5 min interview with Yuzuru Hanyu

Source: twitter

 
 This 5 min interview with Yuzuru is probably the “MUST KNOW” for Yuzu- fans, among the many news clips about his victory at World Championships in Japanese media.  Here is the verbatim translation.


(How did you recover after the SP?)

Right after I finished performing my SP, I was feeling really frustrated.  As I was the first to skate [in the last group], I saw my ranking going down and down [as the other skaters performed], and my feeling went beyond depression. But, being inspired by voices of my fans, and reflecting on what I had been doing and other things, I thought I had to do my best by believing in myself.  I think that’s how I managed to recover.

(Towards the FP)  I think I felt mental fatigue, but that mental fatigue probably matched with my physical fatigue, so perhaps they might have achieved a good balance [between the mental and physical fatigue].

(What did you think with the high FP score?)

Simply, I was just honestly happy. To begin with, I was delighted that the score of 223 was 3 or 4 points above the previous [world] record [that I had]. Moreover, this programme [Hope&Legacy] was significantly less appreciated as compared to SEIMEI, and I also struggled with expressing sufficiently and doing jumps successfully [in H&L]. [During the season] I had made several performances in which I repeatedly wandered between getting closer to the music and farther from the music. But this time I was able to make a clean programme, and my feeling inside myself was also clean.  So, I now have a strong feeling that I was finally able to advance one step beyond my own record. Of course, I will always have a persistent desire to make a clean programme with no mistakes, perhaps I will again feel frustrated with myself when I cannot make a clean programme, and I will continue practising even more in the future. But if I didn’t have such persistence, I certainly would not have such a strong desire for a clean programme. Probably, in view of the NHK Trophy and the GPF as well as other bitter experience in the past year, I think this [gold at the Worlds] may be a little gift awarded by God.  (*smile*)

(About the high level competitions..)

As regards to the increase in the scores over 300, I don’t necessarily get impressed with the high scores per se; rather I think that good performances with high quality have dramatically increased. It’s not so much the execution of each element but the execution and quality of entire programmes that each competitor has improved a lot, as far as I am concerned.

(How do you feel about going to the Olympic season as the World Champion?)

Well, 66 years ago, Mr Dick Button won the second consecutive Olympic gold medal while he was the defending Olympic gold medallist and the World Champion.  In this sense, I am convincing myself that a good omen is coming upon me.

(You have challenged difficult programmes this season..)

I think it was good. Against my coach’s advice in a sense, I insisted on including 4 quads and managed to convince him at the end of the day. That’s how this season started. So, it was not according to the plan of the coach, as it were. After trying for a year and finally managing to deliver a clean programme….well, even if I had not been able to deliver a clean programme [of this season], I have built the self-confidence that I should be able to perform a clean programme at any time and under any circumstances if I now do SEIMEI and that layout [which is less difficult than H&L].  To that extent, I did hard training. So, in the sense of elevating my limitations, this season was a very fruitful one.

At any rate, I have had a consistent desire to win another Olympic gold medal during this season. Even though this is not yet the Olympic season, I was always training with that desire, which finally resulted in the gold medal at this World Championship. Yes, this is not the Olympics, but I have got reaffirmation that this kind of competition would probably take place at the Olympics [next year]. So, I think I will have to build my skating skills and leave no weakness so that I can win even if such [harsh] competitions take place [at the Olympics].

Thank you very much. I will do my best at the next one!


END

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Thanks to pino16.17 for the video.