Where is Yuzu? How is Yuzu?
Posted on March 18, 2015 by BevSmithWrites
ttps://bevsmithwrites.wordpress.com/2015/03/18/where-is-yuzu-how-is-yuzu/
With all the hubbub about the world figure skating championships to come next week,
you might be wondering: “So where’s Yuzu?”
Well, the lithe, mosquito-waisted Olympic and world champion, Yuzuru Hanyu, has spent a great part of the season at home in Japan – not Canada
where he has trained for his biggest triumphs – and is preparing for the world championships in Shanghai, China, in an extremely unusual way:
by correspondence with coach Brian Orser.
“I have not seen him at all,” said Orser the other day at the Toronto Cricket, Skating and Curling Club,
adorned with banners cheering on European champ Javier Fernandez and new Canadian champion Nam Nguyen who train there.
On Thursday, the club is staging a little world championship sendoff for its favourite sons – sans Hanyu.
“Yuzu has been faced with so many challenges this season,” Orser said. “His comfort zone is in Japan when he’s recovering from something.”
And he’s had much to recover from over the past seven months or so.
It’s been an annus horribilis, as Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth has been known to say about the rocky roads
that can assail a person’s psyche.
First a back injury caused his withdrawal from Finlandia Trophy. Then he collided with Chinese skater Han Yan
during the warmup for the free skate at Cup of China last November.
He skated with a bandage on his head, fell five times and stayed in Japan for recovery.
With the NHK just two weeks away, Hanyu remained in Japan.
He started feeling intermittent pains in his abdomen, which seemed a mystery.
But he completely triumphed in the Grand Prix Final, for an astounding 288.16-point win,
34.26 points more than his closest challenger, Javier Fernandez.
Next up? The Japanese championships, which he won by more than 30 points.
Obviously, he did it with some pain. He was already scheduled for surgery a few days later
to repair a urachal remnant, attached to his bladder.
