TES. This is normal in itself; it takes time to hone the interpretation and skating skills, but Hanyu was already at a very high level in this area at a very young age. He continued to perfect it, and at the same time, he perfected his jumps even when he didn’t need them. Just because he wanted to. And that’s extraordinary.

After his first world medal, a bronze, Malinin became the first skater in history to land all types of quadruples, and only then did he win his first world gold.

I conclude with two tables. The first summarizes the data I listed above. On the left, we see all the results achieved at the Olympic Games and World Championships by the six skaters I mentioned before landing their first quadruple jump of each type. On the right, we see their results after landing the jump. Hanyu is the only one who didn’t need a jump to get people interested in him, and he continued to achieve results even afterward.

The second is dedicated to the skaters who have won at least one Olympic or World Championship gold medal since the first quadruple jump was landed. Almost all of the skaters stopped to improve after winning and maintained their level. Only one continued to work to improve because he wanted to.

As I wrote, Hanyu always stands out. No one like him.

Yuzuru Hanyu started skating at the age of 4, competed in his first competition about six months later, and continued competing until two months after turning 27. If we add the three years of his professional career to that total, Hanyu has dedicated 26 of his 30 years to figure skating. I’ve summarized his professional career data in three posts (one, two, three); now I’ll go back and look at what he accomplished during his competitive career.

I’ve done my best to keep this list as complete as possible. It’s not everything, at least not for his younger years. Hanyu officially began competing in the 2004-05 season, when he was 9, and first competed in the Novice B category. What did he do before that? We know very little. The JSF website doesn’t record competitions below the Novice B level, and sometimes it doesn’t even record regional youth competitions. There’s some evidence of a couple of competitions, but for others… maybe someone who speaks Japanese can find them, but not me. This is what I’ve found:

Season 1999-00

Coach: Mami Yamada
Music: Ultraman Gaia (choreography: Mami Yamada)

Miyagi Prefectural Tournement: 2nd (the winner was Jun Suzuki)

Season 2001-2002

Music: Amateur Horse Race (choreography: Mami Yamada)

There’s a short video from Hanyu’s first grade days, showing him wearing a cowboy costume. It could be this season or the end of the previous season.

Shin-Matsudo Daiei OSC Cup Tournement: 1st

UHB Cup: 1st

Season: 2003-04

Coach: Shoichiro Tsuzuki (probably form the previous season)
Music: From Russia with Love (choreography: Shoichiro Tsuzuki)

Badge Test Level 3 for Novice B

Competitions aside, there are the Badge Tests. If you don’t know what they are, they’re mentioned in the anime (and manga) Medalist. They’re tests skaters must pass before competing in a certain category. To register for the Tohoku-Hokkaido Championships in the Novice B category, Hanyu (like all the other participants) must have passed the relevant Badge Test. When did he do it? I have no idea. These are the requirements established by the JSF (in 2010, I don’t know if the requirements were lower in 2004) to obtain the Level 3 Badge Test, the one needed to compete in the Novice B category:

Mandatory elements:

① Axel Paulsen Jump ② Any double jump ③ Jump combination (2+1 or more). Double jumps can be combined with ②. ④ Camel Spin (5 or more rotations) ⑤ Flying spin (any type; 5 or more rotations after landing) ⑥ Spin combination (no change of foot, 6 or more revolutions, but 2 or more revolutions in one position)

Set pattern steps:

① Back Change Half Circle (Starting foot is chosen by lottery) ② Bracket turn step (out/in is determined by lottery) ③ One-Footed Snaking (Forehand) – Starting foot is chosen by lottery ④ One-foot snaking (back) – the foot opposite to the fore

Free skate:

Time: 2’00” for both men and women ●Include at least the required jump elements. ●Select two or more of the required spin elements. ●Include a step sequence.

Season 2004-05

Coach: Shoichiro Tsuzuki until December, Tatsuyoshi Matsuda from January
SP: Spartacus (choreography: Shoichiro Tsuzuki)
FS: From Russia with Love (choreography: Shoichiro Tsuzuki)

Tohoku-Hokkaido Regional Novice B: 1st (FS only)

National Championship Novice B: 1st (FS only)
To understand Hanyu’s skating level compared to the requirements, the minimum requirement for jumps was 1A and a double jump+single jump combination. Without looking at the quality details (pre- and under-rotations, which perhaps weren’t looked at at the time, and in any case we don’t know anything about what other skaters did), Hanyu’s layout was this: 2A; 2S; 2Lz+2Lo+2T; 2T+2T, 2Lo, 2Lz+2T (or it was 2F+2T? bad camera shot and not so clear edge), 2A.

Santa Claus Cup (Tampere, Finland), Novice A: SP 1st – FS 1st – Final rank 1st

Asian Novice Championship (Hong Kong): SP 4th – FS 4th – Final rank 4th

Season 2005-06

Coach: Tatsuyoshi Matsuda
SP: Amazonic/Totentanz (choreography: Megumu Seki)
FS: Summer Storm (choreography: Meguymu Seki) and From Russia with Love (National Championship only, choreography: Shoichiro Tsuzuki)

Tohoku-Hokkaido Regional Novice B: 1st (FS only)

National Championship Novice B: 2nd (FS only)

Asian Novice Chapionship: performed as a guest skater

Badge Test Level 4 Novice A

Mandatory elements:

①. Double Toe Loop Jump ② Double Salchow Jump ③ Double Loop Jump ④ Jump Combination (2+2) ⑤ Spins Women: Layback spin or Sideways Leaning spin (minimum 5 revolutions) Men: Sit spin or Camel spin (with change of foot) including at least one difficult variation (minimum 5 revolutions/minimum 5 revolutions) ⑥ Spin combination (with change of foot, 6/6 or more rotations)

Set pattern steps:

① Open Choctaw and Three Turn Steps ② Toe Step (2 or more rotations) ③ Twizzle Step Four (Out/In determined by lottery) ④ Twizzle Step Back (Out/In determined by lottery)

Free skate:

Time: Women’s 2’30”, Men’s 3’00”. The number of elements is the same as for Novice B. ● Includes at least three types of double jumps (including both toe jumps and edge jumps) ● Includes jump combinations (2+2) ● Spins (including flying, one position (men), layback (women) spin combinations) ●Women: Spiral Sequence, Men’s: Step sequence

Badge Test Level 6 Junior

Mandatory elenents:

① Double Axel Paulsen Jump ② Jump combinations – Women: combination of 3 consecutive jumps of your choice (2+2+2), Men: 3+2 or more ③ A free jump immediately following a connecting step or other comparable free skating movement (in accordance with the Junior SP program of the current year). ④ Spin Combination (including 3 positions, back entrance, and change of foot) (6 rotations/6 or more rotations) ⑤ Flying spin (correct position in the air. 8 or more revolutions without changing position). In addition, this must be the flying spin specified in the Junior SP for that year.

Second test:

Time: Within 2’50”. ISU Junior Short Program for the current year

Free skate:

Time: Women’s 3’30”, Men’s 4’00” Based on the ISU Junior Free Skating of the current year The jump must include at least the following elements: Women: Includes double axel and double+double or higher jump combinations (2 or more consecutive). Men’s: Includes a double axel and one triple.

Season 2006-07

Coach: Tatsuyoshi Matsuda until October, Nanami Abe from October (Soshi Tanaka, who was specialized in jumps, collaborated with Abe, I don’t know if for the entire period Abe trained Hanyu or for a shorter period)
SP: Amazonic/Totentanz (choreography: Megumu Seki)
FS: Summer Storm (choreography: Megumu Seki)

Hanyu did not compete in the Tohoku-Hokkaido Championships, which are usually required for skaters registered with a club in Miyagi Prefecture to participate in the National Championships. His absence from the Tohoku-Hokkaido Championships suggests that Hanyu achieved such exceptional results in the tests held at the Nobeyama Camp that the federation seeded him and excluded him from participating in the qualifying competition.

National Championship Novice A: 3rd (FS only)
Layout of Hanyu’s program: 2A+2T, 3Lo<, 3S<, 3T (fall), 2A, 2F, 2Lz (fall). At the time, there was no distinction between underrotated and downgraded jumps; the < sign assigned the jump the base value of a jump with one less rotation. It is unknown when Hanyu passed the Badge Tests, but the layout of the program he competed with at the Novice Championships (if executed correctly) would have allowed him to pass the Badge Test in the junior category. Riuju Hino, who won the competition, landed three triples (a toe loop and two salchows) and seven doubles, including two 2A, without falling or having any problems with the rotations. Keiji Tanaka, who finished second, correctly completed two triples (a toe loop and a salchow) and nine doubles, including two 2A.

Junior National Championship: SP 18th – FS 4th – Final rank 7th

Junior North Japan Figure Skating Games: SP 1st – FS 1st – Final rank 1st

Mladost Trophy Novice A: SP 1st – FS 2nd – Final rank 1st

Season 2007-08

SP: Sing Sing, Sing (choreography: Nanami Abe)
FS: The Firebird (choreography: Nanami Abe)
Gala: Sing, Sing, Sing (choreography: Nanami Abe – different from the SP version)
When a program originally intended for competition is presented as an exhibition program, it’s usually performed without the most difficult jumps, and in the case of free skate programs, only a part of them is skated. For programs used in competition for more than one season, there are always some changes to the steps and perhaps even the layout. I only note where there are significant changes.

Tohoku-Hokkaido Championship Novice A: 1st (FS only)

Miyagi Prefecture Junior High School General Sports Festival: 1st (SP only)

National Championship Novice A: 1st (FS only)

Junior National Championship: SP 7th – FS 1st – Final rank 3rd

Tohoku Junior High School Skating: 1st (FS only)

Tohoku Skating Championship Novice A: 1st (SP only)

Japan Junior High School Championship: 1st (SP only)

Skate Copenhagen Novice A: SP 1st – FS 1st – Final rank 1st

Season 2008-09

SP: Bolero (choreography: Nanami Abe)
FS: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (choreography: Nanami Abe. Program created in two partially different versions because it was skated in the Junior and Senior categories, which have different requirements on the length of the program)
Gala: Change (choreography: Nanami Abe)

JGP Merano: SP 6th – FS 4th – Final rank 5th

Tohoku-Hokkaido Championship Junior: SP 1st – FS 1st – Final rank 1st

East Japan Kunior Championship: SP 1st – FS 1st – Final rank

Junior National Championship: SP 4th – FS 1st – Final rank 1st

National Championship: SP 8th – FS 5th – Final rank 8th

Junior High School Championship: 1st (only SP)

Junior World Championship: SP 11th – FS 13th – Final rank 12th

Junior North Japan Figure Skating Games: SP 1st – FS 1st – Final rank 1st

Season 2009-10

SP: Mission: Impossible II (choreography: Nanami Abe)
FS: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (choreography: Nanami Abe)
Gala: Change (choreography: Nanami Abe)

JGP Poland: SP 1st – FS 1st- Final rank 1st

Tohoku-Hokkaido JuniorChampionship: SP

JGP Croatia: Sp 1st – FS 1st – Final rank 1st

East Japan Junior Championship: SP 1st – FS 1st – Final Rank 1st

Junior National Championship: SP 1st – FS 2nd – Final rank 1st

JGP Final: SP 3rd – FS 1st – Final rank 1st

National Championship: SP 13th – FS 5th – Final rank 6th

Junior High School Championship: 1st (SP only)

Junior World Championship: SP 3rd – FS 1st – Final rank 1st

Badge Test Level 7 Senior International competitions

Required elements:

① Double Axel Paulsen Jump ② A triple jump immediately following a connecting step or other comparable free skating movement. ③ An isolated triple jump (a jump different from 2). ④ Jump combination (3+2 or more) ⑤ Any flying spin. After 8 rotations without changing the position/variation, a flying spin with a difficult variation or change edge. ⑥ Spin combination (with change of foot). At least three positions must be performed from the spin combo with change of foot on the ISU difficulty level table for the current year, and three features must be satisfied (6 rotations/6 or more rotations)

Second test:

Time: Within 2’50”. ISU Senior Short Program for the current year

Free skate:

Time: Women’s 4’00”, Men’s 4’30” Based on the ISU Senior Free Skating of the current year. Furthermore, for jumps, the minimum required elements enter the assignment.

Not knowing the JSF rules, I don’t know if Hanyu ever took the Badge test to compete in senior international competitions. He was already capable of completing these types of elements during his first season in the Novice A category. Could it be that, having already completed the elements in competitions where the elements weren’t required, the JSF decided not to require him to take the test? This happened to Canadian Kurt Browning: he was granted permission to participate in some international competitions without having him take the tests that were supposed to determine whether he was fit to participate in those competitions, and his results were such that Browning never took the final tests, which, according to Skate Canada, are mandatory. Japan has made exceptions for the National Championship in some cases: participation is mandatory for assignments to the Four Continents Championship, the World Championship, and the Olympic Games, but sometimes skaters are assigned to competitions thanks to an exemption. This is what happened to Hanyu in three seasons, when he skipped three straight National Championships but was still assigned to the 2017 4CC, the 2017 WC, the 2018 OG, and the 2019 WC based on his previous results. The same goes for Riku Miura/Ryuichi Kihara, who skipped the National Championships for four years in a row but were regularly assigned to the 4CC, WC, and OG because there’s no doubt they are the strongest Japanese pair. As for the regional qualifying competitions for the National Championships, if a skater were to participate in one of these competitions while simultaneously registered for an international competition, they are granted an exemption. So, did Hanyu take this Badge Test? Perhaps, or perhaps the JSF decided it was unnecessary because he had already proven he could compete at the senior international level.

Season 2010-11

SP: White Legend (choreography: Nanami Abe)
FS: Zigeunerweisen (choreography: Nanami Abe)
Gala: Vertigo /choreography: Nanami Abe)

GP NHK Trophy: SP 5th – FS 4th – Final rank 4th

East Japan Championship: SP 1st – FS 1st – Final rank 1st

GP Rostelecom Cup: SP 6th – FS 6th – Final rank 7th

National Championship: SP 2nd – FS 4th – Final rank 4th

Four Continents Championship: SP 3rd – FS 3rd – Final rank 2nd

Season 2011-12

SP: Étude in D-sharp minor (choreography: Nanami Abe, Natalia Bestemianova, Igor Bobrin)
FS: Romeo+Juliet (choreography: Nanami Abe, Natalia Bestemianova, Igor Bobrin)
Gala: 1) Vertigo (choreography: Nanami Abe) 2) Somebody to Love (choreography: Nanami Abe) 3) White Legend (choreography: Nanami Abe – differenf from the SP version)

Nebelhorn Trophy: SP 1st – FS 1st – Final rank 1st

Tohoku-Hokkaido Championship: SP 1st – FS 1st – Final rank 1st

GP Cup of China: SP 2nd – FS 4th – Final rank 4th

GP Rostelecom Cup: SP 2nd – FS 2nd – Final rank 1st

GP Final: SP 4th – FS 3rd – Final rank 4st

National Championship: SP 4th – FS 1st – Final rank 3rd

World Championship: SP 7th – FS 2nd – Final rank 3rd

Season 2012-13

Coach: Brian Orser and Tracy Wilson
SP: Parisienne Walkways (choreography: Jeffrey Buttle)
FS: Notre-Dame de Paris (choreography: David Wilson)
Gala: 1) Hello, I Love You (choreography: Kurt Browning) 2) Hana ni nare (choreography: Kenji Miyamoto)
I add the abbreviation WR on occasions when Hanyu set a world record for the highest score.

Finlandia Trophy: SP 2nd – FS 1st – Final rank 1st

GP Skate America: SP 1st (WR) – FS 3rd – Final rank 2nd

GP NHK Trophy: SP 1st (WR) – FS 1st – Final rank 1st

GP Final: SP 3rd – FS 2nd – Final rank 2nd

National Championship: SP 1st – FS 2nd – Final rank 1st

Four Continents Championship: SP 1st – FS 3rd – Final rank 2nd

World championship: SP 9th – FS 3rd – Final rank 4th

Season 2013-14

Since the end of this season, Ghislain Briand has been added to Brian Orser and Tracy Wilson’s list of coaches.
SP: Parisienne Walkways (choreography: Jeffrey Buttle)
FS: Romeo and Juliet (choreography: David Wilson)
Gala: 1) Étude in D-sharp minor (choreography: Nanami Abe, Natalia Bestemianova, Igor Bobrin) 2) Notre-Dame de Paris (choreography: David Wilson) 3) Story (choreography: Kenji Miyamoto) 4) Hana ni nare (choreography: Kenji Miyamaoto) 5) White Legend (choreography: Nanami Abe) 6) Romeo+Juliet (choreography: Nanami Abe, Natalia Bestemianova, Igor Bobrin)

Finlandia Trophy: SP 1st – FS 1st – Final rank 1st

GP Skate Canada: SP 3rd – FS 2nd – Final rank 2nd

GP Trophée Eric Bompard: SP 2nd – FS 2nd – Final rank 2nd

GP Final: SP 1st (WR) – FS 1st – Final rank 1st

National Championship: SP 1st – FS 1st – Final rank 1st

Olympic Games (Team Event): SP 1st – Final rank Team Japan 5th

Olympic Games: SP 1st (WR) – FS 1st – Final rank 1st

World Championship: SP 3rd – FS 1st – Final rank 1st

Season 2014-15

SP: Ballade No. 1 in G minor (choreography: Jeffrey Buttle)
FS: The Phantom of the Opera (choreography: Shae-Lynn Bourne)
– Gala: 1) Hana wa saku (choreography: Nanami Abe) 2) The Final Time Traveler (choreography: Kenji Miyamoto) 3) Parisienne Walkways (choreography: Jeffrey Buttle)

GP Cup of China: SP 2nd – FS 2nd – final rank 2nd

GP NHK Trophy: SP 5th – FS 3rd – Final rank 4th

GP Final: SP 1st – FS 1st – Final rank 1st

National Championship: SP 1st – FS 1st – Final rank 1st

World Championship: SP 1st – FS 3rd – Final rank 2nd

World Team Trophy: SP 1st – FS 1st – Unofficial rank 1st – Rank Team Japan 3rd

Season 2015-16

SP: Ballade No. 1 in G minor (choreography: Jeffrey Buttle)
FS: Seimei (choreography: Shae-Lynn Bourne)
Gala: Requiem of Heaven and Earth (choreography: Kenji Miyamoto)

Autumn Classic International: SP 1st – FS 1st – Final rank 1st

GP Skate Canada: SP 6th – FS 2nd – Final rank 2nd

GP NHK Trophy: SP 1st (WR) – FS 1st (WR) – Final rank 1st (WR)

GP Final: SP 1st (WR) – FS 1st (WR) – Final rank 1st (WR)

National Championship: SP 1st – FS 1st – Final rank 1st

World Championship: SP 1st – FS 2nd – Final rank 2nd

Season 2016-17

SP: Let’s Go Crazy (choreography: Jeffrey Buttle)
FS: Hope and Legacy (choreography: Shae-Lynn Bourne)
Gala: Notte stellata (the Swan) (choreography: David Wilson)

CS Autumn Classic International : SP 1st – FS 1st – Final rank 1st

GP Skate Canada: SP 4th – FS 1st – Final rank 2nd

GP Final: SP 1st – FS 3rd – Final rank 1st

Four Continents Championship: SP 3rd – FS 1st – Final rank 2nd

World Championship: SP 5th – FS 1st (WR) – Final rank 1st

World Team Trophy: SP 7th – FS 1st – Unofficial rank 3rd – Rank Team Japan 1st

Season 2017-18

SP: Ballade No. 1 in G minor (choreography: Jeffrey Buttle)
FS: Seimei (choreography: Shae-Lynn Bourne)
Gala: Notte stellata (The Swan) (choreography: David Wilson)

CS Autumn Classic International: SP 1st (WR) – FS 5th – Final rank 2nd

GP Rostelecom Cup: SP 2nd – FS 1st – Final rank 2nd

Olympic Games: SP 1st – FS 2nd – Final rank 1st

Season 2018-19

SP: Otoñal (choreography: Jeffrey Buttle)
FS: Origin (choreography: Shae-Lynn Bourne)
Gala: Haru yo, koi (choreography: David Wilson)

CS Autumn Classic International: SP 1st – FS 2nd – Final rank 1st

GP Helsinki: SP 1st (WR) – FS 1st (WR) – Final rank 1st (WR)

GP Rostelecom Cup: SP 1st (WR) – FS 1st – Final rank 1st

World Championhip: SP 3rd – FS 2nd (WR) – Final rank 2nd (WR)

Season 2019-20

SP: 1) Otoñal (choreography: Jeffrey Buttle) 2) Ballade No. 1 in G minor (choreography: Jeffrey Buttle)
FS: 1) Origin (choreography: Shae-Lynn Bourne) 2) Seimei (new version – choreography: SDhae-Lynn Bourne)
Gala: 1) Parisienne Walkways (choreography: Jeffrey Buttle) 2) Haru yo, koi (choreography: David Wilson) 3) Notte stellata (The Swan) (choreography: David Wilson) 4) Seimei (choreography: Shae-Lynn Bourne) 5) Hope and legacy (choreography: Shae-Lynn Bourne)

CS: Autumn Classic International: SP 1st – FS 1st – Final rank 1st

GP Skate Canada: SP 1st – FS 1st – Final rank 1st

GP NHK Trophy: SP 1st – FS 1st – Final rank 1st

GP Final: SP 2nd – FS 2nd – Final rank 2nd

National Championship: SP 1st – FS 3rd – Final rank 2nd

Four Continents Chapionship: SP 1st (WR) – FS 1st – Final rank 1st

Season 2020-21

SP: Let Me Entertain You (choreography: Jeffrey Buttle)
FS: Ten to chi to (choreography: Shae-Lynn Bourne)
Gala: 1) Haru yo, koi /choreography: David Wilson) 2) Hana wa saku (choreography: Nanami Abe)

National Championship: SP 1st – FS 1st- Final rank 1st

World Championship: SP 1st – FS 4th – Final rank 3rd

World Team Trophy: SP 2nd – FS 2nd – Unofficial rank 2nd – Rank Team Japan 3rd

Season 2021-22

SP: Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso (choreography: Jeffrey Buttle and Shae-Lynn Bourne)
FS: Ten to chi to (choreography: Shae-Lynn Bourne)
Gala: 1) Let Me Entertain You (choreography: Jeffrey Buttle) 2) Haru yo, koi (choreography: David Wilson)

National Championship: SP 1st – FS 1st – Final rank 1st

Olympic Games: SP 8th – FS 3rd – Final rank 4th

Timeless grace! 💫

A masterpiece from Yuzuru Hanyu at Beijing 2022 figure skating gala. ❄️ pic.twitter.com/5ueTA0mhCx

— Olympic Khel (@OlympicKhel) March 20, 2025

Throughout his career, Hanyu has also participated in numerous exhibitions. He has almost always been present at the final gala of the competitions he has competed in. He began competing in the gala of the National Championships, Medalist on Ice, in 2007, as the national champion in the Novice category. He certainly participated in the gala of the 2009 JGPF and 2010 JWC. Amond senior, in 2010 he did not participate in the gala of the Rostelecom Cup, where he was not invited, and due to various physical problems he did not participate in the gala of the 2012 GPF, 2013 WC (I think), 2014 Cup of China, 2014 National Championship, and 2018 Rostelecom Cup. Otherwise, he should have always participated, which is not surprising given that he almost always finished on the podium.

Regarding these shows, I tried to figure out which shows Hanyu performed in each year, how many shows each tour/show consisted of, and whether Hanyu performed in all of them. The number indicates the number of shows. I’ve written an “x” where I couldn’t find the number of shows. The list is certainly incomplete. In 2011, after the earthquake, Hanyu performed in 60 shows, and I found a lower number. Is there anything else missing? It’s possible, but I have no idea. I’ve highlighted the solo shows in yellow, and the shows where Hanyu served as chairperson in light yellow.

In addition to the programs performed in competitions or at competition galas that I have already listed, and which Hanyu has occasionally performed at shows in Japan, there are several programs that Hanyu has performed exclusively at shows in Japan. These are the ones he has performed over the years of his competitive career:

• True Love (choreography: Kenji Miyamoto)
• Ienai yo (choreography: Pasquale Camerlengo)
• Believe (choreography: Kenji Miyamoto)
• Wings of Words
• Masquerade (choreography: Shae-Lynn Bourne)
• Crystal Memories (choreography: David Wilson)
• Real Face (Coreography: Shae-Lynn Bourne)
• Raison (Choreography: David Wilson)

A very intense competitive career. Just to underscore the intensity with which Hanyu has approached skating over these 26 years, I’ll include a list of the shows he’s participated in since turning professional. For the solo shows and for Notte stellata, he didn’t just skate; he had to structure the shows, tell a story, and take care of countless other aspects, all essential to the success.

• Prologue – 5 shows between November and December 2022
• Major’s Cup – 1 show, December 2022 (there was an audience, so for me this is a performance like the ones he did in competitions gala)
• Gift – 1 show, February 2023
• Notte stellata – 3 shows, March 2023
• Stars on Ice – 10 shows, March-April 2023
• Fantasy on Ice – 12 shows, May-June 2023
• Re_Pray – 8 shows, November 2023-April 2024
• Notte stellata – 3 shows, March 2024
• Fantasy on Ice – 6 shows, May-June 2024
• Challenge – 1 show, September 2024
• Echoes of Life – 7 shows, December 2024-February 2025
• Notte stellata – 3 shows, March 2025
• The First Skate – 1 show, July 2025

To understand how intense these last three years have been, I’ve included a list of the programs skated by Hanyu. In the left column, I’ve listed the programs skated by Hanyu in competition. I’ve highlighted in yellow the programs that Hanyu has performed in full (in bold) or in part over these three years. In the center column, I’ve listed the programs from the shows during his competitive era, again highlighting which ones he performed in the last three years. In the left column, I’ve listed the new programs. Where the choreographer isn’t listed, it’s because the choreography is by Hanyu. I’ve listed some group numbers either because the choreography is by Hanyu, and therefore the creative aspect is added to the performative aspect, or because they are programs for shows where Hanyu is the chairperson. I ignored the group numbers of Fantasy on Ice, even though the main focus is on Hanyu and he has a solo part of some importance, because otherwise I would have had to consider the similar programs made in the old editions of the traditional shows in which Hanyu took part, and the information I have is incomplete.

What Hanyu has accomplished in these 26 years is incredible. And while I have no idea when it will happen, I’m sure he will amaze us again.

The Italian version is here.

The third and final part of my very long post, dedicated to what Yuzuru Hanyu has accomplished since turning professional. When I wrote the post, only two years and nine months had passed, not three, but the exact title would have been a bit ugly. And since the title I chose refers to three years, I edited the post to add some things Hanyu did in the last three months of his third year as a professional. The first part of the post, dedicated to the programs we can watch on the internet, is here. The second part is here.

Some numbers

I decided to add this section to summarize in some numbers and data what Hanyu did.

Show:

• Prologue – 5 shows between November and December 2022
• Major’s Cup – 1 show, December 2022 (there was an audience, so this is a performance like the ones he did in competitions gala)
• Gift – 1 show, February 2023
• Notte stellata – 3 shows, March 2023
• Stars on Ice – 10 shows, March-April 2023
• Fantasy on Ice – 12 shows, May-June 2023
• Re_Pray – 8 shows, November 2023-April 2024
• Notte stellata – 3 shows, March 2024 (bonus: the audience can attend two rehearsals)
• Fantasy on Ice – 6 shows, May-June 2024
• Challenge – 1 show, September 2024
• Echoes of Life – 7 shows, December 2024-February 2025
• Notte stellata – 3 shows, March 2025 (bonus: the audience can attend two rehearsals)
• The First Skate – 1 show, July 2025 (notice of the edit: I added this show to the list after I posted this text)

The total says 13 shows or tour, 61 performances. Hanyu certainly hasn’t relaxed after stepping away from the competitions, on the contrary, he works harder than before, and creates shows, or even single programs, extraordinary. Of these shows, eight were broadcast live internationally, four exist on DVD or Blu-ray. Better than nothing, even if for my tastes it’s too little. It’s not for nothing that I’m asking the streaming platforms to include Hanyu’s shows in their catalog, the solo shows and also Notte stellata. Or, if not the streaming platforms, it would be nice if Japanese televisions gave us the possibility to buy a ticket for the livestream, for Notte stellata or even for any other shows that Hanyu might participate in, because even in group programs he always gives his best, and If…, Glamorous Sky and Meteor, programs that Hanyu will hardly propose on other occasions, are wonderful.

These are the programs skated entirely or in part by Hanyu in these three years (I do not count the ones on which he simply performed a jump, such as Ten to chi to during the SharePractice). In the list I specify if it is a program created in these three seasons and, if a choreographer other than Hanyu is known, the name of the choreographer. I also count the group programs not only because Hanyu had to learn the choreography, but also because he is always in a prominent position, with the eyes of the entire audience on him. If there is an official video online, I will post the link.

• Hana ni nare
• Seimei [2018 Olympic Games]
• White Legend [2014 Olympic Games]
• Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso
• Change
• Dreamy Aspiration (new program)
• Let’s Go Crazy
• Otoñal [2019 National Championship]
• Étude in D-sharp minor
• Spartacus [2005 Asian Novice Championship]
• Hello, I Love You
• Mission: Impossible II
• Somebody to Love
• Sing, Sing, Sing
• Romeo + Juliet
• A Fleeting Dream (new program. I don’t consider A Fleeting Dream_RE as a different program, although the way Hanyu interprets the program is different)
• Haru yo, koi [2022 Olympic Games]
• Parisienne Walkways [2014 Olympic Games]
• From Russia with Love
• Sasanqua (new program)
• The Final Time Traveler
• The Firebird
• Hope and Legacy [2017 World Championship]
• One Summer’s Day (new program, choreography by David Wilson)
• Ballade No. 1 in G minor by Chopin [2018 Olympic Games]
• Let Me Entertain You [2021 World Championship]
• Ashura-chan (new program)
• The Phantom of the Opera
• Notte stellata [2018 Olympic Games]
• Boku no koto
• Conquest of Paradise (new program in collaboration with Kohei Uchimura, partly choreographed by David Wilson – an almost 20 seconds fragment without music)
• Dynamite (new program performed in the studio)
• Song of Hope (new group program choreographed by David Wilson)
• Requiem of Heaven and Earth
• All These Things That I’ve Done (technically a group program, but for his part, about a minute choreographed by himself, Hanyu is on the ice alone)
• Notre-Dame de Paris
• Ain’t no mountain high enough/Rising Heart (new group number choreographed by Jeffrey Buttle)
• If… (new program choreographed by Hanyu, with suggestions from Mikiko)
• USA (new group number choreographed by Jeffrey Buttle)
• History Maker (new group number choreographed by Jeffrey Buttle)
• Glamorous Sky (new program)
• Stars (new group number choreographed by Jeffrey Buttle)
• Gate of Living (new program new choreographed by Mikiko)
• Megalovania (new program)
• The Darkness of Eternity (new program)
• Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals (new program)
• Goliath (new program)
• Aqua’s Journey (new program)
• Carmina Burana (new program in collaboration with Mao Daichi, choreographed by Shae-Lynn Bourne and Rino Masaki – 4 minutes of the program)
• Permission to Dance (new program performed in the studio – a 10 second fragment)
• Danny Boy (new program choreographed by David Wilson – a 8 seconds fragment without music + After I wrote this post Hanyu uploaded to his channel two versions of Danny Boy that he recorded in April at the Ice Rink Sandai: full version and short version)
• Ray of Light (new group number choreographed by Jeffrey Buttle)
• Meteor (new program)
• High Pressure (new group number choreographed by Jeffrey Buttle)
• Taiko drum (in the absence of an official name I call in this way the group number choreographed by Akiko Suzuki and refined by Hanyu on the sound of taiko for the show Challenge – here we can see 28 seconds on a different music)
• Que sera sera (new group number choreographed by Akiko Suzuki and refined by Hanyu)
• Last Ambient (new program)
• First Pulse (new program – In this video we can hear the music and see some footage from the show.)
• “First Echo” and “Circulation” (new program)
• Utai IV: Reawakening (new program choreographed by Mikiko)
• Mass Destruction: Reload (new program choreographed by emmy, Mikiko and Hanyu)
• Piano Collection (new program choreographed by Jeffrey Buttle)
• Eclipse/Blue (new program)
• Gate of Steiner – Aesthetics on Ice (new program)
• Hymn of the Soul (new program)
• Bow and Arrow (new program)
• Bolero (new program in collaboration with Mansai Nomura and Shae-Lynn Bourne, Takahito Mura, Satoko Miyahara, Akiko Suzuki and Keiji Tanaka, choreographed by Shae-Lynn Bourne – at the moment you can see a minute and a half of the program here)
• Seimei (new version in collaboration with Mansai Nomura – here there is a 2:40 part of the program – here is the English version of the video)

If I haven’t lost count, there are 68 programs, more than half of which are new programs and many were choreographed by him. If we add to this the conception of four solo shows, the editing of the videos of his channel, the role he has in Notte stellata, we see that the creative effort is enormous. A creative effort that also led to the birth of a children’s book illustrated by Clamp for Gift.

This is the official website for the book Gift: https://sp.clamp-fans.com/ja/gift/

For this collaboration it was shot a video:

For Echoes of Life Hanyu wrote a short story.

The number and variety of programs can only give an idea of ​​Hanyu’s interpretative skills, refined through continuous study and continuous improvement work. In the case of the tours, those who watch all the shows are able to appreciate the changes made by Hanyu to try to improve what he offers to the public, just as when he competed he continued to perfect the programs throughout the competitive season. On a technical/athletic level, let’s look at some numbers.

A competition consists of a short program and a free program, which are skated on two different days and last less than 7 minutes in total. In Prologue the skating time is around 30 minutes, in Gift it is almost 43, more or less the same as in Re_Pray, in Echoes of Life it is almost 50 minutes. The spins in Prologue were 11, in Gift they became 16, in Re_Pray 20, Megalovania alone contains 6, in Echoes of Life there are 15, one of which is one minute long. Adding the two programs, in competition the skaters do 6 spins. And spins are more tiring than jumps.

The number of jump elements in a competition is 10, three in the short program (for the best skaters it is a quadruple+triple combination, another quadruple and a 3A), and 7 in the free skate (three combinations, only one can be of three jumps, at least a 3A, with one exception the best skaters do 4 or 5 quadruples, the others are triple jumps). In each solo show there are at least 4 quadruples, several 3A and several other triples, and the number of jumps with at least three rotations is higher than the number of triple or quadruple jumps that a skater can perform by adding the two competition programs. And then there is everything else.

These are the different types of jumps performed by Hanyu after his turn to professionalism (I’m not considering how many times he did them, only the variety of jumps and combinations, and I’m not even considering the transition he often does immediately before or after the jump):

• 1Lo delayed
• 1A delayed
• 2T with arms outstretched by choreographic choice
• 3T
• 3S
• 3Lo
• 3Lo+1Eu+3S
• 3F
• 3Lz
• 3Lz+2T+2T
• 3A
• 3A+2T rippon
• 3A+3T
• 3A+3T+3Lo
• 3A+1Eu+3S
• 3A+1Eu+3S+1Eu+3S
• 4T
• 4T+2T
• 4T+3T
• 4T+1Eu+3S (we last saw it in February 2025)
• 4T+1Eu+3S+1Eu+3S
• 4T+3A
• 4S
• 4S+3T (we last saw it in March 2025)
• 4Lo (he doesn’t perform it in shows, but we last saw it in March 2025)
• 4Lo+3T
• 4Lo+3A (we last saw it in July 2024)
• 4Lz (March 2025)
• 4A<< (we last saw it in December 2022)

Jumps are not the most important thing for me, but Hanyu is still able to do four different types of quadruples, and three in difficult combinations, in addition to having completed combinations that in competition are very rare or prohibited by the rules. And while it is true that he fell a few times, it is also true that he managed to complete at least one date in all the shows (with the exception of Gift, which had only one date) without making mistakes.

Television and other commitments

Aside from skating, whether it’s shows or videos, Hanyu has done a lot of other things. One not surprising thing is that he has worked with his sponsors. Some of them have ended their collaborations. ANA is one of them, which is a pity, because they had made several very nice videos. Collaborations with Nishikawa Down and Sekkisei have also ended, while those with Ajinomoto, Citizen, Phiten and Towa Pharmaceutical continue. Two new sponsors, Haier and Aqua, have made commercials at Ice Rink Sendai:

Another new sponsor is Gucci, for which Hanyu first made a short video

and then the classic “what’s in my bag” in collaboration with Elle:

For Gucci Hanyu has been the protagonist of two photographic exhibitions, YUZURU HANYU: A JOURNEY BEYOND DREAMS featured by ELLE and In Focus: Yuzuru Hanyu Lensed by Jiro Konami (here you can see a short video). He has also been interviewed by newspapers that do not normally write about figure skating such as Elle Japan, GQ, Neewsweek, Brutus, Ginza, Goethe, Kateigaho, Toyo Keizai and SO-EN.

発売中の『GQ JAPAN』6月号 特別版の表紙には、羽生結弦が登場。

撮影の様子をおさめたショートムービーをお届け！https://t.co/Hr2sgbhAbg#GQJAPAN #羽生結弦 #YuzuruHanyu #GUCCI #グッチ pic.twitter.com/IusVYDtv1W

— GQ JAPAN (@GQJAPAN) May 2, 2024

Another beautiful video was published on Gucci’s official site.

Sometimes magazines that did a photoshoot on Hanyu published a behind the scenes video. This is the one from Figure Skating Life Extra.

🎥【メイキング動画公開！】 8/29発売 フィギュアスケートLife Extra『羽生結弦 PROFESSIONAL Season2』#羽生結弦 さんが魅せる変幻自在の動きや表情。カメラマンが切り取った瞬間がどんな形になるのか、誌面をお楽しみに✨
Photo: 矢口亨
Styling: 柳翔吾
Hair&Make: 柿崎友美#YuzuruHanyuPRO2 pic.twitter.com/wAArNJKRJe

— フィギュアスケートLife (@fskating_Life) August 27, 2024

This is the one from Aera. The photographer is Mika Ninagawa.

Another video uploaded by Aera is here.

On September 29, 2022, Hanyu attended the ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations between China and Japan.

In December of the same year, he was awarded the Kikuchi Kan Award for contributing to the knowledge of Japanese culture, although, due to his commitment to Prologue, Hanyu was unable to attend the ceremony and sent a short video to thank for the award. The awards he has received are numerous, among other things in 2023 he was named “Person of the Year” by the Public Relations Society of Japan and received the Special Achievement Awards from the Japan Skating Federation.

Hanyu has been included in several prestigious lists, he was among the most searched athletes on Google in 2022, among the most representative Olympic athletes of the 21st century drawn up by ESPN, among the 10 most important athletes according to the Association of Professional Journalists and among the 30 extraordinary leaders under 30 of the Asia Pacific Young Leaders in the category “Culture/sports/arts”.

He has also appeared on numerous television shows. The most important for continuity and its meaning is that of News Every, where he plays the role of Special Messenger. On several occasions, Hanyu spoke about natural disasters, disaster prevention, and visited areas that had suffered a disaster. Some of these broadcasts were uploaded as videos on YouTube with English subtitles.

The Chinese version of the video is here.

The Chinese version of this video is here.

Additional videos of his appearances on News Every, in Japanese only, were uploaded on their YouTube channel in August 2022, December 2022, January 2023, March 2023, July (1 and 2) 2023, and December 2023. This list is not complete, you can find all the videos about Hanyu uploaded on the channel here.

The News Every channel also includes a video dedicated to the conception of Notte stellata 2023 together with Kohei Uchimura:

Hanyu is very active in all natural disasters, not just Sendai or Tohoku. He went to Wajima, bringing attention to Ishikawa Prefecture, months after the earthquake, after he had donated money immediately (as he had donated money after the earthquake in Turkey), and made posters and billboards to help tourism in the region. With Re_Pray he went to Saga, revitalizing the region. And he did not forget Hokkaido, which was hit by an earthquake in 2018.

Returning to Sendai, we can see the importance that his city has for him in the video, this one subtitled in English, that he made as an ambassador for tourism of the city.

The Chinese version of this video is here, the Korean version of this video is here, and an English short version of the video, without audio, is here (I went in all these places, although it was not during Tanabata so I didn’t see the streamers).

He has also worked to improve skating opportunities in Sendai, donating very large sums to the Ice Rink and supporting the renovation project of the Xebio Arena, which is scheduled to reopen next July.

Hanyu has appeared on countless television programs, but unfortunately in most cases those programs in which Hanyu has participated are not visible outside of Japan, even if sometimes on YouTube you can find videos uploaded by fans, clips of shows, some programs, and even parts of appearances on television programs, sometimes with English subtitles. I am certainly forgetting some, for those that I remember I am inserting the link to an official video or to one of the numerous articles dedicated to that program. Hanyu has met Shuzo Matsuoka on several occasions, the first time right after his farewell to competitions. In the immediate aftermath, he also gave an interview to Tokyo TV, available online in Japanese divided into part 1, part 2 and part 3.

In September 2022, Hanyu was a guest on the local show Saturday Watchin! The television later uploaded the video to its YouTube channel divided into part 1, part 2 and part 3. The same happened with Oh! Bandess. In this case we have part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5. Hanyu was a guest on the same show also in March 2023 and in the following two years, always on a date close to that of the Tohoku Earthquake. Another show in which he appeared is Teremasa.

These are regular broadcasts, not specials created especially for him, and which he went to as a guest, Yuming’s radio show All Night Nippon Gold, Kohaku Uta Gassen where he served as a judge on December 31, 2022, Shinya Kiyozuka’s Classic TV, Tetsuko Kuroyanagi’s Tetsuko’s Room, Gen Hoshino’s Ogensan to Issho, the Switch Interview with Kochi Domoto in October 2023, and Mansai Nomura’s Lucky Bags. This video is from when Hanyu was a guest of Tetsuko Kuroyanagi in Tetsuko’s Room:

While all of these broadcasts were aimed at a Japanese audience, we do have an official English translation of the conversation that took place in 2024 between Hanyu and Shigesato Itoi, the creator of the video game Mother.

There is no official translation into any Western language of the two autobiographical books published by Hanyu in 2023, following those he published in 2012 and 2016.

As far as I know, there are only two Japanese publications with English text, a photo book and a perpetual calendar. In both cases, the photos are accompanied by short captions in Japanese and English. I have chosen not to list most of the numerous photo books or magazines focused on Hanyu, not even the ones I have bought, because they are so many publications and this post is far too long. In this case, however, I will make an exception because it is a sign of the openness of a Japanese publisher to an international audience. The book, and the calendar, are called G.O.A.T.

As I mentioned earlier, Hanyu briefly visited Canada in the spring of 2023. There are several photos of skaters training in Toronto and a short video posted by Tracy Wilson to testify to this trip.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Tracy Wilson-Kinsella (@tracywilsonk)

Hanyu was also the protagonist of two events in the Metaverse, events that could be accessed from all over the world. In 2023, for his birthday, there were 35,000 of us. Last March, in three days, there were 130,000 of us who entered the Metaverse. He was there incognito but, on both occasions, those who were present were able to watch two programs from his last tour, Ashura-chan and Megalovania the first time and Mass Destruction and Hymn of the Soul (if I remember correctly) the second time.

At least one article by Hanyu and a conversation are noteworthy. The article was published in Bungeishunju, an extremely prestigious journal to which important figures in Japanese culture contribute, and for an athlete to be asked to contribute is decidedly rare. The conversation, published in installments by Deep Edge Plus, took place between Hanyu and philosopher Rei Nagai, author of Underwater Philosophy, and it’s another thing that doesn’t happen very often for an athlete to converse with a philosopher.

One last thing, even if Hanyu did nothing special for this project and, simply, the director focused (also) on him. Hanyu is one of the protagonists of the film Beijing 2022, dedicated to the 2022 Olympic Games. The film won the Guirlande d’Honneur at the Milano International Sport Movies & TV Festival in 2023.

It has been three years since Hanyu turned pro. I haven’t listed everything he has done, all the photoshoots, TV appearances, interviews, sponsorships. What Hanyu is doing is amazing, and I’m sure he will continue to amaze us in the future.