Yuma will be jetting off to Paris in a few days to get his Team Event silver! It seems as though Carolina Kostner has spent the past few weeks in Japan at Chukyo University, so we can assume that she's been doing some coaching with Yuma before heading out with the rest of Team Japan for the training camp and ice show in Varese, Italy. In other news, Yuma's good friend from school, Shinnosuke Oka, won 2 Olympic gold medals in the Team Event and Men's All-Around for Artistic Gymnastics! Yuma congratulated him on Twitter/X. Apparently Yuma helped Shinnosuke with his signature back in high school, and Shinnosuke is now happy that he has results that match Yuma's. Hopefully we can get a medal meet-up with the two of them in Paris!
The following is a very rough translation/paraphrasing from a podcast by Yoshie Noguchi, one of the top skating writers in Japan, on her impressions after interviewing Yuma. The original link to the podcast is
here, and the translations were done by
@graciasNole on Twitter/X.
Yoshie Noguchi says Yuma has great perspective of figure skating as a sport from the past to the future, has superb analytical skills, is so aware, observant, discerning, critical and demanding of himself. Yuma has been practicing figures and laying the foundation since childhood, and has mastered skating at a great level. In this case, with everyone praising him, he has every reason to think "I am really good", but he never does.
Acknowledging that his own skating skills are objectively good, Yuma says he has not yet formed a strong personal style. So he feels that when he is skating to intense music or pieces with a strong personality, it looks a bit dull. There is a judge within Yuma, who not only asks himself to skate well, but also to show style and flair. He has taken a lot of videos and watched and studied them keenly. Yuma felt that although he had the correct skating techniques and good speed, there were still some differences between him and some of his seniors. Having watched the videos and analyzed them, he concluded that he lacked some personality. Yuma watched videos of Carolina skating and felt that he could not fully dissect why Carolina was good, so he wanted to learn directly from her. He felt that even if heās doing the same movements as Carolina and focusing on the same key points, his movements looked a bit empty and insipid, whereas Carolina's did not feel ācoldā. He couldnāt exactly figure out why this was the case, so he wants to learn from Carolina to find the answer. Yuma also mentioned the lean of the upper body, that there was a difference between him and Carolina. Also the precision in edges and how to place the blades. Or more specifically, the accuracy to leave the same clean marks on the ice no matter how many times you repeat the same movement. Yuma said Carolinaās at the next level in this aspect. He gave an example, the crossovers. Her crossovers were expressive themselves, while his were mere acceleration (though efficient).
Yoshie also says interview with Yuma was always interesting because of the many details, like they are both figure skating fans/geeks and they just had a great time talking about figure skating. Other skaters are also somewhat like this, but Yuma really stands out as such. They talked about things like as how to think about a certain skill/technique, in what style did past skaters perform on the ice, etc. Like, when he discussed crossovers with you, it touched your heart as a skating fan. Yuma can already do 4 types of quads, and the step is to improve his success rate. When she asked Yuma if he would go to the next level and add a 4A like Ilia, he said no and he was working towards improving his skating and performance as much as he can. She says the way he approached things and talked was as if he were 10 years older than his actual age. For these things mentioned above, many skaters would just listen to their coachesā words and not quite internalize them; but Yuma would digest, reflect, analyze, summarize, integrate and try to work things out on his own, which is really impressive. Before Masakazu was hospitalized for cerebral hemorrhage, he would wake him up in the morning, make breakfast for Yuma and take him to training. After that, Yuma did all these things by himself. When Masakazu went to the rink, he would just sit at the rink side, watch and give some guidance. If his father wasnāt there, Yuma would take videos of his training, watch them together with Masakazu to discuss if thereās anything to correct and how to improve. Yuma had to plan and do everything by himself, and he grew a lot during this period. In this process, he was able to more seriously think about what his strengths were.
(Host: From what you say it seems heās even more impressive than I thoughtā¦)
Yoshie says although Yuma is very young, he thinks and approaches things like a 40-yr-old veteran of the sport, just WOW.
(Host: As if he has 3 coaches, including himself...)
Yoshie says when she asked Yuma questions, she often asked "Is this thanks to your father's consideration?" Yuma often answered, "No, this is what I considered myself." Masakazu is not the kind of person who talks a lot to give instructions. He would address the technical issues; but as for the way of thinking, how to put in the effort and to fight, the mental approach to competitions, etc., he would step back a bit and let Yuma work on his own. This has also largely developed Yuma's autonomy.
Yoshie also says Yuma can be a coach right away with his perspective and analytical skills (note here: this is something Yuma wants to do after he retires). Heās aware of what needs to be done now and in the future, and he can also put things into the perspective and he has a big picture idea of how figure skating has evolved in the past and where itās heading in the future and where to place himself in the tide.
He seemed overwhelmed by all the love the crowd showed him; he was near tears when describing how they erupted into cheers of encouragement when he fell during his FS. Interestingly, the GOE on his first-ever 4F in competition was the exact same as Shoma's in the SP at Worlds, AKA the third-highest scoring 4F ever. He is already looking ahead to next season, and will increase his jump layout to feature four quads. Yuma plans to stay in Canada to choreograph his new free skate (I presume with Lori and Caro), and will continue to do his best to become a better skater. He aims to catch Ilia by the 2026 Olympics!
. The 3F+3Lo also made a reappearance. One viewer said that all the men (and Kaori, and junior women) were skating like it was the World Championships in August! Another viewer saw him working through steps for either another short program or his free skate, and said he was working on a less-telegraphed entry for the 4T and 4F but didn't do it in his actual program. We'll definitely get videos tomorrow (there's a livestream) so I'm excited to see the program! Also people on Twitter are saying Yuma dyed his hair (just to a dark brown) which he said he'd never do in the past because he "wanted to be like Shohei Ohtani and never dye his hair". I think Kao might have been a bad influence on him 
