The quadruple Axel – a quest for perfection

It becomes very quiet in the Capital Indoor Stadium. The screams of onlookers, who just saw a saint treading the ice, are silenced. Photographers leave it out of their mind to print. Nobody wants to take Yuzuru Hanyu (27) out of his concentration moments before he starts doing what millions expect of him, but nobody ever did.

In a blouse with puff sleeves in the colors of a lotus flower, he takes a seat in the middle of the Olympic ice rink, right in front of the judges. His black trouser legs merge seamlessly into his skates, as if he has grown into them. When the music of his choice starts to play, oriental sounds from the Japanese movie Ten to Chi tohe raises his face. This is what he came to Beijing for.

The complete program of the Winter Olympics

He begins with graceful arm movements, his fingers tucked into nylon gloves. Golden dust glitters on his chest. Then he starts to accelerate, first forward, a bit back. This is how figure skaters do it: backwards leg-over, the arms spread wide. When he has reached the desired speed, he prepares for a power explosion. His shirt starts to flutter.

He turns forward, bends slightly on his knees, starts a twisting motion by swinging his right leg from back to front and then pushes off with all the strength he has in his left leg. Hanyu flies, as only he can. Higher and further than its competitors. When it starts spinning on its long axis, millions of people around the world hold their breath. They all know what’s at stake on this Thursday. It turns one, two, three, four times. Is he going to do the impossible? Will he be the first human to land the quadruple Axel, the holy grail of figure skating, in a competition?

Remote Mass Hysteria

Yuzuru Hanyu had only arrived in Beijing last Sunday, after a period of absolute radio silence. He has a habit of traveling to a match at the very last minute; in this way he ensures that the mass hysteria, which breaks out wherever he goes, stays at a distance. He doesn’t do social media. Hanyu is on his own. And that contributes to his myth-making.

He became Olympic champion in 2014 and 2018 and a third title in a row hadn’t happened in 100 years. But lately his body had started to falter. His right ankle was especially problematic. When landing after a jump, that joint has to handle up to seven times the body weight. And that sometimes hundreds of times a day. His fans began to worry that their hero might not make it to the Olympics, not be able to defend his title.

Hanyu had to miss several games this season due to his ankle. At 27 years old, he is no longer the youngest in his sport. He chose his moments carefully and set his sights on the Beijing Winter Games. Gold was not his main target. He would rather make history with the fourfold Axel. It became an obsession. Sometimes he practiced nothing else for two hours straight.

The Axel is considered the most difficult of six jumps in figure skating, named after Norwegian Axel Paulsen in 1882. You still have the Flip, the Toeloop, the Lutz, the Salchow and the Rittberger, but the Axel is the only jump where the skater has to push off forward, on the outside of the iron, and then turn around the longitudinal axis at least one and a half times to to land backwards. The Axel therefore developed more slowly than the other jumps. It was not until 1920 that the first double Axel was made.

While the American Dick Button already made a triple Rittberger at the 1952 Games in Oslo, it would take until 1980 before someone successfully performed a triple Axel in a competition. In 1991 the first woman succeeded. Today, the triple Axel is commonplace. Also with the women. The men now do all jumps fourfold. Except for the Axel.

Carousel in the playground

It took Yuzuru Hanyu ten years to stabilize triple Axel. On match footage from 2008 you regularly see him fall, or land with one hand on the ice. The difficult thing about the jump is that you can’t push off with the tip of the skate against the ice, like with the Lutz or the Loop. All the power must come from the extension of the left leg, and the whip from the right. This is how height is gained. The higher and further the jump, the more time the skater has to turn. That is, if enough energy has been put into the rotation. It is always a search for the ideal balance between the two.

A figure skater starts turning through the turn he makes just before the take-off. Once off the ground, it is important to make the rotating surface as narrow as possible. Think of the merry-go-round in the playground. Whoever pushes off and keeps the arms bent, turns faster than when hanging with straight arms. The figure skater has to move through the air like a pencil, the legs pinched together, the arms clasped to the chest. Rotating in a vacuum takes an enormous amount of force. Hence the grimaces at a multiple jump.

Hanyu is revered, even adored by some, for his combination of strength, nimbleness and artistic elegance. When you see him skating for the first time, you can fall in love with his movements. A triple Axel now costs him so little effort that he can suddenly do it in a freestyle, between a series of passes, without running up. He can also do it on land, on shoes, out of stand.

The Ice Prince would have dreamed of the quadruple Axel as a child. He initially thinks it’s quite possible because he senses space and time in his triple Axel. But when he starts training specifically for it, sometimes in a kind of harness that his Canadian coach holds on to a fishing rod, he learns that it’s a different technique. Height alone is not enough. He also needs to learn to turn faster. In the run-up to the Games, he promises his fans that it will happen in Beijing. In a video he asks for mental support. The pressure will be enormous.

A rare mistake

On Tuesday, in the short freestyle, Hanyu makes a rare mistake on his first jump, the quadruple Salchow. A pit in the ice would have ruined his sales. He places eighth for the long freestyle and can forget a medal. Even if he landed the quadruple Axel for the first time in history, he would get too few points for it – skating federation ISU decided a few years ago to lower the value of jumps because they got the upper hand over the choreography of a freestyle. This made the sport more spectacular to watch. But less artistic.

It was better for Hanyu to play it safe and go for a good triple Axel combination than to take so much risk for a jump he’d never landed on his own, not even in training. But on the program form that was handed out on Thursday at the Capital Indoor Stadium, it was really behind his name, as the first jump; ‘4A, Quad Axel’. “I have to keep challenging myself,” he said on Japanese TV. “I need this.”

In the warm-up just before the game, he made two attempts on the 4A. He fell, but scrambled to his feet and nodded, encouraging himself. He visualized the movement needed by hitting his arms flexed against his chest.

He continues to do this, until just before the music of his choice is started. Then he speeds up, backwards, and turns forward. He sways and turns off. Flies as only he can. One, two, three, four times, and then suddenly the ice is already there. He falls, but never got that far; the jury writes ‘underrotated‘ on. He’s a quarter turn short. He fails in his quest for perfection. The reward is fourth place, well away from the American Nathan Chen, the new Olympic champion.

“I could have made easier jumps,” Hanyu says later. “But now I’m pushing boundaries. And that completes me.” He speaks to hundreds of journalists. Behind his back he holds a melted bag of ice.