Get yourself someone who can challenge and support you like Javier Fernandez does to Yuzuru Hanyu

By Ea Francisco | Photo by Terry Matthews/Unsplash

Japan’s Yuzuru Hanyu was all over Twitter last week not just because of his second Olympic gold medal but also because of his beautiful bromance with Spanish figure skater Javier Fernandez.

More than just fan favorites, the two are basically the skating ship of the decade right now. Hanyu and Fernandez have been skating rivals and best friends for as long as we can remember. In fact, you can pretty much Google their ship name Yuzuvier and expect to find hundreds of fanfics and gifs of them together.

Though it was a memorable moment when they swept the top two spots, it was a heartbreaking scene afterwards. When Fernandez said this might be his last Olympics, Hanyu broke down and said “I can’t do it without you.”

They may be from different countries, but the two skaters actually train under Brian Orser in Canada.

Fernandez has even gone so far as to call him his “skating wife” in one of his interviews with Reuters.

“With ‘Yuzu,’ we are everything, we are friends, we are teammates, at some point we have to be rivals,” he said. “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.”

Aside from training, the two have also competed against each other in various world championships, but this definitely doesn’t get in the way of their friendship.

“We’re teammates; in the competition we’re still rivals,” Fernandez said when he was interviewed for his gold at the 2015 Worlds. “Yuzu just told me that he was happy for me. He even dropped a couple of tears.”

“Because I lost last year in this competition, I feel like I have to revenge,” Yuzuru said in an interview at the 2016 Worlds.