St. Petersburg, Feb 16, Taras Barabash. Coach Alexei Mishin said that before the Beijing Olympics, he told Japanese figure skater Yuzuru Hanyu not to perform a quadruple axel. American Nathan Chen won a gold medal in men's single skating at the Olympics. Hanyu fell while attempting the first ever four-and-a-half rotation Axel in the free skate. The Japanese took fourth place in the tournament. «Men's single skating is a detective. The American won, a wonderful athlete. Nathan is a strong athlete. But there is also a legendary figure — Hanyu. I talked with Yuzuru before the Games. I told him: do not do a quadruple axel. «I advised him on this issue and said: don't jump. Yuzuru, like Zhenya Plushenko, has everything, but Hanyu doesn't have one. He wanted to go down in history not as a three-time champion, but as a figure skater who opened the window to the future of figure skating The experiment failed, but it was to be expected,» Mishin told reporters. «The transition to the axel in four turns is something revolutionary. It breaks the idea of a person. What is needed for this? A new method, a new approach to performing a jump can lead to the execution of a clean jump. Where is this mechanism? I have been studying jumps all my life. We need a fundamentally new method. What method is this? I don’t know, «the specialist added.
