- Joined
- Jun 21, 2014
Vaguely complaining about other skaters' abilities while insisting your own technique is objectively correct and objectively worth more points -- is not constructive, at least not in my mind. It's exploiting his influences for his own gain rather than the gain of skating in general. And no matter how polite he's being about it, or how much you might personally agree with him, that is what Hanyu is doing.
I don't know how you came to that impression.
A few phrases from the first translation of the interview are:
"I was wondering whether the path I was taking was truly right" "I had always skated with the sense that steps/TR was one of the most important things and with the thought that this was my key weapon. This time, the fact that it was assesed properly gave me the confidence that this path is a good one. From here even if I do the Lutz and the Axel (probably talking about the quads), I have the conviction that I must do difficult things while continuing down this path"
From my understanding the way he put it shows more doubt than actually blind conviction that your own ways are the only one. Of course he has pride in his preferred way and what he's known for but he was more than willing to adapt if it was necessary, hence why he said he contemplated removing transitions to improve jump consistency. Skaters recognize the judging trends and one that has been more noticeable lately is that jumps with higher base value are usually given higher GOE. We see it both in men and in ladies with the rise of higher base value quads. His score at Skate Canada as he said gave him reassurance that even without having these jumps at the moment (4F/4Lz) he could still receive high GOE based on the quality of his elements. That's why if he ever includes other quads like the 4Lz and or even a 4A he wouldn't need to do it at the expense of transitions.
If anything I find it remarkable that he has always been open to the media about eventual struggles with confidence and self doubt.
Vaguely complaining about other skaters' abilities
I also don't see how he's vaguely complaining about any skater's ability in that interview. Another excerpt of it is "each and every skater has their own unique abilities". He merely states his views on the judging trends and how he is taking it into account to adapt his own skating in order to win while at the same time trying to not abandon completely his preferred ways.