Author | Wu Tang
283.21 points, fourth place. The much-anticipated figure skater Yu Yusei lost his medal.
At the Sochi Winter Olympics and the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, Yusei Yushin won the championship in the figure skating men's single event, creating a legend of two consecutive championships. Fans from all over the world are looking forward to him defending his title again at the Beijing Winter Olympics. And the results are regrettable.
In a short program competition held on the 8th, Yu Yu performed "Introduction and Whirling Caprice". During the first jump, Sokhov jumped around, and the ice blade stuck in the hole and jumped into the air.
"It's not the hole I jumped out of, it's the hole left by the other skaters jumping on the ice. Just like that, it slid, a hole appeared, and then 'clicked' into it. After the game, Yusei explained his mistake in an interview with Japan's NTV. This time, he lost at least 9.70 points, temporarily ranking eighth with a score of 95.15 points.
Habuyuki checks the ice
In the just-concluded free skating competition, Yu Yu's string program "Sky and Earth" scored 188.06 points. Axel jumped around and Sohov jumped consecutively and failed to play perfectly.
China's Jin Boyang scored a total of 270.43, setting a personal season score, ranking 9th, and achieving self-transcendence. American Chen Wei won the gold medal, Japan's Yumasa Keyyama won the silver medal, and Japan's Masami Uno won the bronze medal.
"The Habu era has passed." As the dust settled on the results of the men's solo slide, such a sound appeared.
01
Phenomenal figure skater
However, these rookie athletes, who are slightly better than Yusheng in terms of on-field performance, are still difficult to match in terms of audience popularity and international influence.
Yusei Yushin has such a charm: in an international event like the Olympics, he can make people put aside the recognition of nationality as a distinction between you and me, let the audience watch the performance with a pure appreciation of art and competitive sports, and sincerely bless the performers.
Yusei kisses the ice at the exhibition match
In Japan, he is known as a "national treasure athlete", and the Japanese government awarded him the National Honor Award in 2018, in recognition of his "achievement of the feat of leaving a name in world history, bringing dreams and emotions to many people, and giving society bright hope and courage." At the age of 23, Yu sheng was also the youngest individual winner of this award.
In China, Yusheng is undoubtedly the most talked-about foreign athlete at the Beijing Winter Olympics and a frequent visitor to the social media search list.
On October 1 last year, after announcing that the Beijing Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games would not sell tickets to overseas audiences, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying forwarded a tweet from the Chinese Embassy in Japan, "To the fans of Yusheng Yuxian, I saw (some Japanese people) speak out: 'Cheer up on the spot, please go to the Chinese audience.'" (I would say) to (us)! ”
Hua Chunying retweeted a tweet from the Chinese Embassy in Japan in response to Yusheng's fans
In South Korea, at the last Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, yusei Yuki arrived at Incheon Airport in South Korea, which attracted a large number of fans.
In the first public training, Yusei stayed on the ice rink for only 15 minutes, attracting more than 100 reporters to the scene. Since then, the New York Times has referred to him as "Michael Jackson on Ice."
In terms of personal business value, Yu Yu has surpassed the first-line Japanese entertainment stars. What is more exaggerated is that as an athlete, his participation in the event also affects the nerves of major event organizers, sponsors and suppliers, and has a direct impact on the ratings of figure skating competitions and the sales of derivatives.
Yu yu has appeared on the cover of several fashion magazines
Japanese media reported that in 2017, after Yusheng withdrew from the NHK Cup due to injury, the ratings of the NHK Cup broadcast in the golden file dropped sharply, and the average rating fell from 16% when Yusheng won the championship last year to 6.7%. In 2018, after Yusei won the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, his hometown of Sendai held a 40-minute parade for him, which attracted 108,000 fans and generated direct economic benefits of 1.14 billion yen.
Compared to the Summer Olympics, all Winter Olympic sports are considered niche. Born in a niche project, Yu Yu not only has a rare influence of first-line athletes, but also feeds back the figure skating project, making this ice art known and loved by more people.
As a phenomenal figure skater, perhaps this is a greater contribution of a feather skater to figure skating than winning two Olympic gold medals.
02
Athletes coming out of the disaster zone
Understood purely in Chinese characters, the name "Habu Knot String" is also very imagery.
As light and soft as a feather, as loose as a bowstring, as strong as a strength. As the name suggests, Habu's personal experience and performance style combine the two seamlessly.
At the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, Yusheng Jiexian performed the theme song "Qingming" by the Yin-Yang Division, and the narrator Chen Ying praised it: "The face is like jade, the posture is like a pine, the flying is like a shock, and the grace is like a dragon." ”
"I've spent a lot of my life in the pain of injury, and a big half of my life without an ice rink and without training," he said. ”
At the age of 2, Habu developed asthma. This is a chronic inflammation of the bronchi that is not easily curable, and the symptoms are manifested by recurrent episodes of wheezing, shortness of breath, chest tightness and cough, which have a certain impact on the patient's lung function.
Both dry and cold air and dust mites can induce asthma attacks, so Yusheng yusuke always wears a mask. Before the outbreak, he was stationed in Toronto, Canada, to train, and due to the difference in social culture, he always attracted strange eyes when he wore a mask. In order to exercise cardiopulmonary function, he even wears a mask to train so that the body can adapt to maintain sufficient physical strength even when ingesting thin oxygen.
On the ice rink at the 2012 Finnish Cup and the 2021 World Championships, Yusei suffered an asthma attack. After the performance, he fell directly on the ice. "Even half of the usual air can't be sucked in, and oxygen is not sucked into the body at all." He said.
At the 2021 World Championships, Yu yusuke had a sudden asthma attack before the free skating competition
At the age of 17, he experienced the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11. He was training at an ice rink in Sendai at the time of the earthquake. To this day, Yu Sheng still remembers the sounds he heard and the sights he saw that day.
The shed where the skates were rented collapsed, making a creaking sound; the entrance glass door was pulled staggered open, making a creaking sound; and with a loud noise, the ice rink wall suddenly cracked from it.
Yu Sheng escaped from the ice with his hands and feet, and even his skates did not have time to take off, and walked on the cement floor. The ice blade was ground beyond recognition. He walked out of the ice rink in a half-sleeved training suit and found it snowing outside.
Later, Yusheng and his family spent four days in the shelter, huddled on two tatami mats with his mother and sister, sharing a blanket. In that cold and small space, there was only an electric lamp lit with oil.
The earthquake, which was later measured to be 9.0 magnitude, was only 130 kilometers away from Yusei's hometown. The drastic changes in geological formation also triggered a huge tsunami that hit the coast of Japan and killed 15,897 people.
On the tenth day after the earthquake, Yusei yushin went to Higashi Kanagawa to resume training and resume preparations for the World Championships and the approaching Winter Olympics in Sochi.
At the 2012 World Championships, Yusuke Yusuke skated up and performed "Lake Shiratori" in the post-match performance, symbolizing a new journey
At one point, he felt strong survivor guilt, self-doubt about his persistent skating career, and even thought about not skating anymore. He felt that he had escaped for his personal figure skating dreams and turned his back on the people in the disaster area.
"In the face of such an earthquake, I feel very powerless. Carrying such painful memories, but also fighting the ice rink. Forget it, I want to be an ordinary high school student and live an ordinary life. Later, he recalled his mood at that time.
In the summer after the destruction of the training venue in the earthquake, Yu yu appeared in 60 commercial performances, traveling to the ice rinks across the country, using the performance as training to collect donations for the disaster area.
He found the motivation to skate again. As an athlete from the disaster area, "If I achieve good results in figure skating, everyone will become energetic, and that is what I can do for everyone." ”
Since then, Yusei no longer regards figure skating as his own dream, but as a common dream of people who support him, look forward to him, and feel empowered because of him. On the ice rink, he felt that it was not a person sliding, but thousands of hands pushing him forward.
Yusei no longer regards figure skating as his own dream
In an interview with japanese media before the Beijing Winter Olympics, he said: "Looking back at all my competitive life so far, the best thing is 'for everyone' and 'for the happiness of others'. I want to believe so much and push myself to the limit to fight hard. ”
03
Human limits
Yusei Yushin is 27 years old, which is not the best age for figure skaters.
At the Beijing Winter Olympics, Chen Wei, an American player who competed with him, was 22 years old, Japan's Masamo Uno was 24 years old, and the rookie Jianshan Youzhen was only 18 years old.
Chen Lu, a famous figure skater on the mainland, commented on Yusheng Yuxian and said that his spirit of never giving up is admirable. "He has won two consecutive Winter Olympics, he can completely retire honorably, but he is still constantly breaking through himself. He's been practicing for four and a half weeks, and in him he embodies a true Olympic spirit, higher, faster, stronger. ”
The Four-and-a-Half Jump, also known as axel Four-And-a-Half Jump, is abbreviated as 4A in figure skating terminology.
Figure skaters need to first use the right rear outer blade to help skate, turn around and then pedal the ice with the left front outer blade, jump forward, complete the rotation in the air, and then draw backwards with the right rear outer blade falling ice. Because the direction of taking off and falling ice is different, Axel jumps have more than half a week more aerial rotation than other types of jumps, so it is also called a four-and-a-half jump.
In the history of the world, no figure skater has ever completed a four-and-a-half-week, 1620° rotation in the air in an official competition, which some people say is the limit that humans cannot complete.
Yusei Yuki is determined to challenge it. In the technical composition of his Beijing Winter Olympics free skating program "Heaven and Earth", the first jump is 4A.
In a pre-match interview, he said the 4A was the wall he was eager to cross, "becoming the first human to complete four and a half weeks in an official game", which is the achievement he most wants to pocket in addition to the gold medal.
Jumping, falling, hands touching ice.
Challenging more difficult maneuvers means more intense damage to the body. With each spin, the foot is hit by 5-8 times the pound of the body weight. The "veteran" Yusheng knotted the string, in the case of several ankle ligament injuries, constantly launched a shock to the human limit, at the cost of breaking himself, to chase an untouchable dream.
This process is lonely, tragic, and even more admirable.
This jump, not perfectly landed, but still made history. According to Japanese media reports, the 4A completed by Yu yu at the Winter Olympics became the first 4A jump in the official competition of the International Skating Federation.
Even push the limits of humanity a little bit. At least, Yusei Yushin made such an effort.
04
The energy of art
Before I went deeper into the Feather Knot, I had deep doubts. Olympic events usually inspire people's patriotic feelings and national confidence, people cheer for their own athletes is a matter of course, athletes achieve achievements for the glory of the country, almost without exception.
But the feather knot is an exception to this. As a Japanese player, not only his own people, but also in China also has many fans, and people in different countries around the world are looking forward to his good results, completing the 4A, and creating new glory.
It's weird. But when I watched the figure skating competition carefully and completely, I seemed to have found the answer.
Compared with other sports, figure skating is special in that it deeply links sports and art, and it is very ornamental without losing strength in femininity. More importantly, the form of figure skating competition does not have a fierce, intuitive competitive meaning, and each athlete has a complete period of time, and one person completes his own performance on the field.
Yu Yu's performance is extremely ornamental
Riding on the music, the contestants galloped, jumped, and spun on the ice. It's not so much about movement as it is about dancing.
Therefore, when scoring figure skating, it will be divided into technical points and performance points, the former according to the quality of the action, difficulty and completion of the score, the latter according to the balance of content arrangement, musical consistency, speed, posture and musical expression score.
Among the figure skaters, the feathered knot is also considered to be a slender and tall type, and the movements are elegant and light. Compared with other male athletes, he seems to be thin, but his muscle strength is enough to support him to complete difficult technical movements, and he is a perfect combination of strength and beauty.
Two-time Winter Olympics men's singles champion, American Dick Button believes that before figure skating was considered a competitive sport, it was a sport that attracted spectators with charm. He felt that figure skating should "go beyond the score and infect the audience with emotions" and "feather knots can be done".
Habu's performances are top-notch, sometimes light, sometimes domineering, adjusting his state according to different music. On the ice rink, not only a top athlete, but also an excellent actor, integrated with the show.
Technique, performance, figure, costume, appearance, Yusheng Yushin uses all of this to turn the arena into its own "theater", allowing the audience to forget everything in a short period of time and immerse themselves in it.
This is not only the energy of sports, but also the energy of art.
In his autobiography Cangyan, Yusei yushin said that he had been asked before whether he wanted to become an artist or an athlete. "Athletes have the strength of athletes – absolute strength, superb jumping skills... Such an athlete's technique naturally has to be mastered first, and then become an artist on this basis, which is my goal. ”
Despite losing the medal at the Beijing Winter Olympics, the Yusheng era is still not over.
He's still being anticipated, still aiming to push the limits, still racing on the ice rink to take figure skating to the extreme.
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