Nikkei's article: Step! Step! Step! vol.3(Nov.27.2009)

Today Nikkei Shinbun introduced an article about Dai-chan, Step! Step! Step! vol.3. Again it's a very interesting article!!

Here is the very first part of it. I would appreciate if anyone could help me! And sorry for my poor English. Enjoy!!

(The link for Step! Step! Step! vol.1 & vol.2)


Nov.27.2009 Nikkei Shinbun Step! Step! Step! vol.3: Part 1

Vancouver, to the dream stage.

Enjoying my ideal dancing. Being passionate is what I am.


The real competition in one and half year started while he was fumbling around. After three competitions, the competition sense is finally about to come back to him. He fought battles with his rivals and felt a sense of tension in a while, then he can see a new world that he hasn't realized yet.

Skate Canada was the first competition where Takahashi actually fought after the injury. Setting a goal, "at least second place which gives me a chance to go to GPF", he didn't become defensive. He attempted a quad. Even though he failed it, he placed in 2nd. He had luck and got a result.

He said "I don't think the way to here was tough but the effect of the absence was larger than expected." At first, he jumped dozens of jumps in the official practice, perhaps because he felt anxious unconsciously. "Did I jump that much?" He was so desparate that he didn't aware of it. He was different in Skate Canada. He could practice with intention for the competition.

Being away from real competitions, he forgot how to bring his feeling toward them. Think nothing, do one's best. What he thought before his comeback wasn't so easy. Finlandia Trophy which he won in October wasn't a big comeptition and he felt easy, "it is a first cometition so it's OK if I fail." So he stayed calm even under the situation that 6 cameras chased his every movement. It was the second competition NHK Trophy, when he realized the reality of his own. The comepetition was the toughest one among GPS, having great skaters there.


more to come....

Thanks so much for the translation, miyu! I had heard about this article today and was really curious about its contents, so I'm really glad you posted it so soon.

試合勘 is hard to translate into English... How about "competition sense"?

I'd love to help you translate, but I can't find the text of the article online. Is it only available in the hard copy of the newspaper?

Hi Calliope! Thank you for saying so.
I'm a bit busy these days so I can't work on this this weekend. If you have a time to translate, could you do for us? Please check Video Selection area where I left something for you.

OK, "competition sense". I'll amend my translation!!

Thank you!

Hi Miyu:

Thank you for translation. I can help you if the article is on the net.

試合勘　can be Sense of competition, rather than competition sense.

I can not be at GFP, so I am so looking forward to the report.
I can report CBC and NBC coverage.

Talk to you soon

Thanks so much for the scans, miyu! I started translating the second part, so hopefully I can post that soon. Genki, if you have time and want to translate the third part (starting from 「挑む気持ちに」), please feel free.

Hi Miyu:
I found the article.

I will translate the part after you have translated.

Daisuke has been aware of what is going on with his rivals, but he thought that he should oncentrate on himself. However, when Daisuke met them in person, he could not help looking at them aimlessly.Although he did not tremble due to stage flight as he skated in the show for the first time before audience, he has felt pressured, looking at other skaters with excellent movement.
" I got to win. I got to show how well I can perform."
He found himself expecting to perform better than practice.Daisuke said," I got tensed when I should not. I believe it is because I have started to think that I got to compete against them."
In the long program, he finished 4th,falling twice on jumps.
This clearly showed the lack of endurance.However this type of physical problems will disappear as time goes by.It was rather difficult for Daisuke to focus on his skating due pressure to do many things to improve.

Because of the injury that he sustained, he became more honest to himself and developed strength to face reality.
Daisuke says," Practice is honest." He can also said " I can not do that yet." not pretending to be stronger than he really is. He also started to think that he should enjoy skating, because he skates for himself not for anybody else.
However, when he faced competition, he found himself to hang up on winning.

To be continued.
(I do not have article after this.)
Miyu, will you continue?

Why does he look so sexy in this picture?

He is not that at all in back stage!! So strange.
You guys do not believe me do you?

Many thanks for the translation, miyu, Calliope and Genki!!

Genki wrote:

Why does he look so sexy in this picture?
He is not that at all in back stage!! So strange.
You guys do not believe me do you?

I do believe, Genki!! It is known among his Japanese fans that Daisuke has a big difference between on ice and off ice. He is very shy at the off ice. Actually, I think he is acting when he performs his program on the ice or pictures naturally. In a way, he is gifted like an actor using actor's method.

I would like to thank his choreographers, Kenji Miyamoto and Pasquale Camerlengo who gave Daisuke so beautiful programs for Olympic season. These programs are helping Daisuke a lot since he is back from his injury.

Here's the rest of the article. Genki left out the last sentence of the paragraph that she stopped on, so for continuity, I started from the beginning of that paragraph.

--

After his injury, he developed the strength to accept his current condition and not try to put up a front. He can now naturally say things like "Practice is honest" and "I still can't do that," without pretending to be tough. He became able to think that he has to enjoy skating, since he's not skating for anyone else, but for his own sake. During competition, however, his desire to win surfaced. "I convinced myself saying, that's not okay, I have to do my own performance and enjoy it."

His concentration returned before the free program at NHK Trophy. In the 6 minute warm-up, he was able to enjoy the adrenaline and tension that arose from the sparks scattered between the skaters. This change in his feelings also carried over to Skate Canada.

Takahashi’s struggle to control his feelings may be one of his weaknesses. [Is this the correct translation for 長所の裏返し? I’m not sure, I'm just assuming that the reverse of a strong point is a weakness.] According to his coach Utako Nagamitsu, "He is an idealist." He has a unique characteristic where he thinks, "It has to be like this." This applies to his clothes and personal belongings as well, but when he performs, he listens to the music and an image naturally surfaces; then, the suitable movement comes to mind.

Because he has this specific idea, even if Nagamitsu or others compliment his movements, often he's still not satisfied. Many skaters check their movements in a mirror in the rink when they practice, but Takahashi rarely does this. "If I look and see myself doing it wrong, I get depressed and lose motivation." When he watches his practice videos, he only looks at the jumps.

This fixation has helped Takahashi become one of the best artistic skaters in the world. But because he has such a high level of sensitivity, sometimes his performance falls apart when he makes mistakes and his mood drops suddenly.

Because he has this firm ideal, Takahashi rarely bothers to check the performances of other skaters. However, he watched on TV the performance of Evgeni Plushenko, the Torino Olympics gold medalist who is returning to competition this season after three years. The skater whom many do not want to compete against is not as good as he was in his golden age, but he securely landed a quad and other difficult jumps. "I thought that no matter what, I have to perform like him. I may not be completely satisfied, but I want to be able to think that I did everything I could within my current limits."

Feelings of Challenge

After the free program at NHK Trophy, he was shocked by what his free program choreographer Pasquale Camerlengo told him. "You danced more in the past. Dance some more!" Since his surgery, his body changed and he had to be more careful about his movements, so he forgot the joy of immersing himself in the music. "I realized that being emotional and passionate is what I am. If I dance, something greater than just simple technique will come through."

I want to perform with a free feeling. Thinking this, when his name was called before the free program at Skate Canada, his anxieties disappeared and turned into a good kind of tension. "Look at me." Only feelings of wanting to challenge the Canadian audience arose. Thinking he was able to appeal to them like that, he placed first in the free program.

The next day, the 22nd, was the exhibition. His tension was very high during the morning practice, and his body felt light. When he started practicing jumps half for fun, a space in the crowded rink where Takahashi could jump mysteriously opened up. He landed a 3-3-3 combination, and twice landed the quad which he had been experimenting with. It probably won't be that easy in competition, but he said, "I had a discovery." The 26th is exactly one year from the surgery on his right knee. He continues to feel new possibilities for himself.

Hi Calliope:

Thank you for translation. I think it is really good.

I did not know he landed quads in practice, because I had been back stage all the while. Shoot I missed it. I was just watching his warm up with his trainer all along.

Anyway, I can not wait to see GPF.

Leode, thank you for believing what I said about Dai-chan.
He is really soft spoken, quiet, gentle and cute.
I feel like he is my son skating now, rather than hot sexy Dai that I had known before. He is really a nice kid.

みんなで応援しようね。

Go daisuke!!

I think the difference between Daisuke's on-ice and off-ice personality is one of the most interesting things about him. If you watch his performances and then see him on TV or in interviews, you might think, woah, is this really the same person? But knowing how different he is off the ice makes his performances seem even more impressive.

Anyway, I also wanted to say that I'm glad Daisuke seems to be focused more on his own performances this season and is trying not to let the desire to win take over. In the CBC broadcast of Skate Canada, Tracy Wilson made a comment similar to the ones in this article, that Daisuke wants to have fun and relax more this season and not be so obsessed with the scores. Not that winning isn't important -- it is, and I definitely want Daisuke to win as much as possible -- but it seemed to me that in the 2007-2008 season he was maybe a little too hung up on it. I remember he said in some interviews back then that he didn't used to care so much about winning and just wanted to perform well, but then he began to think that the results are everything and that it's meaningless if you don't win. It seems that after the injury, though, he's realized the joy of just being able to skate in front of an audience again and rather than trying to win everything, wants to focus on improving each performance up until the Olympics. I think that's the right attitude to have in the long run, and hopefully it pays off.

Thank you so much, Calliope and Genki!!
I hope it didn't destroy your weekend, Calliope!
I like this series of Nikkei's articles. They are very interesting to read everytime.

Quote :

"I realized that being emotional and passionate is what I am. If I dance, something greater than just simple technique will come through."

When I saw FOI, CaOI and Finlandia, I had a feeling that he was pursuing more elegant, smooth style of figure skating as the result of acquiring the new body. But his performances in NHK changed my feeling. He was (or tried to be) very intense and passionate there, just like before. This article confirmed what I felt. (For Mr. Camerlengo, even the performances in NHK wasn't enough, though. )

Genki wrote:

He is not that at all in back stage!! So strange.
You guys do not believe me do you?

I've never met him in person, but I can imagine that, maybe because I saw a lot of his interviews these years. (Have you ever seen his post FP interview at 05 Skate America? I think it's the cutest one. I tried to find it on youtube but I couldn't....)

Calliope wrote:

but it seemed to me that in the 2007-2008 season he was maybe a little too hung up on it. I remember he said in some interviews back then that he didn't used to care so much about winning and just wanted to perform well, but then he began to think that the results are everything and that it's meaningless if you don't win.

Yes, I remember he kept saying he wanted to win every competition in that season.
In this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGR84aDv_Js), he said (@0:30)"I might have been worn out. The feeling that I had to get a result grew heavier and probably it wore me out."
I hope he can skate feeling pure joy in Vancouver.

Thank you so much for the all translations, miyu, Genki and Calliope.
I made a new topic for all as hsuhs wrote.
Please use this thread, thank you.

Daisuke's carrier in his figure skating life
https://daisuke-takahashi.forumotion.com/discussion-on-daisuke-in-english-f3/daisuke-s-carrier-in-his-figure-skating-life-t676.htm#6444