#btw toreador at worlds is going to become a carlos fandom classic. the program is a cheesy compositional mess but

[alacants]

i really love fics where there is clearly a fully-realized world underpinning the story but it isn't overexplained—the author relies on you to intuit the necessary background from the information presented in the foreground. i'm therefore about to overexplain the figure skating au to within an inch of its natural life. 

this is tagged role reversal and that was the basic premise—au where jannik is the one from a country with a recent record of success and carlos is from the middle of the fucking wilderness. tennistically skateistically speaking.

fs fans will know that the italian skating federation is right on the border of powerhouse status—it's not quiiiite big 3-4 (russia, canada, us, arguably japan/france) but it's real close. their greatest success hasn't necessarily been in the men's discipline but should a generational talent come along all the elements would be in place to immediately launch him into the stratosphere from the comfort of almost-home. jannik's nearly-lifelong training base—the icelab in bergamo— is only about 100 miles from sexten as the crow flies, just a bit farther than the distance between murcia and villena. the sacrifice is his mother driving him 3 hours there and back on saturdays, then later on boarding in bergamo during the week and going home on the weekends. a small metaphorical price to pay to train at an isu center of excellence from literal childhood.

(so why did it take jannik so long to break through? jump consistency—he lost his jumps after a massive growth spurt and, as the headcase references indicate, even after he got them back he stayed spooked for a long time. the real bergamo legacy is his pure and flawless skating skills, good enough that even the heavily foreshadowed simone-fixing-carlos montage won't be enough to catch up. and he'll still have those skills after his body can't hold up to the jumps any more, just as carlos will still have unmatched performance quality. in a way their late-career competitions are going to be much more interesting than their peak.)

meanwhile, spain. if you don't know much about figure skating i cannot emphasize the extent to which, on the figure skating map, spain is nothing and nowhere. …or was, until out of the blue they produced world champion and olympic bronze medalist javier fernandez. javi falls neatly in between the juanki and carlos generations, so i've split him in two and made juanki the freak pioneer, the one didn't quite beat the structural disadvantage, and carlos the freak protege, the one who will.

juanki… oh juanki. comment referring to him as the local narrative punching bag couldn't be more correct. imagine if irl juanki was exactly the same except born in a country where no one played tennis. this is what it's like to be figure skater juan carlos ferrero, a special talent in an esoteric sport with no resources whatsoever.

the only way juanki would have been able to achieve what he did in the late 90s/early 2000s is to have begun training abroad no later than his mid-teens. you can draw the obvious corollary wrt his family history. something he would have deeply conflicted feelings about, even today, manifesting in a total commitment to his life's mission: a real purpose-built training rink in his part of spain. a mission that is much, MUCH more quixotic than a tennis academy. the most he can dream of is to provide a good environment to learn the fundamentals, help young skaters start competing, bring in guest experts and host training camps and maybe, just maybe, someday, this will help a kid with promise make a real go of figure skating. and then he gets carlos.

right person, right place, right time. carlos is able to launch himself as a competitive junior skater while training in his home country, propelled by juanki's resistance to the idea that the only path to success must be for a child to leave their home and family + learned experience that it's possible to come from a humble skating background and still medal at the top. this is very good for carlos at first. this is less good for carlos later.

namely i think that when carlos first begins to advance there's an element of… idealism? pride? naivete? in how juanki understands his own career, that serves as a early blind spot. like, yes, world bronze, european champion… under the 6.0 system, courtesy of a certain amount of patronization. the judges are happy to reward this obvious talent who may not have the technical chops but has a real feel for the ice, a special quality to his performance… to a point. but that bronze was his ceiling. he was never going to be in the running for gold next. (which doesn't matter, since in 2004 he got the first of several injuries and by 2006 it was all over.) 

20 years later, this is not that different from the judging that lifted carlos to the euro gold. here is an obvious talent performing the skate of a lifetime and landing quads. when the faves flop—casper ruud that was your title for the taking!—you bet he's going to get rewarded. but you only get that shock and awe bump once. (also those quads were sooooo underrotated. his jump technique is Not Good.) afterwards, he's going to suffer from an expectation gap. seventh at the olympics is a much more realistic assessment of the tier he'll find himself in…. unless he makes a big change.

for non-fs fans… it's hard to explain all the factors that influence a supposedly objective score, but suffice to say there are many, many intangibles including but not limited to politicking and packaging. politicking = networking and advocacy on your behalf by your federation and/or coach. a federation like spain has zero power, so it would all come down to the coach. packaging = your combination of music/costume/choreo style, your image on the ice. does it look good and do you sell it well. a coach who hasn't been engaged at the elite senior level for 18 years is going to struggle because what worked in 2003 isn't necessarily going to work in 2022. and part of coaching is understanding what judges want and giving it to them. 

(you know juanki's still resisting the music-with-lyrics rule change so hard. he might understand it but he does NOT like it.)

juanki's a fast learner but he's all on his own out here—trying to coach carlos and teach regular lessons and keep the rink operational. he's doing everything he possibly can to revive all his old skating connections from 2003 and leverage them on carlos' behalf but that's only a drop in the bucket. he could drop all his other obligations and devote himself solely to leveling up as an elite senior coach for carlos, but it still might not be enough, fast enough. and it would kill the rink.

deep down he knows that he should have pushed carlos to make the switch immediately after that breakthrough season. he just resisted it for a long time. he doesn't want carlos to leave! he cares about him so much! how could he not, this magic gift from the fates, the consolation and the reward and the meaning to everything he's worked for over the last 17 years of his life! like. jesus. i am actually making myself feel bad thinking about this but it has to happen and juanki knows it has to happen. carlos fought him for MONTHS before accepting it, and it should go without saying that the major reason he did finally accept it was—in every sense of this word—the carrot. lmao.

(what finally pushed juanki over the line? well, it hurt to see carlos' scores that post-euro season, when he knew what they really could be. he loves carlos. he wants more than anything for carlos to be the skater he has the potential to be. and also oh idk maybe there's a new relationship in his life that's helping him face up to some of these emotional challenges. examines nails.)

juanki's still going to be listed as part of carlos' coaching team, carlos is still going to spend the off-season training in valencia, the odds are good that juanki's going to be the one putting the cry in kiss&cry when milan rolls around. i think the carlos experience does inspire him to commit to high-level coaching and he becomes a fantastic and highly-regarded junior coach, with young skaters from across europe choosing to train with him. the rink in valencia gets a major upgrade and it might not ever be an isu center of excellence but it's a beloved community institution and a source of local pride. HAPPY ENDING!!!!

…got sidetracked there. anyway, the point of this story is: what if jannik was the one who desperately wanted to connect with someone on his level, only he didn't know it. until it happened.