Reporter | Zhao Yue
Above the cold ice, the circle scratches support the hot dreams of players from all over the world.
At noon on February 10, 2022, Beijing time, the figure skating men's singles free skating competition has passed the halfway mark, and Japanese athlete Yusei Yushin wore a blue and white background color embellished gold sequin embroidered top.
Accompanied by the music "Heaven and Earth", he first made a rotational action to complete the warm-up, the audience held their breath, and he began to challenge the obsession 4A jump in his heart. Unfortunately, he made a mistake and failed to land smoothly in two consecutive four-week jumps, but he quickly adjusted and completed all the subsequent moves well, scoring 188.06 points and a total score of 283.21 points.
At the end of the performance, he bowed deeply to the audience and bent down to touch the ice. At the moment of the score, facing the camera, Yu Yu bowed again.
Image source: Oriental IC
4A, also known as Axel jumping around, requires athletes to rotate in the air for 4 and a half weeks, the left foot after the outer blade falls on the ice, the right foot does not touch the ice surface, and then slides backwards, which is recognized as the most difficult action, even the American athlete Chen Wei, who ranked first in the short program, also bluntly said that he had never thought of challenging this action.
"It doesn't matter what an Olympic champion is, what a world champion is, it doesn't matter. I didn't lose momentum at all, I still wanted to be stronger. The new enemy is myself. "Yu Yu yu string so positioned himself at this stage.
Winning three consecutive championships and equaling Grafström's historical record is the expectation of the outside world, but the idea of Yu Yu yu string is more than that, and completing the 4A jump in the official game is his greater wish. In the training ground, he sometimes doesn't even practice other movements, but simply performs two hours of 4A training.
Yusei Yushin said: "I have been thinking about challenging the 4A action for three years. Especially in the past two years, in quite a lot of training and practice, there have been such ideas. If everyone says that only I can do this, I want to complete it. ”
In the figure skating men's singles short program competition on the morning of the 8th, Yusheng Yuxian wore a blue Kausten and chose his beloved song "Introduction and Whirling Caprice" to start his battle to defend his title, but he made a mistake in the opening and the first action jumped, which led to his final score of only 95.15 points, 18.82 points different from the first place Chen Wei, and the difficulty of defending the title was greatly improved.
After the game, he explained that there was a hole in the ice that could have been left by other players after the game, but he didn't complain about it, just that he was unlucky, "(Free skating) I have one more chance, I will perform music and show a lot of jumps, so I will do my best." 」 ”
Due to too much backwardness in the short program, on the eve of the free skating competition, he increased the difficulty coefficient of the whole set of actions, replacing the original 3A2T with 3A3Lo, 3Lo with 3F, including four four-week jumps and 4A single jumps, trying to achieve "the best".
Due to his inability to suffer from asthma at an early age, his parents, in order to enhance his physical fitness, let him learn to skate from the age of 4, and since then he has fallen in love with skating, and has also idolized the Russian legendAry Proshenko.
In 2004, Yusuke Yusei participated in the national competition for the first time and won the gold medal in Group B of the Japan Junior Figure Skating Championships, and at the age of 11, he set his life goal early: "My goal is to win the Olympic gold medal. ”
After that, along the way, his life was like a hanging. In the fall of 2010, at the age of 15, he was promoted to the adult category at the lowest age in the promotion group; in February 2014, at the age of 19, Yu Yusheng won the gold medal at the Sochi Winter Olympics, becoming the first men's single skating champion at the Winter Olympics in Asia; in March 2014, he won the World Figure Skating Championships and achieved the Grand Slam of the Olympic Games, World Championships and Grand Prix Finals; in 2016, he won the World Figure Skating Grand Prix Finals, achieving four consecutive Grand Prix finals; in April 2017, He won the World Figure Skating Championships again.
In February 2018, he won the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics figure skating men's singles title, becoming the second defending winter Olympic men's singles champion after Dick Barton in 66 years.
"One minute on stage, ten years off stage", it is far from enough to get such an achievement by talent alone, and there are countless painstaking efforts behind it.
Since suffering from asthma since childhood, the training time on ice cannot be too long, and the feather string improves the efficiency of the practice. Kenji Miyamoto, a well-known Japanese choreographer, once said that Yusuke Yusuke's concentration during practice is different, and other contestants are generally practicing or resting during the time they wait for him to choreograph, and their attitude is very relaxed. And when he wants to find Yu Sheng's knot, he often feels that he does not dare to disturb him because he is practicing too seriously and seriously, and his aura is strong.
In the 2011 Earthquake in Japan, Yusei Yushin lost his training place, and he was given the opportunity to train on the ice rink by participating in commercial performances. In 5 months, he participated in nearly 60 commercial performances, but he donated all the cost of each performance to the disaster area.
When asked where the Feather Knot string is strongest, coach Totsutsu did not mention the skating aspect, but said that the Feather Knot String is very good in terms of human nature.
Just like this bow, Yusei Yushin bowed to the reporters present at the end of each interview, saying "thank you" before leaving. Former tennis player Shuzo Matsuoka, a well-known Japanese journalist and former tennis player who has interviewed Yusuke Yusuke many times, bluntly said that Yusuke Yusuke is the "most talkative" player he knows.
Good looks, elegant temperament, excellent top competition results and character have allowed Yu Sheng to accumulate a large number of fan bases.
Before the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games, the topic of "feeling that the whole world is looking for Yusheng knots" has already reached the top of Weibo hot search.
With good grades and high popularity, Yusheng knots are favored by a large number of brand parties.
It is reported that before the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics, Yusei Yusuke was paid more than 65 million yen (about 3.61 million yuan) for a short-term advertisement. If you sign a one-year endorsement contract, the remuneration is more than 100 million yen (about 5.56 million yuan).
In 2018, espn, a professional sports television station in the United States, released the 2018 edition of the World's Top 100 Sports Celebrities List, and Yu yu was on the list for the first time, ranking 70th.
After the PyeongChang Olympics, in 2019, Yusei Yusei was once again included in the ESPN Top 100 Athletes list as the only figure skater to be selected. According to the data, the endorsement amount of Yusheng Jiexin in 2019 was as high as 13.41 million US dollars (about 85 million yuan), ranking 64th in the ranking.
According to the incomplete statistics of "21CBR", Yu yusei holds 13 brand endorsements, including Higashiwa Pharmaceuticals, Monster Hunter, Snow Essence Cosmetics, Citizen, Pantene, Procter & Gamble, Ajinomoto, Lotte Chewing Gum, Lotte Folder, Lotte Chocolate, Fato, Tokyo Nishikawa Bedding, Barins, etc.
Taking 2021 as an example, the Japanese agency nanasepn calculates that the annual income of Yusei Yusuke is at least 800 million yen (about 44 million yuan), of which 670 million yuan is the endorsement fee, and the prize money and subsidies for the competition are only 10 million yen.
Now 27 years old, Yu Yu is a veteran of the figure skating arena. He has already gained fame and fortune, but he is also full of injuries. On the morning of the 8th, the American star Chen Wei broke the world record held by Yusheng with 113.97 points. The motivation of Yusei Yushin to continue to compete may have gone beyond the competition for medals, but obsessed with the love of the sport and the transcendence of self.