Falling twice during the Winter Games, failing an announced ‘historic’ jump, and yet getting all the attention: that is only awarded to the biggest stars. Like Yuzuru Hanyu, the Japanese figure skater who finished fourth in the men’s solo on Thursday, but was immediately lifted on a pedestal in China. The gold of the Chinese-American Nathan Chen seemed to matter much less.
The 27-year-old Hanyu is worshiped as a demigod in his home country of Japan and is also extremely popular in China. His Chinese fans praise his athletic ability, his expressive power, but above all his warm personality. Hanyu is the ideal son-in-law: handsome, friendly, endearing. In the eyes of the Fanyu – as Hanyu’s fans call themselves – the “Ice Prince” can do no wrong. Not even if he fails.
Hanyu became famous in 2014 when he became the first Asian male solo rider to win Olympic gold in Sochi. Four years later, he renewed his title in Pyeongchang. He became world champion twice, broke nineteen world records, won everything there is to win. Now he’s aiming for more: just before the Games, he announced his intention to perform a ‘quad axel’, a quadruple rotation (the quad) plus a half turn to land backwards (the axel, after Norwegian skater Axel Paulsen). No skater has achieved that during a competition.
Hanyu’s star status is immediately felt when he steps onto the ice rink of the Capital Indoor Stadium in Beijing on Thursday. The public has been government-selected and his staunch supporters are absent, despite a letter campaign from his fans to the Beijing Olympic Committee. But as soon as Hanyu appears, all the phones in the audience go up. Cheers of encouragement are heard from the stands, one woman shouts ‘arigato’ (Japanese for ‘thank you’).
Two falls
Four minutes later it is clear that the Japanese ice prince does not live up to expectations this time. He falls twice during his free freestyle, once after his quad axel, which becomes invalid. Given the technical difficulty of his program, he still managed to reach 283.21 points and was in first place for a while. When his compatriot Shumo Uno later overthrows him from the throne, the audience hears a collective cry of disappointment. Hanyu eventually finishes fourth.
It is a huge contrast to the reactions to Nathan Chen, a 22-year-old American of Chinese descent who put down an unparalleled free freestyle on Thursday. He jumps one flawless quad after another (albeit no quad axel), on an appropriate Rocket Man by Elton John. After a world record in the short freestyle earlier this week, he achieved 332.60 points, good for gold. The spectators applaud, but there are no shouts or thanks.
On Chinese social media, the difference is even more pronounced. A hashtag about Hanyu’s falls has been viewed 510 million times four hours after the match, with 77 thousand comments. Even though Hanyu was out of the picture, his ambition to push boundaries has made him the ’embodiment of the Olympic spirit’. A hashtag about Nathan Chen’s gold has been viewed 220 million times, with 18 thousand comments. Among them very often the comment that Hanyu is still the true number 1.
The Chinese idolatry for Hanyu has many reasons. Chinese girls find him irresistibly handsome, with his face like a manga figure and his androgynous style, very popular in Chinese fashion circles, against the will of the Communist Party. Others admire Hanyu’s fighting spirit. As a 4-year-old boy, he suffered from asthma and was sent to skating lessons for health reasons. As a professional skater he overcame serious injuries. Fans mirror his mental resilience.
apolitical
Hanyu is also praised for his artistic style and his ability to convey emotions. More than an athlete, his fans see him as an artist. That makes it easier to feel a personal connection with him than with a technical rider like Nathan Chen, who relies more on spectacular jumps. Chen, who studies data science and statistics at top Yale University in addition to his sports, is referred to as the “quad king” because of his style.
But nationality also plays a role in this case. On the face of it, Chen, an American of Chinese descent, should have an edge over Hanyu, who hails from Japan, which has a tumultuous historical and political relationship with China. But where Hanyu adopts a political apolitical attitude and thus manages to transcend Chinese antipathy towards Japan, Chen once criticized Chinese human rights violations. For nationalist Chinese, that amounts to treason.
And so yet another athlete falls prey to the tense geopolitical climate. Chen has the gold medal, but in China Hanyu remains the winner.