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Fernandez joins ranks of Spanish sports royaltyEuropean champion starting to get recognized in soccer-mad home country
http://web.icenetwork.com/news/a ... 13708&vkey=ice_news
(03/04/2013) - There is a saying that it is better to be lucky than good. While it took a lot of luck to get Javier Fernández where he is today, the Spanish skater is that good that he was able to take advantage of his good fortune.

      Figure skating is not a widely understood sport in Spain, nor is it widely broadcast. So for Fernández to end up becoming one of the world's best figure skaters, and to be from Spain, is a story of how luck and talent intertwined at just the right time.

It was by chance that his older sister, Laura, happened upon watching skating on television one day, back when Javier was about 6. She went to her parents and asked them if she could take a lesson. Young Javier watched his sister on the ice, and he, too, wanted to lace up a pair of skates.

     Luckily for the Fernández children, there was a rink not far from their home in Madrid, which is not exactly awash with ice rinks. But even then, Fernández said, the rink was smaller than the standard ice sheet, and he and his sister eventually had to find a larger facility in which to train.

      Want to play soccer in Spain? No problem. Want to play basketball? Sure. Want to play tennis? OK. Spain has produced the likes of Raúl, Pau Gasol and Rafael Nadal. In Spain, you can participate in lots of sports. Heck, you can even run with the bulls.

     But ice skate? Although it's not unheard of in this country, Spain is not exactly a mecca of winter sports superstars. The country first participated in the 1936 Olympic Winter Games but did not earn a medal until 1972. The only other time a Spaniard won a medal at the Winter Olympics was in 1992. Never has Spain earned a medal in figure skating.

     But as luck would have it, Fernández was able to train, and he even got to spend some summers practicing alongside three-time Olympic medalistEvgeni Plushenko of Russia. Alexei Mishin, Plushenko's longtime coach, would take some of his students to Spain for summer camps. When Fernández was about 14, he made it his goal to skate like Plushenko.

    Nowadays, many skaters around the world, especially in Spain, want to skate like Fernández.

    Last month, Fernández became the first Spaniard to win the European figure skating title -- and the first skater from Spain to win an ISU championship -- and he did so in commanding style, beating runner-up Florent Amodio of France by nearly 25 points. Next month in London, Ontario, he has a good shot at becoming the first Spanish skater to win a world figure skating title.

     Fernández's rise to the top of the European standings struck a chord back in his native country. Following his victory, he spent two days in Spain and was offered VIP passes to a Real Madrid soccer match. Afterward, he met with all the players, and they signed a T-shirt for him. One of the players actually recognized Fernández, saying, "I know you. You're the boy who lives in Canada, right?" (Indeed he does, as he trains with Brian Orser in Toronto.) He met the prince and princess of Spain and even received a congratulatory letter from the king.

    "I never had that happen before," Fernández said with a laugh when he mentioned the king's letter.

    All of this has overwhelmed Fernández, who as a youngster could barely follow his sport on television, let alone have it recognized by Spanish royalty.

    Spanish royalty is especially pleased to have one of its own fare well in an Olympic sport. Madrid is a candidate city to host the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Even though those would be the Summer Games, the prince and princess invited Fernández to participate in a 2020 event to add to Spain's Olympic caché.

    Truth be told, he does not get back to Spain much, and often while training in Toronto he yearns for meals from his home country, especially paella. If he can find a soccer game being broadcast online, he will watch it. His father, Antonio, who is in the Spanish military, and his mother, Enriqueda, who works in a post office, will try to see Fernández compete if he is in Europe. But the high cost of traveling to Canada will prevent them from watching him skate at the 2013 World Championships.

    They did get to watch him win the European title, which he earned in Zagreb, Croatia, and they stayed at the same hotel as their son.

    "We celebrated in the hotel and opened a couple of bottles of champagne in my room," Fernández said. "My aunt and cousin were there, too."

    As proud as his parents are of their son's good fortune, Fernández said they remain somewhat outsiders in the sport.

    "They know a little bit," he said. "But they still get confused with the jumps."

    Fernández said he was home for a short time during Christmas and a little bit in the summer, but most of his year is spent in Canada. He first left Spain to train when he was about 17. At the time, he was coached in Hackensack, N.J., by Nikoli Morozov, another Russian whom Fernández had met through summer camps in Spain.

    When Fernández first traveled across the Atlantic to train, he said he could barely speak a word of English. He said he taught himself the language and speaks quite well. He laughed when he thought back to his first days away from Spain, working with a Russian coach and being around Japanese skaters in an English-speaking country, but slowly, he made it work.

    After about a year and half with Morozov, he decided to train with Orser, which was somewhat amusing because many people believe Fernández bears a striking resemblance to the two-time Olympic silver medalist.

    "I really didn't know Brian before, but I had met him once a long time ago," Fernández said. "I even took a picture with him and everyone says, 'He looks like your dad.'"

    Canadians have taken to Fernández almost as one of their own, which certainly will help when he skates in London, about a two-hour drive from Toronto. He might not be as popular as the country's two-time world champion, Patrick Chan, but Fernández does feel Canadian love.

    "People here treat me really well," he said. "The people really support me."

     And it helps that Fernández skates well. In his charming free skate, in which he performs a Charlie Chaplin routine, he not only delights with his choreography but also includes three quadruple jumps.

    Fernández said he first landed a quad (Salchow) when he was about 15 or 16. He tried it one day and three days later, he landed one. After a brief time when the International Skating Union's judging system did not reward quads as much as it does now, the quads seemed to disappear from competitors' programs like drones on radar.

    But they have made a resurgence of late, and now fans are seeing them everywhere. All of the top five finishers in the free skate in Zagreb attempted at least one quad, if not two or three. Canadian Kevin Reynolds landed three to win the Four Continents title, andMax Aaron landed two quads to win his first U.S. crown.

    Even though Fernández did not reach the podium at the Grand Prix Final in Sochi, placing fourth, his performance in the free skate, which included three beautifully landed quads, made him the toast of the event.

    The last time a competitor tried three quads in a program at the Olympic Winter Games was Tim Goebel, who landed the trifecta en route to a bronze medal in Salt Lake City in 2002. Evan Lysacek won the gold medal in Vancouver without one, but no one thinks a quad-less program will put a skater on top of the men's podium next winter in Sochi.

    Goebel once said that landing three quads in one program is like hitting three home runs in a baseball game. When told of that analogy, Fernández agreed but put his comparison in soccer terms: "It's kind of like scoring a hat trick."

    Fernández will try three quads again at the world championships, and who knows how many he will attempt less than a year from now in Sochi.

    For now, he's enjoying being the toast of Spain.

Fernandez bona fide force
Globetrotting by Philip Hersh
http://my.chicagotribune.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-74620747/
March 1, 2013

When Javier Fernandez finished his free skate at the European Championships last month, having landed three clean quadruple jumps, a Spanish TV commentator spent the next minute uttering a stream of "bravos."

"I am speechless," the commentator said amid her 13 bravos. "This is a historic moment."

At that moment, with two skaters left, Fernandez was guaranteed of becoming the first Spanish medalist at an international figure skating championship.

He wound up with the gold, plus the season's highest free skate and total scores.

"I did not think this was possible," Fernandez said. "After all, I am still a Spaniard."

His country's figure skating federation has 600 members, compared to 175,000 in the United States. Spain, with 47 million inhabitants, has 14 indoor rinks, about the same number as in Chicago's north suburbs.

"We never thought any Spanish skater could do this," said Mikel Garcia, one of Fernandez' former coaches. "And I think he is the one and only."

Even Fernandez, 21, did not take skating seriously until he left Spain 41/2 years ago to train in North America. In 2010, he became the second Spanish man — and first since 1956 — to compete at the Winter Olympics.

Fernandez was 14th at the Olympics. Now he is a medal contender at next month's World Championships in London, Ont.

"I know people are going to expect a lot," Fernandez said, "but my goal is to be in the top five."

That is realistic for someone who finished a career-high ninth last year, best ever for a Spaniard. It might not seem that way to Spanish media, who suddenly discovered Fernandez when he visited his native Madrid for two days after winning the European title.

"It was crazy," said Sonia Lafuente, the country's top woman, seventh at Europeans. "Every hour, he was in a different place. Now it is not possible for them that he can have a bad day."

It's not as if Spaniards will be watching the world figure skating championships the way they do Lionel Messi. And Fernandez has escaped media pressure since returning to his current home in Toronto, where he trains with two-time Olympic silver medalist Brian Orser.

"I think he is downplaying his chances at worlds," Orser said. "I like his thinking, because he is not great with pressure.

"But he is definitely in contention to win. He knows winning the Europeans was not by chance."

Fernandez began skating at 6 in his native Madrid. But his career really began in 2008 at Garcia's summer skating camp in Andorra.

Among the invited instructors was Russian Nikolai Morozov, then a U.S.-based coach who had guided Japan's Shizuka Arakawa to the 2006 Olympic title. Morozov saw immediately that Fernandez was both a talented jumper and an unhappy camper — when he saw him at all.

"I was skating really bad, I wasn't going to practice, I was getting really mad at myself," Fernandez said. "Nikolai saw I needed something new."

Morozov invited him to train in New Jersey with his high-powered group of skaters. That Garcia had accepted a coaching job there and would share an apartment with Fernandez helped convince the skater's parents to let him go.

"If Javi had stayed in Spain, he would be playing hockey," Garcia said. "When he got to a country with so much interest in skating and saw what he was doing was important, he got motivated, and nothing could stop him."

Fernandez went from 30th at worlds his last year in Spain to 19th, 12th and 10th in his seasons with Morozov. When the coach began a nomadic coaching existence in 2010 — Russia, Latvia, Italy — Fernandez tired of living in hotels and sought a new coach and permanent base in North America.

At that point, Fernandez still was more jumper than skater.

"I was really bad on the second mark," Fernandez said.

And he still had not found his way.

"I had noticed he was a natural talent but he didn't really have much direction or discipline," Orser said. "He was kind of hit-and-miss."

Orser and Canadian choreographer David Wilson had teamed to help Yuna Kim of South Korea — another country with no figure skating history — become 2010 OIympic champion. They have given Fernandez what he says is "a little bit of everything."

"He has matured as a skater," said Garcia, who still coaches in New Jersey. "Before, he was just moving out there. Now he goes on the ice and owns it."

That was evident in his Charlie Chaplin medley free skate program at Europeans. It blended stunning jumps and a perfect sense of whimsy into a delightful entertainment.

"The moment he created was kind of magical, what we used to see when we didn't have the new judging system," Orser said.

Fernandez, a passionate Real Madrid fan and regular soccer player until he left for the States, had another magical experience four days later, when he was invited to sit in the VIP area for Real's Spanish Cup semifinal match with archrival Barcelona. The team gave Fernandez a No. 1 jersey with his name on the back.

For a Madrileno, that also says, "Bravissimo."

今天才知道小海盗居然是圣卡西的表弟

外国冰迷设计的Javier Fernandez世锦赛海报