Yuna was a huge breakout star as a junior skater and had so much expectation to be the next star in Japanese skating, same time as Marin Honda. But injury, growing pains and deep field kept her from breaking through. So glad she is starting to make her stride now as a woman, especially. Her long program reminded me of programs back in the 90s. So complete, gentle, lyrical and a wonderful balance between technical and artistic. It’s the days where it was about the joy of skating. I hope she doesn’t retire yet.
Your description of her skates is perfect. She brings such a tender beauty to the programs, and that kind of flow that makes big jumps just feel like part of the choreography. Sublime. One of the things we love about the Japanese program is that it has room for adult women. Seeing Kaori, Rinka, Mai, and Yuna all come into their own in their 20s is wonderful. Hope we get many more years from all of them.
Going from watching Four Continents to the Challenge Cup really felt like going back in time to the 90s. It's really sad to me that the challenger series gets so overlooked, since its still a pretty major international event. Nonetheless, seeing Yuna do so well was amazing! I really love both her programs, and I'm going to be so sad if she retires at the end of this season. I always love to see skaters performing their own choreography, and I think there's still a lot she could accomplish on the competitive circuit. Rion Sumiyoshi is also one of my favorites and it was great to see her have a success to kind of wrap up her season. I love her Two Steps From Hell free program a lot. I think that program alone has gone a long way to helping her establish an identity on the ice, and I'm looking forward to what she brings next season.
clarification: Kaiya Ruiter could not have been sent to senior Worlds because she does not have the Worlds tech minimum in the SP. in fact, besides Madeline Schizas, no other Canadian woman has the Words tech minimums, so Skate Canada would have been unable to name an alternate even if they wanted to. sort of speaks to the state of women's singles skating in Canada.
Ah, that makes sense. Wonder why they didn't opt to send her to Challenge Cup or another international comp to get it. Megan Duhamel has commented before that Canada hasn't, in general, been sending their skaters to enough international events.
@scoreography -- Ruiter has participated in four senior int'l events in the past two years and has not been able to get the SP minimum. it's more of an issue of tech content/execution rather than lack of competitions, unfortunately.
Ah, that _is_ a problem. We don't have a firm grasp over the Minimum Total Elements Scores stuff, will need to dig into that more during the off-season. And Kaiya's SP at Junior Worlds isn't making much of a case for her so far. (Sadly, even worse for Joey, and we know how good she is.)
I'm so glad you guys covered this, I wouldn't have known about it. And it sounds like it was exciting! I'll go look for the videos I can find. I'm glad you're talking about Ekatia, too. Seems like they're all hating on her. For her not to make the free at Europeans was crazy.
The videos for Challenge Cup are a little difficult to track down, and a lot of them have pretty bad frame rates. But Yuna and Kaori's skates are well worth watching. It's frustrating that skating has so many international events that just don't seem to get talked about much. (But, too be fair, they're often at small venues with low attendance, so they wouldn't make for great broadcast TV.) We just don't understand what's happening with Kurakova and the judges. One of the most charismatic performers on ice and they seem to have turned their noses up at her. Very frustrating.
