[2026.08.31] Nikkan Sports - Mitsuki Sumoto feature (+ Yuzuru mention)

◆ Mitsuki Sumoto (すもと・みつき) was born on February 4, 2001 (Heisei 13), and is from Izumiotsu City, Osaka Prefecture. He attended Naniwa High School in Osaka and Kansai University. He began competing at the age of four. He competed at the All-Japan Novice Championships for four consecutive years, starting in 2010. In 2017, he won the Junior GP Series Riga Cup, won the All-Japan Junior Championships, took the bronze medal at the Junior GP Final, and placed 6th at the All-Japan Championships. He placed 9th at the 2018 World Junior Championships. He retired from competitive skating in the 2022–23 season. For two years from April 2023, he worked for a private company in Osaka Prefecture. From July 2026, he made a full-fledged transition to becoming a coach. His skater he admires is Yuzuru Hanyu. Height: 164 cm. Blood type: AB.

A Morning in August: “A Strange Feeling”

August 11, 2026. It was early in the morning.

Mitsuki Sumoto was standing rinkside at the Osaka City Naniwa Ice Skating Rink. On the ice in front of him, Kazuki Tomono, two school years his senior, was skating briskly. The 28-year-old, who had decided to continue competing, was working on his final preparations for the men’s free skate at the Summer Cup that afternoon. As Sumoto watched him, Yuko Sugita, the coach who was watching alongside him, whispered:

“Your senior is working this hard like this, so maybe Mitsuki should have kept going a little longer too.”

Hearing those words, Tomono chimed in with a somewhat self-deprecating remark:

“No, no, the senior is the one who’s weird!”

Laughter echoed across the morning rink. The scene, with jokes flying back and forth as usual, hadn’t changed at all from years ago. But the positions of the two had changed. He was no longer a competitive skater. As a coach, he had become the one on the side guiding the skaters.

“Kazuki is skating on the rink, while I, his junior, am teaching my own students on that same rink. It’s a strange feeling. I find myself thinking, ‘How did this happen?’”

This summer, Sumoto began seriously pursuing a path as a coach. In July, he joined the Japan Instructor Association and officially obtained his membership card. Since August, he has been coaching six skaters. Two are fifth-graders in elementary school, one is a first-year high school student, and three are university students. Their badge-test levels vary, with some being almost complete beginners and others already at Level 7.

He gets up at 4:30 a.m., with practice beginning at 6:15. Some nights, practice doesn't finish until 10:30 p.m. He gets only about four hours of sleep at night, which is quite short. Even while experiencing how demanding it is, more than anything, he is simply happy right now to see the six skaters growing.

“It’s still only the very beginning, and I started thinking that everything would be a learning experience, but I’m happy when the skaters are able to do even a little more or get better. Even small things make me feel like, ‘This is fun.’”

The skaters in front of him overlap with his former self. Although his position has changed, the foundation of his life in skating has not.

“I’ve always been chasing after Sota and Kazuki. That’s the kind of skating life I’ve had.”

Shocked by Sota Yamamoto’s Jumps, and His Childhood Dislike of Practice

That person had been there since the time he started skating.

It was when he was four years old. His mother, Harumi, took him by the hand and brought him to the Rinkai Sports Center in Takaishi City, Osaka Prefecture. At the time, during the summer and winter holidays, short-term classes lasting about four days were held there. That was where he first encountered figure skating. According to his mother, he was happy and said that it was “fun,” but he himself doesn't remember much about the first time he skated.

“I don’t remember. I think there are skaters who start because they admired the Olympics or dreamed of winning a gold medal, but in my case, I didn’t start for any reason like that. My mother encouraged me to start, so maybe that’s why I don’t remember much.”

There was someone who left a much stronger impression on him than his own skating.

“Sota. Sota says he doesn’t remember, but I remember.”

Yamamoto, who was one school year above him and also from Osaka Prefecture, had participated in the skating class. He will never forget the shock he felt at that time. Despite wearing rental skates, Yamamoto was doing a single Axel.

“He doesn't remember it himself, but those of us who watched him remember it vividly. He was good even back then.”

As the two of them went on to seriously pursue figure skating around the same time, Sumoto began to clearly feel the difference between himself and Yamamoto.

“I don’t think there was much difference in when we started, but from that time, I already thought, ‘I can’t beat him.’”

Compared with Yamamoto, whose ability had stood out even then, Sumoto couldn't even summon a competitive spirit. To begin with, he didn't like skating.

“I hated practice. I was bad at jumps and couldn’t get them off the ground easily. I thought my skating skills were terrible too, and I wasn't even practicing properly. I think if you asked anyone, they would say, ‘He was always at the wall.’”

Even so, he went to practice because he had a friend there. He hated practice, but spending time playing with his friends was what he enjoyed more than anything.

“Sota and I would play tag outside or play baseball. Rather than going to the rink to skate, I went to the rink to play tag or baseball, skated just to kill time, and then it was like, ‘Okay, let's play!’ We fought a lot too. We’d pull each other’s hair, throw balls at each other. We were together all the time.”

As they got older, Tomono also began joining them. He also played together with Fuka Koshiba, who is now active as an actress, and Chihiro Kawakami, who was active in NMB48. It was precisely because he enjoyed spending that time together that he was able to continue competing.

“If anything, I didn’t really like skating itself that much. All I could think about was playing after practice.”

Above all, the presence of the coaches who warmly watched over them was also a major factor.

"At first, I was taught by Mr. Koseki (Etsuya), and from the second grade of elementary school, I was taught by Mr. Onishi (Katsuyuki) (pictured). Mr. Onishi would often play rock-paper-scissors with me from the time I started skating. Every time I saw him, we would play rock-paper-scissors, and I wondered how many times we were going to play in a day. I think he was worried about me because I often cried, so he would talk to me. During the summer holidays, the teachers at Rinkai would also play tag with us. The teachers would say, ‘What matters is having fun and playing.’ Looking back now, I think I was really grateful for that.”

From a young age, he tried many different extracurricular activities, including piano, English conversation, ballet, and volleyball, but skating was the only one that remained.

Struggling with Jumps, a Notebook Filled with Failed Tests

While being absorbed in playing, he steadily improved in competition as well. By around third grade of elementary school, his second year of receiving instruction from Onishi, he had mastered five types of double jumps. However, because Yamamoto and the others around him were his points of comparison, he had no sense that he was improving.

“Sota, Kazuki, and (Taichiro) Yamakuma were there, and no matter what I did wrong, I could never beat them. The gap was about like that between first place and last place. I think if you asked the three of them, they’d probably say, ‘There’s no way we’d ever lose.’”

He took the badge tests almost every month, but only passed about once a year. In particular, he had a hard time advancing to Level 4. Among the required elements for the Level 4 test, he had particular difficulty with the double loop and the combination of double jumps, and couldn't manage to land them for quite some time. Eventually, the Level 4 section of his badge-test notebook became filled with “Failed” stamps, and when he finally received a “Passed” stamp, it was on a spare page on the back.

“My jumps had a crossed-leg takeoff, and I was the type whose axis wouldn't become narrow, so I was always getting under-rotations even on doubles. I had a sense of difficulty with jumps starting from the double-jump level. I think the reasons were that I wasn't motivated, and that I was scared and couldn't bring my legs together.”

He also struggled to learn the triple jumps. After mastering five types of double jumps, it took him about four years before he was able to do the double Axel (two-and-a-half rotations) and triple jumps. Even during that time, he has almost no memory of practicing with much enthusiasm.

“In the morning, I'd be woken up and my mother would basically throw me into the car. At the rink, I would just talk with my friends the whole time, and I'd get scolded for not practicing. I gradually came to hate skating more and more. I liked playing with my friends, so I didn't think about quitting, but I was basically going to the rink just to play.”

He began competing at the All-Japan Novice Championships in 2010, his first year in the B category, but for the first three years he remained in the middle of the standings, placing 10th, 10th, and 12th. Although he put up a good fight, there was still a gap between him and the top skaters.

“I wasn't getting any better, but I wasn't getting worse either. Since I was doing it reluctantly, I thought the results were about what you'd expect.”

He continued competing somewhat aimlessly, but in the spring of 2012, as he was moving on to junior high school, a turning point came. That was none other than Yuzuru Hanyu's “Romeo and Juliet,” which he had watched on YouTube.

Yuzuru Hanyu’s “Romeo and Juliet,” Which Became a Turning Point

Until then, he didn't like skating. For that reason, he didn't watch skating performances on television or video sites either.

“Sometimes when I was watching Chibi Maruko-chan or Sazae-san on Sundays, a caption would appear in the corner of the screen saying something like, ‘World Figure Skating from ○ o’clock.’ But I would turn off the TV when Sazae-san ended, or watch another program I had recorded, so I wasn't even interested in it. Of course, I knew who Daisuke Takahashi was, but I had absolutely no idea that he was a skater who competed at the Olympics and World Championships.”

Amid all this, a video of Yuzuru Hanyu’s skating came up in his YouTube recommendations.

“There are skating videos on YouTube?”

On a whim, he clicked on a video with Hanyu as the thumbnail. What played was footage of the free skate at the World Championships held in Nice, France. It was a performance in which Hanyu, coming back from 7th place in the short program (SP), won the bronze medal despite it being his first appearance at the event. He simply thought, “Amazing.” He felt as though his field of vision had suddenly broadened.

“Hanyu-san’s jumps and intensity. Even now, I vividly remember the shock I felt when I first saw him. Even though he wasn't that much older than me, he was already going out into the world. I thought, ‘The level is completely different.’ My ideal was Sota’s skating, and that didn't change until I retired from competition, but when I watched Hanyu-san’s performance, I thought, ‘So there’s someone who skates like this.’ That was the strongest impression it left on me.”

He became completely absorbed in Yuzuru Hanyu’s “Romeo and Juliet.” He watched it over and over, morning, noon, and night, etching it into his memory, and he made sure to watch it before and after practice as well.

Looking back, he says, “I watched it 500 times in six months.”

"I kept watching the free skate at the World Championships in Nice over and over. From that point on, the way I approached skating changed."

The boy whose usual spot until then had been at the edge of the rink would go on to accelerate his own skating career.

(To be continued)