Yuzuru Hanyu, a former competitive figure skater from Japan, participated in the Winter Olympic Games three times, winning two gold medals (in 2014 and 2018) and placing fourth in 2022. In 2014, he became the first Asian men's singles skater to win at the Olympics. At 19 years old, he was also the youngest male skater to win the Olympic title since American Dick Button in 1948. In 2018, Hanyu became the first male single skater in 66 years to win two consecutive Olympic gold medals since Button in 1952.
In his three Olympic seasons, Hanyu skated to three different short and free skate programs each, with their background and making being broadly covered by the media. In the first season, 2013–14, he became the first Asian and second skater across all disciplines to win the Olympics, Worlds, and the Grand Prix Final in the same season, after Russian Alexei Yagudin in 2001–02. Hanyu also set two world records in the short program, becoming the first skater to score above 100 points in that competition segment, at the 2014 Winter Olympics. In 2017–18, he set another short program record of 112.72 points, which remained the standing record in the old +3/-3 GOE judging system. At the 2017 Rostelecom Cup, he also landed his first quadruple Lutz jump in competition. In his third and last Olympic season, 2021–22, Hanyu won his sixth national title and went for the quadruple Axel jump for the first time, with his attempt at the Beijing Olympics being the closest in competition up to then. On July19, 2022, he announced his decision to conclude his competitive figure skating career and turn professional.
For his achievements at the Winter Olympics, Hanyu was bestowed with the People's Honor Award by the prime minister of Japan (2018) as well as two Medals of Honor with Purple Ribbon (2014, 2018). He also received the Kikuchi Kan Prize for his accomplishments in figure skating (2022), including his back-to-back titles at the Winter Games. Two monuments honoring his Olympic wins were installed at the International Center Station in his hometown of Sendai. Hanyu was featured in various prestigious lists, such as Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia (2018), and made it to ESPN's top 10 of the greatest Olympians of the 21st century. In 2022, he was ranked sixth in the list of most-searched athletes on Google Search worldwide.
2013–14 season Key events before the 2013–14 season
In the 2010–11 season, Hanyu moved up to senior level as the reigning World and National Junior champion as well as the Junior Grand Prix Final winner. He faced significant competition in the Japanese senior field, including Daisuke Takahashi, Nobunari Oda, Takahiko Kozuka, and Tatsuki Machida, who all had finished ahead of him at the previous Japan Figure Skating Championships. In that season, Hanyu landed his first successful quadruple jump, a quad toe loop, and won his first medal at a main international senior competition at the 2011 Four Continents Championships, where he placed second behind Takahashi.
After the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which had caused severe damage to his home rink in Sendai, Hanyu was forced to move his training base for the rest of the season. He participated in 60 ice shows to get additional practice time and raise money for the areas affected by the disaster. He launched the following season at the 2011 Nebelhorn Trophy, where he won his first gold medal at an international senior competition. During the event, he shared his career goals with the media:
At the 2012 World Championships, Hanyu became the youngest Japanese World medalist, finishing third behind then two-time world champion Patrick Chan and Daisuke Takahashi, who both acknowledged Hanyu as a potential strong rival in the future. Upon the conclusion of the 2011–12 season, Hanyu changed coaches from Nanami Abe, with whom he had trained since 2004, and moved to Canada to train with Brian Orser at the Toronto Cricket Club. His main motivation for the change were the consistent quadruple jumps by Orser's student Javier Fernández. The move resulted in immediate success; in the following season, Hanyu landed his first quad Salchow in international competition and set his first two world records in the short program segment. He also beat Chan for the first time in competition at the Grand Prix Final in Sochi, which served as a test event for the 2014 Winter Olympics, and won his first national senior title at the 2012–13 Japan Championships, defeating the reigning and five-time national champion, Daisuke Takahashi. Despite a knee injury and ankle sprain, he managed to finish fourth at the subsequent World Championships behind Patrick Chan (gold), Denis Ten (silver), and Javier Fernández (bronze), helping to secure three berths for the Japanese national team at the 2014 Winter Olympics.
Programs of the 2013–14 season Short program: "Parisienne Walkways"
For his first Olympic season, Hanyu returned to his short program "Parisienne Walkways" from the 2012–13 season. The music piece is a medley of the songs "Parisienne Walkways" by Gary Moore and "Hoochie Coochie Man" by the Jeff Healey Band from their album Live at Montreux 1999. Hanyu scored two world records with the program in his two Grand Prix events in the previous season.
"Parisienne Walkways" was the first of Hanyu's multiple collaborations with Canadian choreographer Jeffrey Buttle. For Buttle, who was also choreographing a short program for the defending three-time world champion Patrick Chan in the same season, it was important to highlight the different strengths of the two skaters. In Hanyu's case, Buttle wanted not only to create a program that fit the wild abandon in his skating but also to help him to overcome his shyness and have some fun. He pointed out Hanyu's engagement and active role in the creation of the choreography: "It's always nice to have someone who will sort of play along with the choreography instead of just standing and waiting for me to say something". Later, in 2018, Buttle named "Parisienne Walkways" as the most memorable of the three programs he had choreographed for Hanyu up to then. He praised Hanyu's ability to pull in the audience and his maturity as a performer at such young age.
The costume for the program was created by Japanese costume designer Tadashi Nagashima. For the 2013–14 season, the color of the shirt was changed from grey to blue.
Free skate program: Romeo and Juliet
For the free skate, Hanyu selected the music from Franco Zeffirelli's film Romeo and Juliet (1968) composed by Nino Rota. In the 2011–12 season, he had already performed to Craig Armstrong's soundtrack of Baz Luhrmann's film Romeo+ Juliet (1996), earning him his first world championship medal.
The music piece was Hanyu's personal choice; the program was meant to mark the culmination of his first four senior seasons. The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, his success at the 2012 World Championships, and the subsequent coaching change were three key events of that period that influenced his decision, as he stated: "I spent two years with Nanami Abe in Sendai and another two years with Brian and his team in Toronto. I wanted to create a program that expresses my gratitude for these four years." Romeo+ Juliet was the first free skate program he had skated after the earthquake, having performed it at multiple ice shows across Japan. The support he had received from his fans, coaches, and family at that time made the music piece meaningful and precious to him. However, he switched from Armstrong's to Rota's soundtrack for the Olympic season as he thought it stood out the most among the different versions of Romeo and Juliet, and he had long wished to skate to that specific music piece.
Hanyu asked Canadian choreographer David Wilson to create the program for him, but Wilson felt "conflicted" because he had previously created choreography to the piece for many skaters, including Sasha Cohen's free skate program for the 2006 Winter Olympics. In his letter to Wilson, Hanyu stressed his desire to skate to Rota's soundtrack and win the Olympics with it: "I don't want to wait until the next Olympics to be the Olympic champion, I want to be the Olympic champion now. And I'm willing to do anything to make that happen, so please, please help me." Wilson, who had already rejected Hanyu's request to skate to The Phantom of the Opera in the previous season, eventually agreed after realizing that Hanyu would use the music piece either way.
The costume of the program was designed by American figure skater Johnny Weir, whom Hanyu named as one of his skating idols, and made by Stephanie Handler. The color and shape of the top were influenced by Weir's personal preference for "white and sparkly" costumes.
2013 pre-Olympic events
Hanyu's first competition of the Olympic season was the 2013 Finlandia Trophy, where he won the gold medal after placing first in both competition segments, setting unofficial personal best scores with 180.93 points in the free skate and 265.59 in the combined total.
His assignments in the 2013–14 Grand Prix series were the Skate Canada International and Trophée Éric Bompard. At Skate Canada, he moved up from third place in the short program to second overall and won silver behind Patrick Chan. Hanyu expressed his disappointment with both performances, having received negative grades of execution (GOE) for all three attempted quadruple jumps and another three jumping passes. At the Trophée Éric Bompard, he skated a clean short program and improved his world record score from the 2012 NHK Trophy by 0.05 points. However, he finished second behind Chan, who had scored world records in all three competition segments with 98.52 points in the short program, 196.75 in the free skate, and 295.27 in the combined total. The two second-place finishes qualified Hanyu for the 2013–14 Grand Prix Final in Fukuoka, where he placed first in the short program and set a new world record with 99.84 points. He also won the free skate despite a fall on the quadruple Salchow, scoring new personal bests of 193.41 in the free skate and 293.25 in the combined total, and claiming his first Grand Prix Final title.
In December 2013, Hanyu competed at the Japan Championships, where he went on to win his second national title after placing first in both competition segments. His scores of 103.10 in the short program and 297.80 in the combined total both exceeded the incumbent world records. However, they were not officially recognized as new highest scores because the International Skating Union (ISU) only recorded results that were achieved at international competitions, not national championships. Hanyu was subsequently appointed as part of the Japanese team for the 2014 Winter Olympics and World Championships.
2014 Winter Olympics
Hanyu went into his first Olympics as one of the gold medal favorites besides Patrick Chan, Daisuke Takahashi, and Russian Evgeni Plushenko, the 2006 Olympic champion as well as the 2002 and 2010 Olympic silver medalist. Hanyu participated in the men's short program of the inaugural figure skating team event, where he competed for the first time against Plushenko whom he had admired growing up. Hanyu performed a clean program and scored an Olympic event record of 97.98, winning that segment and earning 10 points for the Japanese team, which had finished fifth at the end of the event.