Here's a part of an article released on November 3, after SP, titled as "Walls to overcome for the two Japanese skaters who chase after Yuzuru Hanyu" by Toshimi Oriyama.
https://sportiva.shueisha.co.jp/clm/othersports/figure/2019/11/03/post_27/index.php
While Keiji Tanaka at age of 24 getting a result of 3rd place at Skate Canada to follow Yuzuru Hanyu and Shoma Uno, who out of the young skaters will rise to make their mark? That's one of the biggest highlight of Western Sectionals, which has just started.
At Single Men's SP on the first day of the competition, many skaters ended up making mistakes. Sota Yamamoto is the one who came out on top (after SP). This season, he has demonstrated his recovery/come-back by his SP with 4S+2T, 4T, and 3A all successful, earning 92.81 points to take the lead slightly above Uno, at Finlandia Trophy.
As he repeated falls with his jumps to hand Uno a come-back victory in Free at Finlandia, Yamamoto says, "I put a lot of effort into practicing free." He also says that he feels his condition for jumps is shifting to tone down, but that's a kind of concerns he can finally have now because he has recovered from the injury and can work out as much as he likes.
"Until last year, at training, I had imposed a limitation for jump practice and had done only once a day, but with that kind of limitation I couldn't tell how my condition was like as I could only focus on one at a time. But this season, with the significantly increased amount of training, I get to know how I'm doing each day, and that (up and down) also affects me."
Yamamoto analyzed so himself. At 6 mins warm-up, he was carefully working with jumps, trying 4S, 4T, and 3A with several mistakes but managed finishing it with successful ones.
At his actual performance, the first jump, 4S, was UR with a hand down, but managed adding 2T to make it a combination. The following 4T, which he was struggling to land during the warm-up, was successful with positive GOE of 2.28 points. But he made a mistake with his last jump, 3A, and his score was just 75.05 points, though he placed first.
"I somehow managed quads, but I was concerned with my condition and it felt like I wasn't going up high enough (by jumping), and I wasn't successful with 3A. I'm not a kind of skater who takes pride in axel jumps, and I still find quads difficult. As for 3A, I'm not yet in good shape to be able to jump one all the time. So, I think I have to increase the amount of practice/training even more," says Yamamoto.
After leaving a result with SP at Finlandia, he's started to aspire for the better and he's already targeting to score 270 to 280 points.
"I got 92 points with my combination jump being just 4+2 then, so I want to make it 4+3 to aim late 90s in short. In free, I got 171.63 at the last competition last season, but my layout this season is more difficult and I think I can get it higher if I get to deliver it."
In order to do so, he's working on his free to make it stable. When he got 171.63 points last season, he only had one quad of 4T, and now he has two 4S and one 4T in his program. When he gets to deliver the free program, I'm sure he will start scoring higher.
[continued to the next part on Tomono (if interested,
posted in Tomono's Fan Fest thread)]
). At least for NHK, he can take one quad out of the free program. His SP was saving him many times so far and we saw how important it is to have a good placement after the short.
