- Joined
- Mar 6, 2014
I had so many first impressions of Shoma at Skate America, but my first was "Who is this little Japanese firecracker?" I thought he looked like he was about 12 years old! But he stepped on the ice and skated BIG! His speed and charisma were very impressive. Yes, I did think the leprechaun costume was just a little strange - but still, it was much better than some of the others where the guys look like they just reached in their closet and grabbed an old t-shirt and said "I think I'll skate in this today!" I remember thinking on his triple axel, he looked like he was shot out of a cannon! It wasn't so much the height, but rather the distance he covered on the ice. And of course when he ended with the cantilever, the audience really started cheering and many people were on their feet before he even finished. He really won the audience over. I think that if he hadn't fallen on his quad in the short program, he would have taken the gold. He was so cute when he took his bows. He had such a big smile, and he waved at the audience which struck me as very cute, since most of the other skaters didn't wave. Later when I was able to watch him on TV, the commentators were very complimentary of him and saying that he was causing quite a "stir" during practices before the competition. Kurt Browning from Canada was pretty much the same and called him a little "pocket rocket" which I thought was really funny...So what really happened was that I went to Skate America to cheer on Jason Brown, and I left a Shoma (and Jason!) fan! Loved the pairs that were there too and was so happy I got to see Sui and Han, whom I really love!...All in all, a great Skate America. I can only hope that this year's is as good. 2014 was great too. Machida was fabulous!
Thanks for sharing your experience. I was just thinking how I'm not bothered as much as I should be about his leprechaun costume and maybe it's because I remember being shocked seeing his red costume at Dreams on Ice

I can't wait to find out the GP assignments for next season. In fact, this might be the funnest part of the season for me. Then the competitions start and I start to slowly die a little bit at a time...
You're so lucky to live so close to the stadium too. I hope all your favorites are there. Jason was fabulous at WTT when I saw him even though he was the size of a match stick from where I was sitting. I want to see him from a seat where I can actually see his face next time.



in fact if you read the first bunch of pages of this thread you can see my posts celebrating his first quads and his first 3A which I saw in a shady practice video and replayed it many times to make sure it was rotated.
:hap93:
