Deep Edges | Yuzuru Hanyu

1.

"Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence."
Vince Lombardi

Sometimes you find yourself in the middle of a place where nothing is too sure or obvious. Izumi would find that she chose a sport where this was way too clear.

She had been skating for over ten years, competing inside and outside her home country, and yet, it was all the same everywhere.

It's not often that you find so many things that are complete uncertainties in a well-established Olympic sport.

Figure skating seemed to be the exception to the rule.

How can a sport be competitive when the rules don't seem to be clear?

How can judging be fair when no one truly knows the rulebook?

Then again, after years of doing your best to get to the top, all of those things were more than normalized. It didn't mean that she was satisfied with any of it.

You can try your best to be on absolute technical peak but when you're being judged like any other athlete who doesn't care, it's too easy to get carried away and try to just forget about it.

Well, for a while, that's exactly what she did, jumping in any possible way and not caring much. It was just a direct consequence of how she was judged as a junior and novice.

If jumps were being rewarded with good scores, you would, in theory, believe them to be good.

Izumi, however, knew that it wasn't exactly true. The thing was, her current coach didn't care at all so neither did she.

Well, sometimes life throws you some challenges that make everything change, points of view completely shift, and attitudes completely turn in just a matter of a few days.

For her, COVID was the responsible.

After being away from training for a while, her coach just seemed to lose more and more interest in the sport as time went by. That lack of interest also managed to result in something way more complicated. It was just easy to settle into incorrect habits that, unfortunately, can lead to injuries over time.

She found that out through the most painful of ways.

Izumi was just 20 years old when a severe hip injury made her miss the Olympic games entirely. It had been her athletic dream to attend the games and yet, she missed them due to mere stupidity.

It was just one of those things that taught you on the spot.

The decision to change coaching teams was made way too quickly and easily. It was just that she knew that the change had to happen eventually and it was better to get it over with sooner rather than later.

It was time to go back to her childhood teacher, a man who even if very strict with his students, was one of the best Japanese coaches of all time. If anything, his extensive list of star athletes only proved that.

Yet, if Shoichiro Tsuzuki was known for anything, it was his top-notch technique teaching and there were no doubts in Izumi mind that he would have a field day teaching her everything again.

He just wouldn't settle for anything less than correct technique.

Whatever the future would hold, she was absolutely sure that all of those previous years of slacking would end very very soon.

Izumi knew Tsuzuki-sensei well after being coached by him for 5 years and every time they were together, he made sure to let her know that he wasn't fond of her newly acquired technique, going as far as telling her directly that it was one of the reasons she was injured in the first place.

Well, that was probably about to change, because the very first thing he told her before accepting her into his rink was that he wouldn't accept her current technique and to be fair, Izumi knew that it was the right call after her injury.

The thing was that she knew that would mean sacrificing some of the quads she had been working on.  It's all fun and games when you use pre-rotation to your advantage but it all goes away once you try to jump everything correctly.

The challenge would be big but the old Izumi was soon back and dedicated to making things right, as she had once been.

It was only a matter of a week until she arrived at her new training base and got ready for the drama that would be handling with the grumpy man again. No matter what, Izumi was not only prepared but looking forward to it all.

After all, even if Tsuzuki-sensei was a little bit hard to deal with, he only did that purely out of love and concern for his students.

The real question was what challenges awaited her and if she was strong enough to face it all after getting used to a different type of technique.

And when she did arrive, the old coach told her one thing that would stay in her mind throughout her new journey.

"I will make you the skater you should have become before and I won't take no for an answer."

For a man over 80 years old, you would expect him to be a little more low key but any student of his knew that he didn't joke when skating was concerned.

Whatever she was about to face, the one thing that was certain was that giving up was not an option.

Still, Izumi couldn't help but wonder what this new time of her life would bring.

What she didn't know was the rollercoaster that was about to come and who it would bring into her life.