I’m a little annoyed from people that search continuously to lower the others at their same level. Sorry, in some cases it’s impossible, some people’s dignity is so low that for them it’s impossible to lower the others so much. And in insulting others they lower only themselves.

I wouldn’t care if they weren’t in a position to influence others with their repeated nonsense. If someone with scarce respect for the others lies and insult, trying to hurt someone who is important for me… I suppose you’ve already understand. I write.

Nathan Chen’s win in the 2021 World Championship is right, with what the skaters has done, he deserved the gold. I see no problem in writing the truth. Chen is a strong skater. Said this, Yuzuru Hanyu deserved the silver. If he was scored rightly in the short program, his advantage on Yuma Kagiyama was higher, and even with his imperfect free program, he would have remained second. Even the free skate was scored in the wrong way, go to see the two combinations, and their GOEs, if you don’t trust me. There was also an asthma problem, but we can’t say what could be happened if Hanyu was healthy, so I go on. The competition is ended. We all know the results. Now, it’s so difficult to praise the skater that you want to praise without insulting anyone? For Philip Hersh the answer must be yes, it’s really difficult. He has written this (thanks to who posted the screenshots, so I don’t need to go on his site):

For most people to chase a dream is right, for Hanyu is hubris.

[Edit: The ironic thing is that Hersh didn’t always think so. I recently came across one of his articles from 2016. At that time Hanyu had only won one Olympic gold and only one World Championship gold, not two, he had not completed the Super Slam and the world record count had reached 10, not 19. Since that time it has practically doubled everything. In his article on the story of the quadruple jumps, Hersh wrote

Hanyu said trying a quad axel in a program has been his dream since he began skating.

This means that Hersh knows that Hanyu hasn’t suddenly gone mad. He knows that he talked about the quadruple Axel well before he won at PyeongChang and that it was even a dream he had when he was still a child. So for someone who has won everything (and who has won almost everything twice), what’s strange if he is no longer interested in the goals that attract all the others and decides to pursue what has been a dream of him since when was he a child?]

To better understand the uniqueness of Hanyu’s path, I look at it more closely. Let’s start with what the Olympic medallist has done after their medal:

These are all the Men’s Olympic medallist from 1948. I’ve written the year in which they won their medal, the colors say which medal was. For example, Dick Button won a gold in 1948. He competed in intermational competitions in the following three years. These years are marked with a “X”. In 1952 he won another Olympic gold. After, he retired. He didn’t compete in 1953, so there aren’t other X. Hans Gerschweiler won a silver in 1948, and retired. There are no X next to the year. So, if there are one or more X after an Olympic medal, the skater continued to skate, otherwise no.

For some skater there are strange signs. In 1961 the World Championship wasn’t held ouf of respect to the American skaters died in the crash of the Sabena Fligt 548, I’ve written “nd” for Karol Divin and Donald Jackson, that would partecipated if the competition were held. Brian Boitano and Viktor Petrenko retired after their gold, but they wanted to return to the competition. The rule was changed because of Boitano’s efforts, but at first they stopped after their gold. For Yuzuru Hanyu and Shoma Uno I’ve put a “?” for the next year, they’re active skaters, they will try to go to the Olympic Games, but we can’t say in advance what will happen.

I hope that it’s all clear. Out of 46 skaters, 18, the 39%, retired the year of their Olympic medal. Some of them didn’t go even to the World Championship a month after the Olympic Games. Four skated for a year and retired, five retired after another year. Some, as Patrick Chan, took a year off. Of 46 skaters, only 19 (I’m counting also Shoma Uno), the 41%, continued to compete up to a second Olympic Games. Among them, only 9 won another medal. Almost all retired. We have Boitano and Petrenko that returned, without a new medal, Elvis Stojko (no third medal for him), Evgeni Plushenko (another silver, and he would liked to try in 2014 but an injury stopped him) and Yuzuru Hanyu.

We understand how incredible is what Hanyu is doing? Almost all retired because they can’t find any more motivations. Only Petrenko (after a year of pause), Stojko, Plushenko and Hanyu, four skaters among 46 (0,9%) continued to skate after a second Olympic medal, and Hanyu is the only one who won two gold.

And if this isn’t enough, I’ve checked what Hanyu won. In this table there are all the competition he won, split in four group. First the Novice competitions. These aren’t important if we compare them to the others, but it’s nice to remember that Hanyu won the Japan Championship in all the categories. Second are the Junior competition. He was among the Junior only for two years, but he won all that he could win. The third are, by a lot, the most important, the senior competition. He won at least a gold in all the competitions, the silver are fewer, the bronzes really few. The fourth are the team competition. In the World Team Trophy Japan is competitive because there are two Men and two Ladies for nation, in the Olympic Games, with only one skater among Men and one among Ladies, Japan isn’t competitive. The Team Olympic Event is the only medal he never won, but a team event in figure skating isn’t so important. Count for the nations, for the final medal table, not for the skaters, independently of what can write some journalist.

How important are these results if we watch not only him but the world? I’ve watched the results of the skaters that won at least a medal in the World Championship in Hanyu’s senior years (from season 2010-2011). The block of skaters on the right won an Olympic medal after the ISU judging system was adopted, I’ve added them for a wider sight. Among them there are also Brian Joubert and Johnny Weir, I’ll explain after why they are there. I start to watch all the lines of my table.

First line is National championship junior. I don’t know for three skaters, so I’ve written a “?”. Almost all won the competition.
Second line, Grand Prix Final. Win for Nathan Chen, Yuzuru Hanyu, Boyang Jin, Takahiko Kozuka, Shoma Uno and Evan Lysacek. When Evgeni Plushenko was junior, the competition didn’t exist.
Third line, Junior World Championship. Win for Hanyu, Kozuka, Daisuke Takahashi, Uno, Vincent Zhou, Plushenko and Johnny Weir.
Fourth line, National Championship. Almost all won.
Fifth line, Grand Prix Final. Win for Patrick Chan, Chen, Hanyu, Takahashi, Brian Joubert, Stephane Lambiel, Lysacek and Plushenko.
Sixth line, Continental Championship, European or Four Continents according to the nationality of the skater. Win for Chan, Chen, Javier Fernandez, Hanyu, Jin, Takahashi, Ten, Uno, Jeffrey Buttle, Joubert, Lysacek and Plushenko.
Seventh line, World Championship. Win for Chan, Chen, Fernandez, Hanyu, Takahashi, Buttle, Joubert, Lambiel, Lysacek and Plushenko.
Eight line, Olympic Games. Win for Hanyu, Lysacek and Plushenko.

Have you seen who is the only one that is in every line? Hanyu. I can accept Plushenko because the Grand Prix Final didn’t exist when he was junior, and I don’t know about the Junior Russian Championship (if he never win, it’s because he was very young when he become a senior). Only two skaters won all.

The lower part of my screenshot is a little more unusual.
First line: podium in all the Grand Prix competition, including the final. Only Plushenko won more medals than Hanyu. Five skaters have an asterisk. One of their medal came in the 2020-2021 season, in the domestic event. I’ve counted the medals, but I’m not sure that it’s right to count them. Since they were local events, the field of participants was really small and skaters with important international experience behind them were few.
Second line, the most unusual. Where the skaters won? In only one competition? Tahakashi won seven of his 19 medals at the NHK Trophy, but never won one at the Bofrost Cup (held until 2004) or in the Internationaux de France. Patrick Chan won seven of his 19 medals at Skate Canada, but none in the NHK Trophy. The only who won at least a medal in all the Grand Prix competition are Hanyu, Joubert, Plushenko and Weir, and this is the reason for which I’ve included Joubert an Weir in my table. It’s easier to go always in the same place, go arond the world and collect medals everywhere is more demanding.
Third line: number of the medals at the World Championship. Hanyu, together to Jan Hoffman, is the skater who won more medal from 1947, I’ve written about this here.
Fourth line: medals at the Olympic Games. Beside the winner of the gold now I’ve written the names of Chan, Fernandez, Takahashi, Ten, Uno, Buttle and Lambiel. All great skaters, but who won the gold is most important.
Fifth line: number of world records. We can count only from 2004-2005 season, before there was the 6.0 system for judging the competitions. The man who established more world record is Hanyu, 19 (12 with the +3/-3 system, 7 with the +5/-5 system). Second, with 13 record, is Plushenko.
Sixth line: Super Slam, that is win in Grand Prix final (junior and senior), World Championship (junior and senior), Continental Championship (European or Four Continents) and Olympic Games. Only one man in this line: Hanyu, even if I can concede to Plushenko that perhaps he too could have accomplished this result.
Seventh line: first skater to land a jump. 4T Kurt Browning; 4S Timothy Goebel, 4 Lz Brandon Mroz, 4F Shoma Uno, 4Lo Yuzuru Hanyu. Only Uno and Hanyu, among the skaters in my table, were the first to jump a quad. For a broader picture, Browning win four World Championship, zero Olympic medals in three participation, Goebel won an Olympic bronze and two World silver, never a gold, the best results for Mroz are a silver and a bronze in two Grand Prix competition. I can add something other, things as the first man to do 4T+1Eu+3F, or the only one to do the sequence 4T+3A, but if I watch all the combination the discours will became too long.

So, Hanyu has won all that he could win. He doesn’t have to prove nothing. He has won all, and has won more than the other skaters. And he is competing when almost all the others retired after one or two Olympic medals (two medals, not two gold, and only few skaters won more than one medal). How can he find the motivations to push continuously himself? I don’t know, but he is stronger than anyone else, he has established it in all these years. So, if he want to land the quadruple Axel, why not? He can do all he want, we can only admire his strongness, his intelligence, is talent and the beauty in all that he does.

In truth there will be a reason to avoid the quadruple Axel: his base value is ridiculous. I totally agree with Roman Sadowski:

So now I wach how much ridicolous is the base value of the 4A. At first I compare the old values with the new ones.

Comparing the + 3/-3 system with the + 5/-5 system with the related GOEs, the maximum value of a quadruple Axel has increased by only 0.15 points, the same growth that occurred for the double Axel.:

The double jumps are considered to be much more difficult than single jumps, to the point that their base value is increased by more than three times as soon as an extra lap is added. The transition from double to triple is rewarded a little less, but also for the jump whose the increase is lower – the Axel – the value has more than doubled. With quadruples there is an increase which, in proportion, continues to decrease, to the point that for the only jump that has never yet been performed, the increase is minimal.

For some inexplicable reason, while a double Axel is considered much more difficult than a double Lutz, with the difference between the two jumps reaching 1.80 points, and the difference between triple Axel and triple Lutz is huge, with a difference of 3.15 points, a quadruple Axel shouldn’t be too difficult compared to a quadruple Lutz since the difference is only 1.50 points.

Does this make sense to spend so much energy in a quadruple Axel with this values? No, if we watch only the numbers no. Bur if for a man who won all, who could have already retired knowing that he is the GOAT (1 and 2), this is a dream and the reason to continue to fight, I’ll support him in his dreaming.