D’Artagnan’s suit does not have time to gather dust in Philippe Candeloro’s closet. Once a year, at least, the French skater, double Olympic medalist in Lillehammer in 1994 and Nagano in 1998, dons it for a gala in Japan. From the tip of his skates, he thrills 10,000 to 15,000 people, often women between 35 and 55, the hearts of the public. Japanese. “Twenty-four years after my last medal, you realize”, laughs the whimsical champion. The passion remains intact, hiding the few wrinkles that may have appeared on the faces of those who skate and those who applaud in the stands. “I don’t feel like I’m growing old with them”, comments Philippe Candeloro. The most famous of French skaters alone symbolizes the special relationship between French ice stars and their Asian fans, which will experience a new episode on the occasion of the Beijing Olympics.
It was during the Lillehammer Games in 1994 that it all started. On the music of Nino Rota, Philippe Candeloro performs a Godfather on ice skates. Dressed in black from head to toe, ponytail in the wind… Nothing very French in appearance. And yet. “Maybe it’s a program that offers judges something they can’t refuse”, slips live the American commentator, paraphrasing one of the cult lines of the film by Francis Ford Coppola. She touches with her finger what will make the Candeloro leg, before becoming the trademark of tricolor skaters: “Have fun on the ice, first, entertain the public second, and only last, think of the judges”, believes Ayako*, a Japanese unconditional of the “French Touch”.
“I fell in love with figure skating when I saw Philippe’s performance on television”, adds Misaki, another Japanese enthusiast. Philippe Candeloro confirms: “Me, I always tried to amuse the gallery, while ensuring a performance to win a medal.” In a sport subject to the ruthless verdict of judges who must stay on the ice along the ice rink, this is anything but trivial… “American or Russian skaters are so serious, so programmed to win… Sometimes they look like machines”, adds Ayako.
The “Candeloromania” is launched. “My Japanese fan club was more active than the one based in France”, smiles the skater who now comments on the major events on France Télévisions. At its head, Yayo Matsuyama, who spared no effort: “There were thousands of us wanting to know everything about him. I took matters into my own hands, I went to a specialized library to retrieve articles from French newspapers. I didn’t speak a word of your language, so I then paid a translation service. Google Trad and its emulators didn’t exist at the time.” The fan club sends a correspondent to France to follow the training sessions of Philippe Candeloro in Colombes (Hauts-de-Seine), sorry. And when the skater returns home, Japan is never far away.
At first it was my wife Olivia who opened the fan mail. But we received a lot of panties, it quickly became embarrassing. My sister quickly took over.
Philippe Candeloroat franceinfo
When D’Artagnan landed on the ice in Japan, “thousands of us wanted to throw something at him”, recalls Yayo Matsuyama. She does not exaggerate. “I kept everything I could”, confides Philippe Candeloro, who remembers gala interruptions of nearly fifteen minutes, the time to clear the ice rink after his performances. The only exception: flowers, perishable, offered to neighboring hospitals. “But everything else, I brought back to France. I let you imagine the face of the employee at the Air France counter when I landed with seven boxes of excess baggage. I compacted to the maximum, huh! Good, good often, it was a fan behind the counter, and there was a way to negotiate, because the Federation refused to take charge of these costs, and it cost a kidney at the time…”
Needless to say that this cumbersome popularity went well beyond the bleachers of the ice rink. “When I was booking a hotel room in Japan, there were a hundred fans watching me on the landing”, remembers Candeloro, very, perhaps too much, available with his fans. Too demonstrative too? Go see from 2 min 37 on the video below to measure the ambient hysteria…
A few years later, a Brian Joubert established more distance. Which didn’t stop him from running into an intrusive groupie. “I have a Japanese fan who goes everywhere I go, who comes to Poitiers, watches my training and so on”, he tells France Bleu. Without altering the special relationship that binds him to this country: “In Japan, there is a different culture, it’s like another dimension. (…) There is a special atmosphere when you skate in front of 20,000 or 30,000 people, they bring so much energy… “
The French school was born. “When I compare French skaters with the Japanese, for example, the choice of music, choreography, have nothing to do. That’s what makes skaters unique”, advances Massaomo, another Japanese fell into the magic potion of tricolor skating in the 1990s. From Brian Joubert to Kevin Aymoz who represents France for men at the Beijing Olympics, “The Japanese fall under the spell of athletes who show their emotions, their frailties, more than those who flaunt their strength”. Many Japanese fans have supported French skaters for several decades, like others swear by New Zealand rugby players or Brazilian footballers.
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Originality is the key word for “made in France” skates. “It’s rare to see French people skating on threadbare tracks like Carmen“, underlines Fabian Bourzat, who, with Nathalie Péchalat, wrote some glorious pages of tricolor ice dancing.
“We have a much more creative side. The Americans and the Canadians will first try to score points.”
Fabian Bourzatat franceinfo
And to continue: “We, with Nathalie, were looking to do different things [ils ont entre autres patiné sur le thème de Tarzan ou la bande originale du Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain]. And why not mark the history of our sport. For that matter !”
Today, the most famous Frenchman in figure skating is not necessarily the one you think: “It’s the French choreographer Benoît Richaud, asserts Jack Gallagher, a journalist based in Japan for three decades and host of the podcast “Ice Time”. We tear it off, all over the world. NHK, the Japanese public television, has just devoted a one-hour documentary to him.
Japan is the ice skating bridgehead in Asia. In China, the scene of the Olympic Games (virtually) deprived of the public due to the pandemic, skating is at best a regional sport. “It speaks to people in the three northeastern provinces who see snow from time to time”, laughs Furong, a Chinese addicted to triple lutz exiled in Germany. “It’s only since Beijing had the Games that the authorities have really started to promote the sport, if only by broadcasting competitions”, notes Kano, another Chinese amateur.
Faced with Japanese fans who can go as far as hysteria, Chinese fans have a somewhat exaggerated reputation for reserve. “My best memory of an Asian public was at the China Cup, describes Fabian Bourzat. We skate to the music of the musical Cats, we have cat costumes, and for setting up, we move to the center of the rink with feline movements. At that moment, we close in on each other. And the audience let out a ‘Ooooooohhhhhh’ in unison. The same expression of a parent seeing a young child achieve something for the first time. It was extremely touching.” This is confirmed by Jiaming, one of the Chinese supporters: “We are here to see high-level performance, not to support the Chinese.” A notable exception in a country with reputedly chauvinistic supporters.
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Although small, the Chinese fan community has developed its own way of appropriating its French champions. With a lot of nicknames, deformations of surnames, not easy to pronounce for Chinese speakers. “Brian Joubert, we call him ‘Zhubebe’ [bébé porcelet] because of the phonetic similarity, but also because it’s a cute nickname”, laughs Kano. The prize going to the Papadakis-Cizeron duo, who will wear the tricolor colors in Beijing, who inherit the pretty nickname [“鸡丝龙龙”, littéralement] “Kis and Ron-Ron”. Phonetically, it is about dragon, symbol of luck, and silk hen, a breed of Chinese chicken with particularly silky and ruffled plumage. “The Silken Hen Dragon”? Even the Chinese speakers interviewed by franceinfo are struggling to translate the idea into French, but all assure that it throws a punch…
By his own admission, Philippe Candeloro has only been to China two or three times during his career. He still inherits the nickname “Uncle Roro”. Perhaps it should be seen as an allusion to the captain’s age. “For a clip promoting the Beijing Games, I was asked to redo my Napoleon program, laughs “Uncle Roro” who has trouble measuring his popularity in the Middle Kingdom. I hadn’t worn the costume for 27 years. Not only did I get into it, I also managed to close the zipper!”
The last frontier of skating in Asia, as for many other sports, remains the very closed North Korea. Where the applause meter does not necessarily depend on your talent on the ice or your physique which puts glitter in the eyes of the fans. “The audience only applauds if certain people in the official gallery applaud first, describes Fabien Bourzat, three galas in the country on the counter. We see spectators bubbling during the wait…” As with diplomatic relations, the skating will wait for the thaw of the Kim Jong-un regime.