He’s everything. He’s the skater, he’s the jumper, but quintessentially, he’s the performer. He seems to have the superpower to take all the pressure, all the expectations and all the lights and all the cameras, and somehow he’s able to use it as a competitor.
— Four-time world champion and skating commentator Kurt Browning,
cited by Jeré Longman, New York Times, published on February 16, 2018
The more I skate a program, the more time passes, the program also ages in a way that brings out its various depths.
— Yuzuru Hanyu at the 2020 Four Continents Championships press conference,
cited by Nikkan Sports, published on February 7, 2020
Hanyu’s skating programs cover a wide range of different music genres, cultural backgrounds, and dance styles—each of them excelling in a different area of skating and performing art. Hanyu also took the unusual approach to remaster and perform his programs every few years, which is more common in ballet and classical music. His short program Ballade No. 1 (by Frédéric Chopin) was used in four competitive seasons between 2014 and 2020 with another revival at the solo show GIFT in 2023, spanning an entire decade of skating in two different judging systems. What makes Hanyu’s remasterings particularly interesting is the notable changes in choreography, music cut, technical content, maturity, and storytelling. The following articles present a selection of Hanyu’s best programs and strongest performances in the five program components that were used in competitive judging by the International Skating Union (ISU) until the 2021–22 figure skating season.
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Yuzuru Hanyu Legacy 