Figure skating is not an aggressive sport. Skaters compete against each other, but off the ice they are mostly friendly with each other.
Rivals might sit together in the dining room and have lunch before they go out trying to better each other on the ice a few hours later.
But sometimes their fans think they need to be at war with each other.
In the Men’s short program practice at the practice rink at the World Figure Skating Championships in Boston on Wednesday, March 30,
Japan’s super star Yuzuru Hanyu and Kazakhstan’s Olympic bronze medalist Denis Ten got close to each other on the ice.
This happens sometimes, skaters get too close to each other, maybe not paying enough attention as they are too absorbed in what they are doing.
Several eye witnesses confirmed that Yuzuru was skating to his music while Denis was doing a spin. There was enough room around Denis,
but Yuzuru almost ran into him. There was no physical contact, nobody was hurt. Apparently Yuzuru got upset and yelled at Denis.
It was a minor incident that usually quickly would have been forgotten. Unfortunately, when Yuzuru spoke to the press in the mixed zone that day,
he accused Denis of trying to hurt him and intentionally being in his way. There was no reason for this kind of severe accusation, however,
some media greedily picked it up and blew the whole incident out of proportion.
Who could seriously believe that one skater tried to hurt another skater? I’ve been covering figure skating for more than 20 years now.
I’ve seen many near-collisions in practice and warm up and several actual collisions, but never ever one skater accused another skater
of intentionally trying to do anything wrong. Yuzuru probably said this as he was under high stress and had the terrible accident
on his mind when he collided with Han Yan in the warm up during Cup of China in 2014. So he kind of overreacted,
but some journalists happily used it to create a scandal and even wrote about a “protest” or “complaint”
that the Japanese Skating Federation planned to file.
