[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.