Yu-Na Kim names Mao as someone who helped her as a skater?!

Ok, so I found this Japanese article the other day, but it appears to be a site that translates Chinese and Korean sites/articles into Japanese, so I'm not sure how correct this is, and I haven't been able to find the original TV program/news article to verify it myself. Only nice things are said, but still, please take note that I'm not sure how accurate this is...

http://news.searchina.ne.jp/disp.cgi?y=2009&d=0511&f=national_0511_004.shtml

[Korean search word] Among Yu-Na Kim's three benefactors, "Mao Asada is a good rival"

On the evening of the 8th, when Korea's figure skater Yu-Na Kim appeared on a MBC TV program, she named "Coach Jong-Hyun Ryu, who led her into skating, rival Mao Asada, and her mother, who's been by her side supporting her" as the 3 benefactors who influenced her life as a figure skater.

Many net users have taken up this topic, and the phrase "Yu-na Kim's benefactor" has entered the top search ranking list on Korea's major portal site daum.

According to May 9th edition of Newsen, Yu-Na Kim said about Mao Asada, "Honestly, I've never once that I could ever beat Mao Asada. Her existence is something I'm very grateful for," and she revealed that the existence of Mao Asada, who reached the peak of the figure skating world one step ahead of her, had a great influence on her.

About this topic, a blogger pointed out that "Mao Asada's ability is something that stimulated Yu-Na Kim's desire to win, something she aimed for, and she piled all her hard work into trying to overcome Mao Asada, and that is how today's World Champion was formed. In that way, Mao Asada's existence is important."

However, setting aside her principal occupation of skating, in Korea, Yu-Na Kim's popularity knows no decline [ie, it's not declining at all.]

Every time she appears in a Samsung cellphone CM, or a milk CM, or an A/C CM, it becomes a topic of discussion, and the sales of the item are superb. Of course, there are some critical voices that say it's too much, but for businesses, Yu-Na Kim's popularity is something they can't overlook.

Furthermore, there was an incident where the president of Korea University wanted to ride the wave of popularity by all means, and continuing from the Yu-Na Kim posters' actions, he made the controversial statement that "from one year ago, we instilled the Korea University spirit in Yu-Na Kim through telephone calls and letters," and he was criticized not only by net users, but also the current students at Korea University, who said they were "shocked." Topics related to "the nation's little sister" knows no end.

Yu-Na Kim has completed her schedule in Korea and flew to Canada on the evening of the 10th. Yu-Na Kim, who brings out the best out of her elements, and Mao Asada, who is always challenging herself with new things, have become true good rivals that rise above the "rivalry opposition" that the media uses to get ratings, and I want to expect that they will be able to meet next season.

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This is very interesting; if it is true, I am very touched that Yu-Na Kim has
so much respect for Mao and is grateful to her. (Yu-Na has said stuff like this - that she's grateful to Mao for motivating her as a skater - so I believe it's true.)

On the other hand, this makes me appreciate Mao even more.
Because she's always been there pushing herself, trying new things, always taking on challenges, BECAUSE THAT'S WHO SHE IS. She doesn't need a rival to push her to work harder; she is driven by the belief that she can be better than she currently is, and that ceaseless desire to improve and evolve--that is what truly impresses me.

Thank you for the translation of this article, Batsuchan~!!!

This was so sweet of Yuna to say, and I hope it will also be a factor in cooling the rivalry between their fans.
Being a biased Mao fan, I think it is true that Mao will always "be one step ahead" of Yuna, but I am so happy that Yuna took time from her busy schedule to say a few words about how Mao actually helped her advance. I also agree with your theory of Mao not really needing a rival to push herself--sure it helps, but she just wants to advance for the sake of advancing!
This article just made my day!

wow! that's really nice of yuna to say that mao inspires her.

Thanks for the article!!

It's always refreshing to see skaters appreciating and respecting each other. Mao also sees Yuna as a good stimulus to her skating.I wonder which three figures do Mao find most influential to her skating career.

Both Mao and Yuna have great stories to tell with both their careers and personal lives. As much as I appreciate Mao's character, my hat is off to Yuna's perseverance and courage to push through soooo many obstacles to become a top skater in the world. Unlike Mao, Yuna doesn't have a supportive federation to back her up. The path of success, especially in her junior years, had been anything but easy and the KSF has not done much to ease it even after she won her first international competition. These two girls are fighters. They make mistakes and suffer from disappointments but they never gave up. That's what I admire in people in general.

The media sometimes fuel up the rivalry between the two to attract readership. They generalize and simplify the attributes that these two skaters represent, making it a superficial comparison between technicality v.s. artistry, rich v.s. poor, cheater v.s. victim of injustice. The reality is, (or what I'd like to personally think is) it is a difficult thing to separate these two girls into neat little boxes. The fan wars and the hatred apparent in some of the posters in both Japanese and Korean boards certainly did not help much either.

When I see how the male skaters have so much fun at the Korean ice show
last early this month, how they enjoyed skating programs together, I couldn't help but lament the fact that it is virtually nearly impossible for us to see Yuna and Mao skate in the same ice show (at least for now). It is such a shame that things like anti-skater/anti-country sentiments/ agency problems get into the way. They would have rocked an ice show together.

I genuinely wish that Mao Asada and Yuna Kim will one day be able to do something special together - on ice or off ice. I had always thought that they would have been great friends with each other if not for all the rivalry and tension. Well, let's also hope that Mao will continue to brush up her English speaking skills (grins). I really hope to see them skating a pair/ group program together or at least, in the same ice show.

snowdrops24 wrote:

Both Mao and Yuna have great stories to tell with both their careers and personal lives. As much as I appreciate Mao's character, my hat is off to Yuna's perseverance and courage to push through soooo many obstacles to become a top skater in the world. Unlike Mao, Yuna doesn't have a supportive federation to back her up. The path of success, especially in her junior years, had been anything but easy and the KSF has not done much to ease it even after she won her first international competition. These two girls are fighters.

Again, I say, snowdrops24, you always write interesting posts that make me think for awhile before I can reply!

I agree that both girls have faced many challenges and persevered.

However, I am not sure I would agree that Yu-Na Kim had it a lot tougher than Mao, and that she had to show much more perseverance.

Yes, I agree that the JSF is a lot more well-established, and probably a lot better funded than the KSU. However, the KSU only really had Yu-Na Kim to focus on. They could/can pour virtually all of their resources into her. Mao, on the other hand, may have had the benefit of a better-established program, but the JSF also had a large number of top skaters that they needed to focus on: when Mao was entering the junior ranks, there was Fumie Suguri, Shizuka Arakawa, Yukari Nakano, Miki Ando, etc, among the women, and Daisuke and Nobu among the men - many skaters vying for support.

In fact, the sheer number of great Japanese skaters may have worked against Mao - conspiracy theorists claim that the JSF did not lobby enough for Mao to go to the 2006 Olympics because they already had pre-selected the team of Shizuka/Fumie/Miki, and they didn't want to change their well-laid out plans. However, if the situation were reversed and Yu-Na Kim had been the winner of the 2005 GPF, it is my *guess* that the KSF would have lobbied heavily for Yu-Na to be able to go.

In fact, the JSF has been criticized for not supporting some of the lesser skaters, like Daisuke Murakami:
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/sp20081008it.html

So I would not say that JSF being bigger/better-funded than KSU necessarily made it easier for Mao before she made it as a star. (Of course, after she won the 2005 GPF, of course, things changed and now she's their #1 star. )

Here's another thought I have. Yu-Na Kim is the best Korean skater ever. Period. She's the pioneer of the sport in her country. So even she stopped now, she'd already be the best Korea has ever had.

Japan, on the other hand, has had World junior champs and World champs and Olympic gold medalists and the women's triple axel pioneer, etc, etc, so if Mao wants to establish herself as Japan's best skater ever (which I think she does ), she's got to do even more. I think this is part of the reason why Mao is always challenging herself.

I feel like Yu-Na had no expectations about how far she could go as a skater, because no Korean women had ever succeeded before. When she started as a junior, she probably never thought she could be World or Olympic champ (though undoubtedly those thoughts have changed now).

Mao, on the other hand, has seen women from her country win Worlds and the Olympics, so she's set her goals much, much higher.

Well, that's just my take on things...
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As for the last point about them potentially skating together once they are no longer competing - I used to think that Mao and Yu-Na were sooo cute together, and I was soo touched by the fact that they seemed to be genuinely friendly/friends with each other.

After Worlds 2009, however, my thinking changed... It's not that I think they are more competitive with each other now or that they dislike each other now - no, it's not that at all!

But I realized - what would they be able to talk about, in the future? In the future, if they ever look back on old competitions, it'll probably be the case that one of them was happy and the other was disappointed. For example, Yu-Na's happiest moment from the season - Worlds 2009 - is Mao's most disappointing and painful moment, while Mao's happiest moment - GPF 2008 - is probably Yu-Na's worst moment of the season. I kind of feel like meeting the other will just be a reminder of all the personal disappointments...well, and also the triumphs too, I guess...but at any rate, I feel like it will always be kind of awkward between them...but I do think that even without saying anything at all, they understand each other and what they other has suffered better than anyone else.

Batsuchan wrote:

Again, I say, snowdrops24, you always write interesting posts that make me think for awhile before I can reply!

I agree that both girls have faced many challenges and persevered.

However, I am not sure I would agree that Yu-Na Kim had it a lot
tougher than Mao, and that she had to show much more perseverance.

Hahaha , I'll take that as a compliment, I guess(no sarcasm intended).Thanks.

I could have been clearer in my post, apologies. I wasn't suggesting
that in general, Yuna is more persevering / had it tougher than Mao.
But I do think that in terms of relationships with their country's
skating federation, Yuna most probably did have it tougher than Mao. I
will not go into details here but a little bit of research will tell us
that KSF has very little to be credited for Yuna's success.

I was writing in the "other skater" topic and commenting an article
about Yuna, so I thought it would be better if I focused my comments
more about her instead of Mao - since we already have other discussion
boards mainly for discussing news about Mao. Perhaps I should have
written a small paragraph about my appreciation of Mao's
character/sportsmanship as well to balance things out. But I must admit
(grins), I was feeling lazy.

I guess it was the tone of my second paragraph that led you to think
that way. The use of the phrase, "as much as" may suggest I'm more
impressed about Yuna than Mao. I was simply expressing my admiration
for Yuna in that paragraph. Perhaps I shouldn't have included Mao in
the sentence because it would look like I was comparing them.

Ahhh... time to be more careful with a second language. Sometimes, it's
the subtlety of foreign languages that's really hard to master. Sorry
for the misunderstanding.

I would have to agree with snowdrops24 here because I think (from an outsider's point of view) that Mao has gotten a lot more support (especially when she first started out) than Yu-Na did as a junior skater. I don't want to make it all about culture because I don't think it's entirely that, perhaps the history of figure-skating in Korea and Japan and the disparity between these histories hold the answer to it? I remember that someone linked an article to this forum where Brian Orser was talking about how unhappy Yu-Na was before she started training with him, and how she thought it was all about the jumps. Mao faced that too, to some extent, but she just seemed to be an all-together happier child than Yu-Na was.

I also heard from a friend (and I'm not sure if this is true) that Yu-na's sister (who's in nursing now) originally wanted to become a singer, but Yu-na's mother only had the resources to sponsor one child and Yu-na's figure-skating took precedence over her sister's desire to be a singer. Now, I don't know if this is just gossip my friend made up, but based on that, I would say that Yu-Na had a lot of pressure growing up to be the best in order to make all the resources her family put into her worth it.

Then again, it wasn't as if Mao's family was made of cash either. I just think that snowdrops24 has a point in what she said. I think both Yu-Na and Mao trained equally hard. Maybe it's their personal circumstances that is making the difference?

snowdrops24 wrote:

Hahaha , I'll take that as a compliment, I guess(no sarcasm intended).Thanks.

Yes, of course I meant it as a compliment! Post long and post often!

Well, I have to admit I don't know very much about Yu-Na at all, so I think I let my extreme Mao bias get the better of me... My apologies.

Please continue to write about the other skaters as much as you want and don't feel like you have to mention Mao.

snowdrops24 wrote:

Ahhh... time to be more careful with a second language. Sometimes, it's the subtlety of foreign languages that's really hard to master. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

Ooh, English is your second language? Can I ask what your first language is?

Batsuchan wrote:

Yes, of course I meant it as a compliment! Post long and post often!

Well, I have to admit I don't know very much about Yu-Na at all, so I think I let my extreme Mao bias get the better of me... My apologies.

It's alright. No offense taken, . My mother tongue is Chinese; Cantonese to be even more precise.

snowdrops24 wrote:

Batsuchan wrote:

Yes, of course I meant it as a compliment! Post long and post often!

Well, I have to admit I don't know very much about Yu-Na at all, so I think I let my extreme Mao bias get the better of me... My apologies.

It's alright. No offense taken, . My mother tongue is Chinese; Cantonese to be even more precise.

Haha! SAME , but I know more english than chinese.