Uno out of WTT

[rabidline]

I do hope he takes a break from shows or at least limits his jumps over the summer!

Shoma has at least 3 weeks break, thankfully. His next show will be on May 3-5 at Prince Ice World Yokohama (6 shows in 3 days, but this is already a decrease for Shoma since he's doing partial dates of the show instead of full one of 12 shows in 6 days as usual), and then another break for a month until June 10-11 at Prince Ice World Saga (3 shows in 2 days).

And then another long break since he's not going to Dreams on Ice (DOI) like last year, but his next leg of shows is the heaviest one because it's going to be 2 solid weeks of The ICE from July 22 - August 4, with 4 cities to stop (Nagoya, Nikko, Osaka and Morioka) and 12 shows overall. This is pretty much unskippable because he's the chairman, and last year (2022) he used 8 out of 9 shows to test out his Free Skate (the Bach/Hasse baroque one), ending with him doing a 4Lo 4S 3T 4T 4F 3A 4T in August.

The turnaround to ONE PIECE is likely to be the most tricky one because the first round of shows will be in Yokohama from August 11-13 (6 shows in 3 days), with 3 weeks' rest before he'll do it again in Nagoya on September 2-3 (4 shows in 2 days). He usually does Friends on Ice at mid/late September, but this one is likely the easiest to skip since he's in the same management office with the chairman, Shizuka and the show cast is geared more towards Shizuka's friends aka retired skaters. And then there's usually Japan Open/Carnival on Ice in the beginning of October... but Shoma did say post-Worlds that he'll start the season a bit later.

Even though he was carrying an injury, the SOI shows that just finished is probably the "lighter" shows that Shoma's done because even though there's 10 shows, they limit it to 1 show per day. The shows Shoma skates at usually have 2 shows in 1 day (afternoon and evening). I think what he can do is get show programs that only needs him to jump 2 times (Grespi and Padam worked well at SOI) or less. Last year he was already attempting full SP layouts at shows by May 2022 (two months after Worlds) and full FS layouts at shows by August 2022 so I'm not surprised about his injury. He doesn't need to do that this year (and he won't be skating competitive programs at ONE PIECE).

 

[rabidline]

Isn't part of Rika's persistent problems that she's continued to do shows in lieu of getting the rest that her leg needed?

I think Brian Orser said so in his interview before the season started (he was interviewed at JGP Riga by a Russian journalist: https://www.sports.ru/tribuna/blogs/vsemlutz/3076904.html#supertop). Because Rika has a stress fracture and he thinks ideally she should be resting and putting her leg on a cast, but I think she has sponsorship obligations with the shows and she also did a charity marathon run/walk for Red Bull during that summer.