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[2022.01.26] Noriko Shirota - Just a Jump, Yet So Much More: The Weapon That Brought Gold Medals to Japanese Figure Skating

*machine translation, inaccuracist may exist

Chapter 1: Why Have Japanese Skaters Become Able To Win?

-The Essence of European Culture

In this chapter, I would like to briefly explain the historical background that enabled Japanese skaters to achieve the kind of success they enjoy today on the international figure skating stage.

I retired from competitive skating at the age of 20, immediately after winning the All-Japan Championships ice dance title for the second consecutive time (the 1965–66 and 1966–67 seasons), because I believed that “there was no way I could win at the international level.”

Kazuo Ohashi, a senior member of the skating club at my alma mater, Rikkyo University, and a director of the Japan Skating Federation at the time, encouraged me to continue competing, telling me to “aim for the World Championships.” At the 1965 World Championships, Nobuo Sato, who would later coach Mao Asada, had finished fourth. Yet I simply could not picture myself standing on the podium on the international stage. On my way home from the Korakuen Ice Palace, I threw away the skates I had cherished for so long, tossing them into the Kanda River from the bridge known as “Okera-bashi” on my way to JR Suidobashi Station

Today, many Japanese skaters have achieved outstanding results on the international stage. However, it would be too simplistic to say that the athletes who win Olympic medals today are simply more talented than those of my generation. First, we need to understand what kind of sport figure skating actually is.

Figure skating, in which athletes skate to music, originated as a sport in the United States. It subsequently became widely popular in Europe, and the sport then expanded back across North America in a kind of “reverse import” from Europe. As a result, European countries still occupy a special position in figure skating today. For example, one of the major international competitions in figure skating is the Four Continents Championships. Yet, as the Olympic logo itself illustrates, the world is made up of five continents. So, the “Four Continents” actually refers to the continents other than Europe.

In other words, skaters from Japan, the United States, Canada, and other Asian countries compete at the Four Continents Championships. European skaters alone compete at the European Championships, an event on equal footing with the Four Continents Championships.

Furthermore, figure skating incorporates elements of ballet, classical music, and other European cultural traditions, and these forms of expression are also taken into consideration when performances are judged. These elements, too, represent what could be called the essence of European culture. It may be difficult for people today to imagine just how challenging it once was for Japanese skaters to enter and compete in such a cultural sphere.

I began skating in the fourth grade of elementary school and started going to the Korakuen Ice Palace in Bunkyo, Tokyo. The wife of Hideo Saito, who would later become a mentor to the world-renowned conductor Seiji Ozawa, was a member there, and I saw Saito himself several times during that period.

Saito had been familiar with the cello from an early age and, in 1922, went to Germany to study under Julius Klengel at the Leipzig Conservatory of Music. The way European society treated an Asian person who sought to study classical music at that time is precisely what lay behind my decision to conclude that “Japanese people can’t win” and throw away my skates at the age of twenty.

*** END OF FREE PREVIEW

By yuzurujenn · 13 hours ago13 hr
[2022.01.26] Noriko Shirota - Just a Jump, Yet So Much More: The Weapon That Brought Gold Medals to Japanese Figure Skating

*machine translation, inaccuracist may exist

Introduction

-The Best Jump Is the Ultimate Weapon

2022 is the year when the Beijing Winter Olympics will be held.

For Yuzuru Hanyu, the figure skater who won consecutive men’s individual Olympic titles at the 2014 Sochi Olympics and the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics, 2022 is the year in which he will be aiming for an unprecedented third consecutive Olympic victory.

At the Sochi Olympics, Hanyu defeated Patrick Chan of Canada, who was the undisputed world champion at the time. At the PyeongChang Olympics, despite being unable to prepare as he would have liked because of injury, Hanyu demonstrated his ability to perform under pressure, essentially competing with little opportunity to test himself beforehand, and won the gold medal. At the Beijing Olympics, he will face Nathan Chen of the United States, who has rapidly improved since the PyeongChang Olympics and whose results since entering the 2020s have clearly surpassed Hanyu’s.

Compared with the formidable rivals Hanyu has faced and defeated on the Olympic stage in the past, Nathan is clearly in a class of his own. He possesses exceptional ability, with the potential to become one of the greatest and strongest skaters in the history of figure skating. In order to defeat such a rival and achieve three consecutive Olympic victories, Hanyu has no choice but to devise a strategy that threads its way through an extremely narrow margin, then focus his training on that strategy and further develop his technical abilities.

So, what strategy has Hanyu adopted in pursuit of his third consecutive Olympic victory? As many readers already know, Hanyu is currently training to successfully land the quad Axel (a four-and-a-half-revolution Axel jump). At the end of this book, we present an analysis showing that, if he succeeds, Hanyu would have a high likelihood of beating Nathan even if Nathan were to post a score matching his personal best. Hanyu himself is also continuing to train toward mastering the jump, with the goal of becoming the first person in history to successfully land a quad Axel.

The question, then, is why the success or failure of a jump can be the deciding factor in determining victory or defeat in figure skating. This is also one of the central themes of this book.

Among the events held at the Winter Olympics are judged sports. In other words, rather than competing solely on the basis of physical measurements or records, these sports have judges who evaluate performances from their respective perspectives. Conversely, this is precisely why the system employs multiple judges rather than entrusting the judging to a single person.

For example, the long jump in athletics and ski jumping in Nordic skiing are alike in that they both compete over “how far one can jump,” but in ski jumping, the judges’ evaluations of the jumper’s form are also reflected in the result.

In that sense, figure skating can be considered the quintessential judged sport among the events held at the Winter Olympics. Figure skating does not even have a purely physical measurement criterion like the distance traveled in Nordic ski jumping. Everything in the sport is determined through judging.

However, following the rule revisions discussed later in this book, the judging criteria are now specified in the rules down to an extremely detailed level. And when those rules are examined closely, the “path to victory” that emerges is the successful execution of high-difficulty jumps. In general, jumps are assigned higher base values than spins.

The primary theme of this book is to trace the history of technical evolution in figure skating—spanning from Midori Ito, the first female skater to land a triple Axel (winning silver at the 1992 Albertville Olympics), to Yuzuru Hanyu, who is challenging the quad Axel.

-From The Perspective Of A Former International Judge

As a member of the Japan Skating Federation, I served as a team leader of the Japanese national team and in other roles from 1988 to 1992. From 1994, I served as Director of the Figure Skating Strengthening Department, and from 1998, I also served as head coach of the Japanese national team.

While working on athlete development as a federation staff member, I continued my work as a judge. When I retired from competitive skating, anyone with experience competing in official competitions automatically qualified as a Class B judge, so my career as a judge began when I started officiating at competitions appropriate for that qualification.

I subsequently underwent the training required to advance as a judge, passed the necessary examinations, and was certified as an ISU (International Skating Union) International Referee, the highest level of qualification. The ISU has a mandatory retirement age of 70, so I have since retired, but during my career as a judge, I participated in numerous international competitions. Of all my experiences as a judge, the competitions in which Midori Ito competed remain particularly unforgettable.

In 1983, during her first season competing at the senior level, Midori participated in the Ennia Challenge Cup in the Netherlands and finished second. The winner was Katarina Witt (representing the former East Germany), who would go on to win the gold medal at the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics held shortly afterward, so Midori’s result was certainly an impressive one. However, the judges engaged in heated debate at the meeting held after the competition.

I was also one of the judges at this competition, and I could not accept the fact that Midori, who had landed five of the six types of triple jumps other than the Axel, had lost to Witt, who had landed only two. If we were going to achieve our goal of “winning Midori a gold medal,” we had to address the issue of judging. I had also heard from my seniors that when Nobuo Sato finished fourth at the 1965 World Championships, he had delivered a performance that “should have put him on the podium.” My desire to ensure fair judging was ignited.

“If figure skating is a sport, then technical elements such as Midori’s jumps should be properly evaluated in the scoring.”

“No, figure skating is a competition in beauty. In that respect, Witt surpassed Midori, so her score was a legitimate evaluation.”

A heated debate ensued over the very nature of figure skating as a competitive discipline. Witt was renowned for her beauty, so much so that after retiring, she appeared in numerous films as an actress. She could certainly be described as the quintessential German beauty. However, I was not the only one to hold this view; many of the relatively younger judges also argued that “beauty is an important element, but figure skating is a sport, so technical ability should also be evaluated fairly.”

In the end, the referee, who ranked above the judges, brought the discussion to a close by saying that “there is merit to both perspectives.” However, the debate that took place here would eventually lead to changes in the rules and scoring criteria of figure skating. Under the scoring system at the time, "Artistic Impression" carried considerably more weight than it does today, creating a tendency to prioritize beauty and artistry over technical ability. I will discuss the details of the rule changes that followed later in this book.

The rule changes that originated from this debate would ultimately greatly expand the opportunities for Japanese skaters who competed on the world stage using jumps as their weapon—such as Midori, who became the first female skater to successfully land a triple Axel, and Hanyu, who is now challenging the quadruple Axel.

As figure skating is a judged sport, judges, whose decisions naturally have a major impact on athletes’ results, are expected to possess a discerning eye and the expertise to scrutinize technical elements rigorously. For me, having had the opportunity to be involved in international competitions from the position of a judge has been an invaluable experience. One of the themes of this book is to provide a detailed analysis of figure skating technique from the perspective of a former international judge.

-What Television Commentators Don't Say

Figure skating in Japan is currently experiencing what could be called an “unprecedented boom,” thanks in large part to the achievements of Yuzuru Hanyu, who won consecutive Olympic titles. However, when I listen to commentators during televised broadcasts, I understand that they are being asked by the production side to make positive comments, but I often find myself thinking, “Aren’t they overestimating the performances of Japanese skaters a little too much?”

I understand that, from the perspective of television networks and other media outlets, portraying Japanese skaters as having a strong chance of winning medals is necessary from a business standpoint. It is also meaningful for organizations within the figure skating world, myself included, as it helps broaden the sport’s reach. However, while many commentators built illustrious careers during their competitive days, they have no experience as judges.

For example, at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, there were nationwide expectations that Mao Asada would win the gold medal. At the time, she could arguably be considered the biggest star in Japanese sports as a whole. To heighten that sense of anticipation even further, perhaps the media and commentators were presenting her chances of winning gold in the most favorable light possible.

Her biggest rival was Kim Yuna of South Korea. As someone who had served as an international judge, when I compared the two skaters’ performances, I felt that it was wrong to treat Asada’s gold-medal victory as though it were a foregone conclusion. Such expectations would only place excessive pressure on Asada.

Figure skating is judged on four elements: jumps, steps, spins, and expressive ability. Yuna not only possessed excellent fundamental skating skills, but also had the expressive ability to enhance each element throughout her entire program.

There were also flaws hidden within the triple Axel that was Asada’s greatest weapon—flaws that, had I been judging, would have made me hesitate to award it a perfect score. This is also relevant to the quadruple Axel that Hanyu is currently attempting in preparation for the Beijing Olympics, so I will discuss it in greater detail in Chapter 2.

Of course, as a fellow Japanese person, I shared the desire to root for Asada. Although I was not deeply involved in her specific training program, as someone connected to the Japan Skating Federation, I also strongly hoped she would win a medal.

However, ever since I hung up my skates at the age of 20 and, through my encounter with Midori, began engaging with figure skating again, I have always kept one thing in mind: “performing to win.” And in figure skating, a performance capable of winning must be built on technique that judges will evaluate highly. In that sense, I felt uncomfortable with media coverage that treated Asada’s gold-medal victory as a given without properly evaluating her technical abilities.

Some may call this harsh. But in this book, I intend to use my “eye” as a judge to provide accurate commentary on the techniques of each skater.

-Can Yuzuru Hanyu Achieve Three Consecutive Olympic Titles?

I have been deeply involved in developing Yuzuru Hanyu as an athlete. I first met him in 2004, when he was just nine years old. He had participated in the Japan Skating Federation’s National Promising Newcomers Training Camp, commonly known as the “Nobeyama Camp,” which has been held annually since 1992.

I will discuss the details later, but looking back over his career, the decision I considered most important in designing his overall development program was to entrust him to Brian Orser, who remains his coach today. As many of you may know, Hanyu had been based in his hometown of Sendai for training, but lost his training rink after the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011. For a time, he trained in Higashi-Kanagawa, Yokohama, under Shoichiro Tsuzuki, who had coached him when he was a boy. However, it was clear that he needed a new training base with the 2014 Sochi Olympics approaching.

That was when I turned my attention to the Toronto Cricket Skating and Curling Club (Cricket Club) in Canada, where Brian Orser coached. Brian is a highly accomplished figure: he won silver medals at two consecutive Olympics (Sarajevo 1984 and Calgary 1988) as a competitor and later guided Yuna Kim to a gold medal as a coach at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

Immediately after the Vancouver Olympics, I approached him and began saying, “Next, I would like you to coach Japan’s top skater.” When approaching a world-class coach, it is important to make the offer as early as possible. At that point, however, even I had no certainty about who would ultimately train under Brian. In the end, Hanyu became a member of the Cricket Club and secured that opportunity. It was about two and a half years after my initial approach.

I will not recount Hanyu’s subsequent achievements here. However, after he accomplished the remarkable feat of winning gold at two consecutive Olympics in PyeongChang, I said to him: “Congratulations! You worked so hard. Well done.”

Naturally, I assumed that after accomplishing the feat of winning two consecutive Olympic titles, he would retire. Hanyu had become the Olympic champion at the age of 19 in Sochi, and by PyeongChang he was 23. By the time the Beijing Olympics arrived four years later, he would be 27. For comparison, Tara Lipinski (USA), who won the women’s figure skating gold medal at the 1998 Nagano Olympics, was just 15 at the time and retired after those Games.

I believe every Olympic sport has its own “optimal age range.” In winter sports, for example, many athletes in shooting-based events such as biathlon are selected for the Olympics well into their 40s and beyond. By comparison, in figure skating, 27 is an age at which it would be understandable for people to say that an athlete’s peak has passed.

While I respect Hanyu’s decision to take on the meaningful challenge of pursuing a third consecutive Olympic title, I simply do not want to see him lose.

The fact is that he faces an extremely formidable rival in Nathan Chen, while Shoma Uno and Yuma Kagiyama have also risen rapidly. Furthermore, the “Next Hanyu Generation,” including Vincent Zhou (USA), whom I introduce in Chapter 7, is also making an impressive push. Based on the assessment at the time of writing, to be frank, it will not be easy for Hanyu to defeat Nathan. And the weapon Hanyu appears to be seeking to develop for this difficult battle is the unprecedented quadruple Axel.

Will Hanyu succeed in this challenge?

As someone who has been deeply involved in Hanyu’s development, and drawing on the keen eye and expertise I have gained as an international judge, I aim to offer objective commentary on what may be his final challenge, while also watching it with hope and anticipation. This, too, is one of the themes of this book.

By yuzurujenn · 14 hours ago14 hr
[2022.01.26] Noriko Shirota - Just a Jump, Yet So Much More: The Weapon That Brought Gold Medals to Japanese Figure Skating

Info:
https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B09R1RWHCN
https://ebookstore.sony.jp/title/10659687/

From Midori Ito's triple axel to Yuzuru Hanyu's unprecedented quadruple axel, this book, written by an author who has long been active behind the scenes as the head of the Japan Skating Federation's strengthening program and an international judge, chronicles the history of Japanese figure skating techniques. Midori Ito, Shizuka Arakawa, Miki Ando, Mao Asada, Daisuke Takahashi, Yuzuru Hanyu, Shoma Uno, Yuma Kagiyama... Behind the rise of Japanese figure skating to the top of the world was the weapon of "jumps," a highly advanced technique that made use of the unique characteristics of the Japanese people.

<Table of Contents>

Introduction
-The Best Jump Is the Ultimate Weapon
-From the perspective of a former international judge
-What television commentators don't say
-Can Yuzuru Hanyu achieve three consecutive Olympic titles?

Chapter 1: Why Have Japanese Skaters Become Able To Win?
-The Essence of European Culture
-“Rome Was Not Built in a Day”
-The Significance of the Emergence of Kristi Yamaguchi
-What Yuzuru Hanyu Needed at That Time
-Lobbying Efforts to Keep Promoting Japan to the World
-So That the World Would Know the Athletes' Ability and Their Character
-Coaches Who Know the World
-Shizuka Arakawa's Road to Olympic Gold
-The Emergence of Japan's “Gold Coach”

Chapter 2: The "Winning Formula" For Japanese Skaters And Jumps Established By Midori Ito
-The Only One to Meet the Rigorous Requirements
-The Six Types of Jumps
-The Triple Axel from a Counter Turn
-Beautiful Rotations
-Midori Ito at the NHK Trophy at Age 11
-The Launch of the “Midori Ito Project”
-The Battle Against Injuries
-Struggling with Compulsory Figures, the Foundation of Figure Skating
-Just a Jump, Yet So Much More
-Lucinda Ruh's Unprecedented Fast Spins
-The Legendary Free Skate Performance in Paris
-From the Triple Axel to the Quadruple Axel

Chapter 3: Shizuka Arakawa's Gold Medal and the “All-Around Strength” Built by Her Rivals
-The Emergence of a New “Gold Medal Contender”
-Switching Coaches to Galina Zmievskaya
-The Mentality for Victory
-Finally Intervening in the Selection of a Coach
-The Road to Finishing Fourth at the Salt Lake City Olympics
-A Gold Medal Won Through the All-Around Strength of Team Japan
-The Weakness of a Two-Time World Champion Prodigy
-The 2011 World Championships: Demonstrating Maturity as a Skater
-A First-Year Participant at the Camp for Discovering Promising New Talent
-Rivalry Showdown
-The Road to the Gold Medal
-The Ina Bauer Added to the Program at the Last Minute
-Daisuke Takahashi's Brilliant Footwork
-Why Is Blue the “Winning Color”?

Chapter 4: Mao Asada and Yuna Kim
-Learning the Brilliance of Yuna Kim from Rinkside
-A National-Scale Development Project
-The Direct Showdown at the World Junior Championships
-Brian Orser as the Overall Producer
-One World Record Score After Another
-One of a Kind: A True Genius
-The Ultimate Battle in Vancouver
-The Aftermath: When the Curtain Falls

Chapter 5: Yuzuru Hanyu's “Talent for Winning”
-The Third Skater Selected for Development
-The Okinawa Training Camp That Broke the Stagnation
-A True Step Up to the Senior Level
-The Legendary Night in Nice
-Departure for Toronto
-A Reprimand on a Night in Paris
-Finally Seizing the Champion’s Crown!
-The Established “Performance for Winning”

Chapter 6: Yuzuru Hanyu's Gold Medal and His Consecutive Olympic Titles
-The Strategy Behind Choosing the Short Program for the Team Event
-A Stunning Short Program and a World-Record Score
-Patrick Self-Destructs: The Fear of the Olympics
-The First Gold Medal for a Japanese Man—and What Came After
-The Complete Absolute Champion: “The World of Yuzuru Hanyu”
-Poor Physical Condition After Achieving the Triple Crown
-His Determination to Continue Competing

Chapter 7: The Next-Hanyu Generation and the Challenge of the Quadruple Axel
-A Performance That Set World-Record Scores in Both the Free Skate and Overall Total
-Romantic-Baroque style
-Shoma Uno: Performing Four Types of Quadruple Jumps
-Yuma Kagiyama: Jumps Full of Infinite Possibilities
-The Impact of Competition Cancellations Due to COVID-19
-Hanyu vs. Nathan: A Direct Showdown
-The Potential of the Quadruple Axel
-Calculations of the Score If the Quadruple Axel Is Successfully Landed
-Hanyu’s Winning Method

Afterword

<Author Profile>
Noriko Shirota ● Born in Tokyo in 1946. Active as a figure skater in women's singles and ice dance. Won the All Japan Championships in ice dance twice in a row. After retirement, she served as the head of the Japan Skating Federation's figure skating strengthening program from 1994 to 2006. She played a leading role in Shizuka Arakawa's first gold medal win for Japan at the 2006 Turin Olympics. She holds an ISU (International Skating Union) referee and judge qualification and has served as a judge at the Olympics and World Championships for many years.

By yuzurujenn · Saturday at 09:52 AM4 days

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[2022.01.26] Noriko Shirota - Just a Jump, Yet So Much More: The Weapon That Brought Gold Medals to Japanese Figure Skating

[2022.01.26] Noriko Shirota - Just a Jump, Yet So Much More: The Weapon That Brought Gold Medals to Japanese Figure Skating

[2022.01.26] Noriko Shirota - Just a Jump, Yet So Much More: The Weapon That Brought Gold Medals to Japanese Figure Skating

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