Fernandez takes tips from his skating ‘wife’

Reuters/Shanghai

Rather than turning into a green-eyed monster following the Olympic success of his training partner, Yuzuru Hanyu, Javier Fernandez cannot wait to see how he measures up against a man he calls his skating ‘wife’. The two Brian Orser graduates will be gunning for gold at the figure skating world championships in Shanghai this week. But whatever happens on the ice, Fernandez is looking forward to catching up with Hanyu after spending three months apart while the Japanese world and Olympic champion recovered from illness and injury in Sendai. “With Yuzu, we are everything, we are friends, we are team mates, at some point we have to be rivals,” Spaniard Fernandez told Reuters in a telephone interview from his Toronto training base. “It’s like having a wife, your wife is your friend, your wife is everything but it depends on the time. “When we are on the ice we are competing against each other but when the competition is done, we are friends again and we work together again.” Whereas having the same coach could spark fireworks in other sports—imagine tennis players Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe jostling for ‘me time’ under the same mentor—Fernandez feels there is more pros than cons with the set-up he shares with his great rival. “We’ve never had that feeling (of jealously) that Brian is working more with Yuzu or is working more with me because he wants one of us to win. That’s not Brian at all,” said Fernandez, who has been guided to a hat-trick of European titles by the 1987 world champion. “He’s absolutely neutral. He doesn’t have a favourite. “Brian takes the same care with all his skaters, it doesn’t matter what level they are. He cares about his job and he wants to make figure skaters the best skaters they can be.” GOLDEN TOUCH Orser certainly has the golden touch when it comes to moulding champions. The Canadian missed out on getting the ultimate prize himself, after coming off second best in the ‘Battle of the Brians’ at the 1988 Calgary Games—pipped by Brian Boitano. As a coach, however, he has enjoyed rip roaring success with Kim Yuna at the 2010 Olympics followed by Hanyu in Sochi last year. Fernandez feels that having a ringside seat to Hanyu’s training sessions with Orser has helped him to become a better skater himself. “Sometimes we learn just by watching,” said Fernandez, who narrowly missed out on an Olympic bronze last year.”