"Trouble in paradise" between Yuzuru Hanyu and Brian Orser? Coach says no

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"Trouble in paradise" between Yuzuru Hanyu and Brian Orser? Coach says no

It looked strange, to say the least.

There was Yuzuru Hanyu, the world’s most acclaimed active figure skater, waiting by himself in the Kiss and Cry to get his scores after a disappointing short program performance at last week’s Grand Prix Final in Turin, Italy. At that moment in a competition, a coach is almost always at the skater’s side.

Once one of Hanyu’s coaches at his Toronto Cricket Club training base, Ghislain Briand, eventually showed up two days late, there would be a simple explanation for why Hanyu had been alone.

And yet even that would not explain why Hanyu’s primary coach, Brian Orser, had not gone to Italy for the second most important competition of the Japanese superstar’s season.

Was there a rift between the skater and the man who had coached him to two Olympic gold medals, two world titles and four Grand Prix Final titles in the seven seasons since Hanyu came to train under Orser?

“I know it looks like there is trouble in paradise, but there isn’t,” Orser said Tuesday via telephone.

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Virtue-Moir left sport quietly, but their dazzling career deserves this loud shout out

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Virtue-Moir left sport quietly, but their dazzling career deserves this loud shout out

The announcement was hardly unexpected, so much so that it created little buzz even on figure skating news groups.

After all, no one thought Canadians Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir would be extending their extraordinary competitive career after taking another post-Olympic leave from the sport with yet another Olympic ice dance medal (this one a second gold) on their résumé.

And retirement is what they in fact confirmed last week.

Yet there was part of me that hoped they would come back again, especially with this season’s world championships not only in their own country but also in the same city, Montreal, as their training base before the PyeongChang Olympics.

Whether they won another world medal or not in Montreal – and a recommitted Virtue and Moir were very likely to be on the podium, if not atop it – the couple would have been awash in deserved acclaim from the home crowd, as they were in winning their first Olympic title in Vancouver in 2010 with a free dance that left me spellbound then and does the same in every re-viewing.

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International figure skating officials finally get the message and act on conflicts of interest

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International figure skating officials finally get the message and act on conflicts of interest

 For nearly two years, I have loudly and pointedly decried the conflict of interest inherent in allowing presidents of national figure skating federations to judge significant events in the sport.

For most of that time, the cries fell on deaf ears.

Here is my story raising the issue in November 2017.  And here was another when feckless International Skating Union members – led by Skate Canada – voted against evening putting the issue to a vote at its 2018 Congress.

The cases I brought up involved Skate Canada president Leanna Caron, who has shamelessly continued her activities as a judge, and former U.S. Figure Skating president Sam Auxier, who recused himself from judging major events during his presidency but still judged others “with the ISU’s permission.”

But lo and behold, the ISU appears finally to have gotten the message.

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Takeaways from 2018-19 figure skating season: big props for Zagitova (and others)

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Takeaways from 2018-19 figure skating season: big props for Zagitova (and others)

A baker’s dozen takeaways, with some looks to the future, from the 2018-19 figure skating season, which ended Saturday in Japan with the United States winning the World Team Trophy.

1. It’s time to give Russia’s Alina Zagitova full – and massive – credit for what she has done the past two seasons.

Zagitova and her coaching team were unfairly criticized in some quarters for what turned out to be a brilliant strategy of doing all seven jumping passes in the second half bonus area of the 2018 Olympic free skate. Not only was that an impressive feat of stamina, the bonus points Zagitova got for those jumps were the difference between her winning gold and getting silver.

When a Zagitova worn down by a post-Olympic whirl of appearances flopped to fifth in the 2018 World Championships, staggered to fifth at this season’s Russian Championships and was beaten at Europeans, there were suggestions she might be a one-hit wonder. Then, as she later said in an interview on the Russian Skating Federation website, Zagitova became so unsettled by the pressure and the thought of failure at 2019 worlds her jumps deserted her in practice, and she had thoughts of quitting.

Some of her struggles were not unexpected. She had grown some three inches since the Olympics. Her body proportions were changing from those of a girl to those of a young woman. New rules minimized one of her strengths by limiting skaters to just three jumping passes in the bonus area.

And Zagitova overcame all that, the psychological and the physical issues and the scoring changes, to win the 2019 worlds with two clean programs, a dazzling short and a strong, commanding free. At 16, she had added a world title to her Olympic title. That is worthy of unqualified acclaim.

2. Nathan Chen had a remarkable season, even if judged only by what he did on the ice.

When one puts his undefeated record in the context of having done it while simultaneously being a full-time freshman student at Yale University whose coach was 3,000 miles away, Chen’s was a season for the ages.

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Operation Tweet Storm, Day 3: Singles redemption, rhythm dance virtuosity at world figure skating

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Operation Tweet Storm, Day 3: Singles redemption, rhythm dance virtuosity at world figure skating

I set a tweet storm personal best today.

Pushed to do it after what Papadakis & Cizeron, Zagitova, Medvedeva and Tursynbaeva accomplished on the ice in Japan.

So much fantastic skating, in so many ways.

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