Hi Alice! In your recent post you mentioned Yuzu being more of an edge jumper who can also work toe jumps. Is it because Yuzu‘s axel jumps are the best? From my viewpoint his quad Salchows have not been as consistent as his Quad Toeloops. He has been telling in interviews that he worked the hardest on the axel when he was young just because he believes it to be the king of all jumps. How do you tell what his strength is?
The reply to this is going to be a bit lengthier than you expect, I think. I will go into some details because your question reminded me that I’ve got several unanswered asks on the same topic: how to tell if a skater is an edge or a toe jumper.
I need to first clarify that edge or toe jumper is not a completely fail-safe method to categorize skaters. I (and many skating fans, I think) use it simply because it’s convenient, and conventional.
The basic idea is that when you want to consider whether a skater is an edge jumper or a toe jumper, you look at which of the two categories of jumps, on average, they are more comfortable with.
Now, success rate can be an indicator of whether or not a skater is comfortable with a certain jump type, but it’s a superficial metric. You’d also want to think about how good the skater’s technique is and what kind of quality they can achieve on that jump. Contradictory can happen because the more confident the skater is in a jump type, the higher the chance of them slotting that jump towards the end of a program, which will increase the risk of failure.
Practical example: in recent seasons, Yuzu’s success rate on his 3F has been higher than on his 3Lz (I think the last time he had a serious stumble on a 3F was back in Sochi), but if you know him well you can obviously tell that between the two jumps, the Lutz is the one he’s much more comfortable with.
One more practical example: Janny’s success rate on her toe jumps are neck-and-neck with that on her edge jumps, especially since she turned senior, but I would not hesitate to call her an edge jumper by nature, because her technique on those jumps, especially the Salchow and the loop, is a lot better than that of all her toe jumps.
Furthermore, since the consideration is about edge vs toe jump as two groups, we usually average the skater’s performance on Salchow - loop - Axel and compare that against their average on toe - flip - Lutz. Because it is an average, if a skater is exceptionally good at one jump type, it can skew the evaluation of them towards the group which contains that jump. That was a super convoluted way of telling you, yes, in the categorization of Yuzu as an edge jumper (which is widely agreed upon by most of the skating fans I’ve talked to), his magnificent Axel does play a role :)
(I’m sorry I couldn’t not throw in at least one Yuzu-3A gif. By this point it has become my natural reflex)
So, essentially, there are a few questions you can ask in order to do this edge vs toe categorization of a skater:
How good is their overall technique on toe jumps vs edge jumps? On toe jumps in particular do they pick with their toe or with their full blade (i.e., do they take off for their toe jumps as if they are edge jumps)? Which jump types can they enter with steps / without steps?
Which is their strongest jump?
For the men: which kinds of quad do they practice?
For the ladies: which triples do they put in combination? —This can work for the men as well.
For everyone: which type of jumps do they usually use in their exhibition
Using those to answer your main question, Yuzu is an edge jumper because (1) his technique on the average edge jump is better than on his toe jumps (not to say that his toe jumps are bad, his Salchow - loop - Axel average is simply too good), (2) his best jump is the Axel, (3) he has a highly trustworthy triple Salchow in combination, (4) you don’t usually see him doing toe jumps in exhibition and (5) in case you still need more convincing, he himself once confirmed that his most favorite jump types are Axel and Salchow :)
Incidentally, there’s a cheat code: anyone who’s got a great Axel is usually an edge jumper, and anyone who’s good at both the Lutz and flip (i.e., no wrong edge on either) is usually a toe jumper. Yes, I know, this cheat code totally fails in Yuzu’s case, and in Boyang’s case as well, which is why I said the both of them are rare animals in the skater kingdom. I promise that it does work most of the times though.
Finally, remember that this categorization, as I said in the beginning, is only a convenient way to look at things. It’s not always the most accurate and it’s not always the most reliable. There will always be skaters who fall into a certain grey area between the two. A prime example is our newly minted Olympic champion, Alina Zagitova. I still can’t for the life of me figure out which side of the fence she falls in. My first instinct says toe jumper, since she’s got decent edges on both the Lutz and the flip, but her triple loop is really consistent and her Axel isn’t bad either :)
