Figure skater Yuzuru Hanyu simply the best. Again. Ever.

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Figure skater Yuzuru Hanyu simply the best. Again. Ever.


BOSTON - After watching on television as Yuzuru Hanyu lit up the figure skating firmament with four straight record performances at the end of last fall’s Grand Prix series, I had been waiting impatiently to see him live and in person for the first time since the 2014 Olympics.

And it was worth every second of the wait.

What did I see?  Two quadruple jumps that defied gravity, exquisite spins, stunning speed across the ice, a perfect match of mood to a Chopin Ballade, passion that screamed as loudly as he did at the end of Wednesday’s short program in the World Figure Skating Championships at TD Garden.

Once again, the 21-year-old from Japan showed he is from another universe than the terrestrial skaters who try to compete against him. 
 

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Shibutanis take circuitous path back to prominence

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You're teenage siblings in a discipline where the major championship medalists long have been older -- twentysomethings at least -- so critical are performance maturity and adult passion to excellence in ice dance. 

It's only a year after you missed the podium at the 2010 World Junior Championships, and suddenly there are world bronze medals around your necks, which are all of 16 and 19 years old.

No one has done this before, going from the junior level to the world dance podium in a season. In fact, the best jump anyone can recall from junior to senior worlds was the sixth-place debut by Canadians Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir the season after becoming world junior champs.

Sure, you were a distant third at those 2011 World Championships to compatriots Meryl Davis and Charlie White, who went on to win Olympic gold, and their Canadian rivals, who were already Olympic and world champions.

But the road between you and more glory then seemed very short and straight.

If only it had been that way for Maia Shibutani and Alex Shubutani.


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Yu-Na Kim, Yuzuru Hanyu, Javi Fernandez and friends: how the Toronto Cricket Club became skating mecca

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TORONTO - Put more than a dozen highly decorated figure skaters on the same practice ice at the same time, and there is bound to be some friendly in-your-face stuff.

Yuzuru Hanyu, Javier Fernández and Nam Nguyen will do quadruple jump after quadruple jump, each trying not to be the first to pop a jump or fall. Gabrielle Daleman and Sonia Lafuente will do the same with triples.

What each wants most, though, is to do well enough that Brian Orser, or one of his fellow coaches at the Toronto Cricket, Skating and Curling Club, rings the 16-inch brass bell that hangs outside the glassed-in, computerized music room on one side of the ice surface.

That sound is the reward for anyone who does a clean run-through of a competitive program in practice.

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An "every-other-year girl" like Kwan? Gracie Gold can only dream of it

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An "every-other-year girl" like Kwan? Gracie Gold can only dream of it

The question about reigning U.S. figure skating champion Gracie Gold always has been her inconsistency, especially when it counts most internationally.

This time, on a Thursday conference call advancing the World Championships beginning Mar. 30 in Boston, the question was phrased in terms of how much confidence she could gain from knowing her coach, Frank Carroll, had produced big event “money” skaters like Michelle Kwan and Evan Lysacek.

Gold answered it by saying, “They weren’t always perfect.   Michelle kind of was the every-other-year girl.”

Gold undoubtedly was referring to Kwan’s having won her first three of five world titles only in even-numbered years (1996-98-2000) and then, after breaking that pattern, the final two  in odd-numbered years (2001-03).

The odd-even thing was something Kwan joked about in 2000 and 2001.

But Gold’s analysis is just plain silly.

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Slow the hype so Hunter, latest high school track phenom, has time to grow

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Slow the hype so Hunter, latest high school track phenom, has time to grow

In a very small corner of U.S. sports fandom, the biggest story last weekend was not the Super Bowl.

It was the performance of a high school runner named Drew Hunter in a mile race Saturday afternoon at the Armory in New York.  Hunter clocked 3 minutes, 58.25 seconds, breaking Alan Webb’s 15-year-old U.S. high school indoor mile record by 1.41 seconds.

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