As for Shoma Uno, Yuma Kagiyama, Nathan Chen, Jason Brown, Donovan Carrillo and Deniss Vasiljevs, I watched Yuzuru Hanyu’s Short Program in Beijing at 25% speed. For Hanyu, as for Uno, Kagiyama, Chen and Brown I got a lot of help from the extraordinary analysis of Roseline Winter and Elisa, so it is a more detailed analysis than the one I did, in total autonomy, for Carrillo and Vasiljevs.
Roseline and Elisa also watched Juhnwan Cha’s SP, and it’s worth it. I don’t think I will dwell on Cha too, this kind of look takes time, but the program deserves to be admired and I don’t think there is all this difference with Jason Brown, much less that it is inferior, speaking of PCS, to the Chen’s, Kagiyama’s and Uno’s programs. I remind you that you can find some explanations on the components here, while I have looked at the way in which the first four of the final ranking perform the crossovers here.
To this program – Japanese national championship version, but if in Beijing the salchow is missing and the landing of the jump of the flying spin is not perfectly controlled, for the rest in Beijing there is some more transition – Alessandra Montrucchio dedicated a wonderful analysis from the point of view of a dancer. You can find it, in Italian and English, on Elena’s blog. The Japanese translation was made by Nymphea.
0:38 start. Hanyu remains motionless for 7 seconds, until 0:45, then suddenly turns on himself, spreading his arms. A pause little over a second, then he presses on the ice with both feet to spread them apart and make a pivot. Carrillo also started with a pivot, but the quality is by no means comparable. Hanyu’s pivot, done without the slightest effort perceptible, lasts two turns, and the line he traces on the ice, the line of his body, is of geometric perfection.
Hanyu finishes the pivot and gives himself a single push. Only one. If you watch the video as it should be watched, at normal speed and with the music, you see that his movements are pure, nothing more or nothing less of what is needed. The moves are as pure as the notes, and they fit together perfectly. With that push Hanyu do a spirals for 3 seconds, at first with his free leg fully extended back and the torso tilted, in a position for which he needs a good sense of balance, then he straightens up. The pose is always very elegant.
I really would like to see Chen, or Kagiyama, or Uno hold this position. Or simply reach this position. With the same perfection of the body.
Or even do the next. Of course, this is a simpler position, the center of gravity does not create problems, but the line of the body, leg, back and arm, is perfect, the free leg, shoulders and hands absolutely relaxed. In a glide that lasts three seconds, after a single push and with a more challenging position right before this.
Immediately after there is a bracket, from image 8 of the previous screenshot, then a ina bauer. Do you see how much is body is straight? Straight, and at the same time soft, relaxed. There is never an impression of rigidity.
At this point he does a crossover, the first crossover of the program. There are only six in the entire program, never two in a row, details of which I am sure thanks to the analysis of Roseline and Elisa. They are really much better than me at analyzing programs. And how Hanyu does the crossover he needs to gain speed? Do he struggle to do it? Not at all, his body is completely relaxed, as we seen in the glide immediately after.
It would need no more to see the abysmal difference between Hanyu’s skating skills and those of anyone else, but this is an extraordinary program and must be admired until the end. In screenshots 6-8 of the image above Hanyu makes a mohwak, and we can see his elegance also in the mohawk.
0:59, second crossover, this time forward. The television shot gives us a strange effect, in my opinion not very beautiful, but the leg is perfectly stretched back and the torso erect. The problem is the shot, not Hanyu’s gesture.
After a three there is a crossunder, something not very different from a crossover. It’s still a push, Hanyu is looking for speed, but he isn’t looking for it with a run. He pushes, and then does something else, then pushes again a little. And the crossunder is a smaller gesture than the crossover, less effective in giving speed, but in which the effort is less evident.
Effort? But what effort? We can see all the effort with Uno and Chen, Hanyu instead turns backwards, with his head and back straight and his shoulders relaxed, the attitude of one who takes a quiet walk and turns to look sideways at something which caught his attention.
And immediately after, in screenshot 4 of the previous image, between one push and another, Hanyu stretches out. Leg and arms. It’s just a detail, but it’s something that enhances the step, makes it beautiful. In the post dedicated to Vasiljevs I reported a sentence by Jenny Mast,
You can do something simple as a three turn and you can do it in a beautiful deep edge in, deep edge out, with all the extensions and alignments and that falls under the quality of the transition.
A crossunder isn’t a three, but there is way and way to push. There is Hanyu’s way, and then there is Chen’s way.
Or Kagiyama’s way.
Or even Uno’s way.
After a chasse Hanyu does one (I repeat, one) crossover, and here we see him really pushing. Some push is necessary, without speed the skaters cannot perform either the jumps or the spins, but there is a way and a way to push. What he bends are his legs, not (so much) his back.
For all four of them I start to watch from the moment they start their run.
Chen does a twizzle, then a hop (0:58), a three, a mohawk, two crossovers, turns twice, does a chasse, three crossover (the one in my screenshot is the second one), turns, does a glide, then turns again, does a crossed step, turns on two feet, does a chasse, a mohawk, a three and at 1:15 (after 17 seconds) there is the 4F. He basically did nothing, there is some variety, but also some consecutive crossover, and in the crossover of my screenshot his back is 29 degrees off the ice. He is making a tremendous effort, and we see it all.
Uno makes a three (1:20), a chasse, three crossovers (I have immortalized the second, at 1:23), something that has a flat edge at the end and that could be a choctaw like a mohawk, a crossover, a crossed step, a mohawk, a chasse, a mohawk, a three, then there is the 4F (1:31). That’s a total of 11 seconds of run. His back is tilted at 45 °.
With Kagiyama I start watching from the end of a twizzle (0:35). Followed by a crossover, a hop, a mohawk, two crossovers, a mohawk, a crossunder, which is the one in my screenshot, because Kagiyama’s backward crossovers are framed in such a way as not to allow us to see the inclination of his back. In crossunder the skater pushes with one foot, not two, so the movement is less accentuated, the push less strong, and the effort of the skater less evident. Then a choctaw, two steps, one of which crossed, a mohawk, a three, then the the 4S (0:46). That’s 11 seconds. The inclination of his back is 53 °.
For Hanyu I flipped screenshot 4 of the previous bigger screenshot, so that he goes in the same direction of the other skaters. This is the only crossover made by Hanyu in the fragment of the program that I watch, and it is preceded by a three (1:00), a crossunder, so at 1:04 there is my crossover. After there are two mohawks, a twizzle, an outside spread eagle, a mohawk, a three and another mohawk, at 1:12 there is the salchow. He needs speed, and he takes it like that. I watched 12 seconds, but what’s inside? What’s in those 8 seconds between the crossover and the jump? The inclination of his back is 48 °.
Hanyu is the one who does the fewest crossovers, crossunderers and push of various kinds, and together with Kagiyama he is the one who has the best position. I wrote what his steps and turns are. Now let’s look at them. At 1:07 (from screenshot 5), after a mohawk, he does a twizzle.
1:08 outside spread eagle. In the inside spread eagle the skater leans forward, in the outside spread eagle he leans backward. It is a position in which the skater feels less stable, especially if he tilts his back back like Hanyu does, and which is therefore more difficult to maintain.
I repeat: how beautiful is his position? How relaxed is he? Do you remember Jenny Mast? The video is this:
From 0:43:
So we must have continuity of movement from one element to another. Common mistakes as we all know is that is as we have a few steps, skaters think that they’ve checked that requirement and now it’s time to get ready for the element. They go back to looking like maybe they’re in practice. They do the element, they come out, they do a little step, and they get ready, stop doing transitions, it’s time to get ready, they’re setting up, do the next element, and the pattern continues. We need to recognize the difference between those who have taken the risk… because it is a risk to have continuous movements from one element to another, that is seamless. They can do it with variety, ideally with difficulty, quality
And, from 2:02
Common mistakes is that we automatically put transitions as the lowest score. […] But it would be very interesting if you have an event where the opportunity is where transitions should have been the highest score.
Judges, have you listened to this seminar?
Then Hanyu does a mohawk, a three, another mohawk and the salchow.
Again: do we see how relaxed his body is? And I didn’t deliberately try to make screenshots good for him and bad for others, for all I looked for the ones where the position is clearly visible. Which position they have is related to the way in which they skate.
The salchow went as it went, Hanyu’s blade went into a hole in the ice and the jump was gone. I’ve already written about it here. Let’s see first the very relaxed body position, it doesn’t look like it’s preparing a quadruple at all, and then the flight phase.
The salchow is not there, Hanyu has lost 9.70 of base value, but with the GOE his 4S often exceeds 14.00 points. I don’t like it, but that’s how it went. But… did he lose the flow? Any transitions? Did he get out of the role he was playing? Did his program turn out to be unbalanced? Have he lost his connection with music? The answer is no, to all questions. His components shouldn’t have been affected, and the fact that most of the judges gave him low marks is a serious mistake, one that heavily influenced the result of the competition.
What did Hanyu do after the landing? Another outside spread eagle, even moving his arm to catch a note, because he never left the part he was playing, and his program is a continuous flow, in which he takes care of even the smallest details.
At the exit of the spread eagle Hanyu turns with a double three enriched by choreographic movements of upper part of the body and the arms, at the end of which he stretches again.
Yes, I really believe that I will dedicate a post to the positions of balance and the extension of the body. I add a detail: both arms are backwards, this position is even more difficult than the one we have seen before.
The movement, and this phase of the program, ends with another pivot. The choreography is brilliant, the interpretation sublime.
We can’t see it from the screenshots, but obviously the arms movements are on the music, with a different tempo for the moves linked to the different tempo of the music. After a brief stop Hanyu push and start the second part of the program. For a moment the TV frame is too close and when he comes forward, lowering, it loses him.
Toe push, three, euler – often skaters do a half turn hop, but Hanyu doesn’t do a half turn, he does one, this is an euler (screenshot 2-4). I remember that an Euler, only when used in combinations between two listed jumps, becomes a listed jump (1Eu) with the value indicated in the SOV. If the euler is isolated, is considered a choreographic passage. Immediately after there is a choctaw.
Here comes the part where Hanyu runs the most, the one before the combination, 4T+3T. There are two crossovers separated by a hop, a crossunder, three mohawks, another hop and a couple of threes before what is the traditional preparation of a toe loop with another three. The take off takes place after 12 seconds, less than the time needed by Chen for the solo 4F. They are all simple steps, but the posture is elegant, there is variety, no two steps in a row are the same, and there are some simple choreographed arm movements. Even if he is looking for speed, we do not perceive this phase as only a run.
Below, in screenshot 7, Hanyu is doing the first of two crossover before the combination. Most of the time his back is straight, showing no fatigue. Here it is tilted – however not as much as that of Chen or Uno – but his head is also pointing downwards: it is a precise choreographic choice.
I am realizing that there are a lot of screenshots. My blog is starting to complain about the images, it tells me that I load too much of them and that they are often too heavy, so I’m trying to avoid problems by cutting them a little, even if it means losing the reference points within the rink. But with Hanyu the work is really long. I took a lot of screenshots, and since my screenshots are related to the steps and turns made by the skaters (but on the long glides I took several moments just to show the length), it means that Hanyu is always doing something. Maybe it’s just a detail, a push that he enriches with a stretch, so for something in which another skater received a screenshot, he received two, one for the push and one for the stretch. So this is a really long post.
4T+3T. The second jump is in the rippon version. A skater who does a rippon jump has to control a body that extends more vertically, and this makes the jump more difficult, but the position of the arms up, and not around the body, makes the body thinner, and that makes rotating easier. They are two different techniques, some skaters prefer one, others prefer the other. When a skater, like Hanyu, is able to do both versions of the jump, it means that he has an extraordinary body control. His reference points change, yet his combination, this rippon version and the one with his arms around the body in the short program of the 2021 World Championship, are both perfect.
The size of the jumps must be taken with some caution. In Beijing they did not use Icescope but another system, which finds lower values. The measurements of Beijing are not comparable with those of the other competitions but only between them. Of those few quadruple toe loops whose measurements were provided, the highest was that of Boyang Jin (who, however, did one of the shorter jumps), followed by Hanyu’s. The longest was that of Yuma Kagiyama (slightly higher than the average), followed by that of Hanyu. It is confirmed that Hanyu’s jumps are high and wide.
Compared to the National Championship, Hanyu worked on the exit of the combination. In Saitama, depending on the camera angle, I liked what I see or not. Here he makes two rockers. So, because he can. And he take my breath away for the beauty of the movement. Alessandra has analyzed it, and also the 3A. You can read the Italian text and the English translation in Elena’s blog, the Japanese translation in Nympea’s blog.
Already during the flight phase Hanyu appears relaxed, as if he were not doing anything in particular, with a straight body and soft arms. He lifts the arms up, but he doesn’t hold them as tense as someone who needs this movement to find balance. No, he is dancing, and when he lands, he continues to dance.
After, in the screenshot below, he suddenly stops, takes a breath (it is an artistic breath, it is not he who needs to breathe), makes two pushes and enters the spin.
First spin.
This is the flying spin. Hanyu does not control the landing of the entrance jump, he traveled, but it is a problem of the GOE of the element, not of the PCS. I’ll be back on the GOE on another occasion.
A three, and a second after the end of the spin he is already back in the part with an ina bauer on which he raises an arm.
Several easy steps (another three, a crossed step, a mohawk)
a rocker because yes (screenshot 4-7)
Crossunder and hop. Not a simple hop, but with a movement of the feet (screenshot 2), the position of which is reversed. Brown does it too (although Brown does a more difficult split jump more often), Kagiyama does it (forward, not backward as Hanyu), Chen does one at the end of the step sequence after pretending to do one at the beginning (in the first case his movement is different, his is more a jumped step, made to make a scene without really doing anything in the least difficult), Uno does not. Uno’s hops are all half-turn, but he doesn’t even try to move his feet.
Some push, he need speed, but, again, there aren’t two steps alike in a row. There are six seconds in which there are two threes, a chochtaw, a mohawk, a chasse, a crossover and a crossed step. This is Hanyu’s concept of running. For only six second. And after?
Do he jump at this point? No. What he’s going to do is a triple axel, and it’s since he was 16 that he stopped doing simple entrances on the triple axel. A triple axel that everyone knows five seconds in advance is coming even if we he had never seen that program before? This is something for someone else, not for him. And so… backward crossrolls. So, just to test his sense of balance. And to put it to the test even better, the steps are accompanied by very accentuated arm moves.
Only at this point Hanyu does his usual back counter and the triple axel. I repeat. His usual back counter and triple axel. For him it is normal, for others it is not. Kevin Aymoz is the only one who sometimes does a back counter before the triple axel, the quality of execution is quite different. But for the judges this is obviously a usual entry, even if only two skaters in the world do it, and they forget to count it in the GOE.
As I have already explained for the combination, the system for measuring jumps used in Beijing gives lower values than Icescope. As far as we know, the highest jump was Nikolaj Majorov’s (for him the length was also good, over the average), followed by Hanyu’s jump. The longest jump was Hanyu’s. With this preparation and take off. And with a landing that can be seen in screenshot 9 and at which I look better.
The left arm is bent. Spreading the arms help stabilize the jumps, control the landings. Widening just one, making an asymmetrical gesture, destabilizes the jump. It makes it much more difficult to control the gesture, only a skater who has an impeccable technique on that jump, who has extraordinary skating skills and who considers the musical interpretation of every moment of the program fundamental, can do it. And only if he has also an extraordinary courage. Skating skills: 10.00. Interpretation: 10.00. This landing would be enough for these marks, but of course there is also everything else.
While I’m there, this is Elisa’s comment:
After that landing, what does Hanyu do? He raises his arms, always asymmetrically, just because, and does a twizzles, so he tests his sense of balance a little more, aided by the arms that still unbalance him a little, he risk to loses some speed because it’s what usually happen with a twizzle (but Hanyu isn’t an usual skater), then does a push, only one, and if we are distracted for a fraction of a second, we don’t even see it, and enters the second spin. If he miss the triple axel (I would like to see the skaters who won the Olympic medals do a double axel like this, I do not ask to them to do a triple), the spin disappears. But how much courage does it take him to present a succession of steps, turns and elements like this one?
Second spin.
Step sequence. As with the other skaters, I limit myself to a few screenshots on steps or turns that are not related to the level of the sequence. All the skaters do those, everyone wants the level. But what do they do when there is nothing that forces them to do something, beyond the indications relating to the components?
Lunge (there was another one at the beginning of the step sequence, but the TV direction decided not to show it to us). There are a lot of moves more difficult than a lunge, but perhaps I’ll do a comparison because it can be interesting. Here we have already seen it several times the final position in the next screenshot, with the head lowered. It’s the expression of pain that we perceive in the music.
Since the hops are trivial, all the skaters do them, what Hanyu does is a (high, look at the boards behind him) choreographic jump, so he needs more energy, and he has it followed by an illusion turn. If anyone does not know what the term flow means, Professor Hanyu has decided to provide an explanation that is understandable even to amateurs. Not just here, in the whole program.
Butterfly, immediately followed by some twizzles, in case anyone still didn’t understand the concept of flow. And these twizzels are not for the step sequence level because they are isolated and there are two twizzles in the clusters, so these are here just because they are the best thing to do in this moment, with these notes.
Jump (high) with half turn, followed by a lunge. It’s really difficult separate Hanyu’s move one from another.
What’s the word used by Jenny Mast? Oh, right, seamless. I know, everyone do one step after another, but Hanyu, for a change, does less crossover and crossunder than the others, does some unnecessary difficult turns just because he can, and does several energy-consuming movements.
Next are the clusters for the step sequence level. I hadn’t noticed it before, but now I’m studying what Elisa wrote. Her wonderful guide is here:
https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/18294415831000915/
In one of her slides, Elisa listed the six most difficult type of clusters. Among these is the cluster that starts with a twizzle, exactly what Hanyu does both from 2:35 and from 2:58. Why this is a difficult cluster?
Okay, I’ll go ahead. Hanyu does his clusters, a few more step and turns, including a bracket and a choctaw because yeah, then a saute de basque. It is a ballet movement, but what the dancers wear is light, not skates, which weigh and require some effort if you want to lift them. But when does Hanyu ever worry about energy consumption?
Twizzle (not necessary, but why not?), lunge and last spin.
End of the program.
Alessandra wrote another wonderful post explaining this program, you can read the Italian text and the English translation here, the Japanese translation here.
As I did for Uno, Kagiyama, Chen and Brown, I made a chart and two graphs of the type of movements made by Hanyu. For this work I used the analysis of Roseline and Elisa on Twitter, so the program is that of the National Championship, and we have seen that in Beijing after the combination Hanyu added two difficult steps. I keep in mind the difference, but for the graph I still use that data, because it’s not fair to change the data for only one skater, and it takes time to watch closely all the programs of all the skaters, because sometimes I need to look at a turn many times to understand what I saw. However, if the technical panel manages to call the step sequence, I have to assume that recognize the turns is easier for them than for me. And it would be simple for one of them to hold down a button while the skater is doing pushes (power skating, PS in my table, so crossovers, crossunders, crossed steps, various pushes), another for transitions (tr. in my table) and another for difficult turns (diff. Tr.). With this data it would be easy for the computer to make graphs of this type. In the first graph I have divided the moves into several sections, each separated by an element (the yellow line in the table is the step sequence), in the second there is the sum of all sections.
It is evident that in his program Hanyu devotes a lot of time to transtions, in all phases of the program, while the pushes are not much more than the difficult turns. Among he difficult turns I did not count those to which the level of the step sequence is linked.
In this other table, done with the same data, I looked at what precedes (top row) and what follows (bottom row) a difficult turn (difficult, column on the left) or an element (element, column on the left, box in light blue). The subdivision is between a push (power skating, PS, box in light green), a transition (tr) a difficult turn (D, box in yellow, and if I watched the short program skated at Beijing I should add a difficult turn after the second element, and a difficult turn after that difficult turn), and an element (E, box in red).
Just to understand the difficulty of Hanyu’s program, I put all the tables side by side, also adding that of Junhwan Cha even if I have not dedicated any post to his program.
Chen does not do two difficult things in a row even by mistake, Uno once got confused and did them. Kagiyama is a little better. I would say that the programs of Brown, Cha and above all Hanyu are of a completely different level. Maybe if the judges could see tables like this as a reminder of what the skaters did outside the jumps, they would assign a little more correct marks.
For now I’ll stop here, but I’ll write again on Beijing programs.
