Yuma Kagiyama

[figureskatingandrainbows]

Yuma has now won his third World silver medal (in addition to two Olympic silvers), so while he's very happy with his comeback season, it's kind of an unfortunate trend. 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!

 

[CrazyKittenLady]

Stunning pictures of Yuma at Worlds from Yoriko Suzuki, one of my favourite FS photographers on insta:

 

[4everchan]

Yuma's gala number was for me, one of the highlights of Worlds 2024. Looking forward to seeing his new programs.

 

[yuumagical]

Yuma's gala number was for me, one of the highlights of Worlds 2024. Looking forward to seeing his new programs.

Same here, glad to have voted for him.

 

[CrazyKittenLady]

And the Free Skate:

 

[reader3]

Happy Birthday to Yuma for May 5th.

 

[Jeanie19]

 

[Arriba627]

Happy birthday to Yuma! I wonder if the fans were allowed to give him gifts at PIW, or strictly flowers. Wait, he's 21?! I thought he was 12! LOL.

 

[yuumagical]

Happy birthday to Yuma! I wonder if the fans were allowed to give him gifts at PIW, or strictly flowers. Wait, he's 21?! I thought he was 12! LOL.

Lol, he looked like he was 12 when he was 15... Now that he's 21, he finally looks like he's 15, lol.

It appears that Yuma had an incredibly fun time on his birthday, according to one of Kao's Instagram posts (scroll all the way to the right)!

 

[Arriba627]

@yuumagical The way they said someone else was 62 instead of 26, I thought maybe Yuma was supposed to be 12 and they switched it to 21! LOL. Hope he had a fun time and received lots of Snoopys!

 

[figureskatingandrainbows]

Yuma gave an interview with World Figure Skating in mid-April. He says that he overall enjoyed Worlds and his progress throughout the season, and was very motivated by the high level of Ilia and Adam. He was extremely happy to win his first ISU Championship. After Worlds, Yuma spent time in Canada with Lori and Caro. They worked on improving his jump layout, movement quality, and GOE of his spins. He will be continuing to work with Caro, and he says that she was a huge help both artistically and mentally. His new free program was choreographed by Lori, and he describes it as a very challenging program, perhaps even more so than RIYBE, and he may show it off in the summer (likely during Dreams on Ice). He is still considering his SP. Yuma started to take one day off a week this season, which helped him feel refreshed (and I'm sure reduce injury risk). His goal for the next season is to surpass his previous scores and performances and score 300 points at his first competition.

Also, some people saw him practicing at Chukyo University over the weekend and apparently he's skating Sound of Silence as his SP currently, but alternating between a 4F and 4S as his opening jump, and his FS is a "flamenco" or "Latin-style" program (the music has not been identified, but the people who saw it seemed to like it)

 

[figureskatingandrainbows]

Yuma has signed a contract with Suzuki Corporation! The contract will last through the 2026 Olympic games, and he got a Suzuki Swift car and is now an ambassador for the brand. His coach, Carolina, is currently signed by Suzuki Italy, which is part of why he was selected. During the announcement and visit to the Suzuki History Museum with the president, Yuma held a press conference. He is planning to do 4 quads next season, but is working on a 4Lz. He lands it about once every two days, and is working on improving his physical strength so he can incorporate it into the program. He shared that following the retirements of Shoma Uno and Yuzuru Hanyu, he feels kind of lonely, as he wanted to compete against them more. He also feels that he isn't on the same level as Yuzuru and Shoma as far as carrying the Japanese team, and hopes to develop that level of confidence. Now that he has his car, he is planning to take driving lessons and get his license in July.

In other happy news, Yuma's good friend and classmate Shinnosuke Oka from Seisa High School, who was one of three students in the special sports correspondence program with Yuma, recently qualified for the Paris Olympics in Men's Artistic Gymnastics! Shinnosuke feels inspired by Yuma's success on the Olympic stage and wants to win a gold medal for Team Japan.

Yuma also gave an interview with Number Japan, the full translation of which I have below. It was translated by @graciasNole on Twitter and also posted on their Weibo blog. I thought it was a really revealing and valuable interview, which is why I'm posting the whole thing.

With "positive regret" in mind - Yuma's reflection on this season's journey

text by Yoshie Noguchi (bold text is quotes from Yuma, regular text is Noguchi's writing)

“My father never imposed goals, ways of thinking, or techniques on me. Instead, he supported me in achieving my goals."

When Yuma was 15 years old in the third year of junior high school, Masakazu suffered a cerebral hemorrhage.

"I had no choice but to do everything by myself. Planning my practice, setting goals for competitions. But because I did a lot of thinking on my own in high school, I think I was able to develop a style of making good plans and gaining experience."

When he moved up to the senior ranks, he continued to share the podium with Nathan Chen, Yuzuru Hanyu, Shoma Uno, and others. For him, the season he missed due to a left ankle injury was a trying time.

"Since it was my first serious injury, I couldn't accept it, and there was a hole in my heart. My father was the one who helped me. All I could think about was 'I want to compete as soon as possible', but my father told me, 'Your skating career is long, so you should take a break and focus on your future.'"

This season, to bring a breath of fresh air, he added Carolina Kostner, who is renowned for her expressiveness, as his coach.

"Carolina-sensei exudes both grace and power in her various programs, and she is able to incorporate different expressions while bringing out her own atmosphere and vibes. Her expressiveness is amazing in a way that I can't even comprehend, so I would like her to teach me that. My skating still feels junior-ish, so I wanted to be able to express myself in a more mature way."

He calls himself “junior”-ish. That's because he has high ideals.

"'Junior' may be an overstatement, but I wanted more of an explosion of expression. Hanyu and Uno are able to give different colors to their programs, and their passion can easily come across. But when I watched my own videos, I felt that my attention was focused only on my jumps, and that my expression lacks personality."

His skating and jumping, which are faithful to the basics, have always been his weapons.

"In a good way or a bad way, I feel like I have no peculiarities. And the more intense the program gets, the worse my lack of peculiarities looks. So even with simple crossovers, I wanted to show changes in pace and presentation to add variety."

What amazing analytical skills. In competitions, points are awarded to skaters for movements that conform to the textbook. However, he wanted to step out of the box in pursuit of artistry.

"Training with Carolina-sensei was full of surprises. Even in the warming-ups, the movements that should have been the same felt completely different on the ice. Even her fingertips were beautiful, and the traces [and curves] (in and out) of the steps [and turns] she demonstrated were amazing. It was fun to watch and fun to learn. I felt like I had discovered the true joy of skating."

After seeing Carolina's skating, he changed his mind. Instead of polishing his expressiveness, he decided to go back to the basics.

"I felt that expression is something can be added on later, so I decided to start by rebuilding the basic foundation."

By thoroughly strengthening the basics, the biggest change he felt was in his stamina.

"I have been using this program for two years. Two years ago, in the second half of the program, I felt like I was 'just skating with all my strength.' But as I learned the basics of how to lower my body and how to use my legs, I stopped using unnecessary force, and the second half of the program became less demanding, and the overall performance of the program improved, too."

Developing the basics leads to expression. This year marked the start of his journey into the depths of art. Once again, what path will he chart after his three silver medals? The winner, Ilia Malinin (USA), landed five different types of quadruple jumps in his free program.

"I did three quads, but I'm not thinking about doing five anytime soon. It would be more realistic to add one more. In fact, I could also earn extra points by improving the quality of my spins and jumps. Rather than trying to catch up with my rivals, my approach is to work on perfecting my performance little by little. Therefore I feel sense of regret—but a positive one—right now."

Instead of competing against someone, he analyzes himself deeply and focuses on developing his strengths. Ahead of the aesthetics of the quiet 21-year-old lies the pinnacle of the world. I believe so.

 

[demarinis5]

Revealing interview from Yuma, great read. Training with the Goddess on Ice will improve his artistic personality coupled with his other great skills he will be at the top if his game. Thanks for sharing

 

[Arriba627]

Sounds like Yuma and Kao really enjoyed Mao's new ice show, Everlasting 33. Many are raving about her Bolero in the comments.

 

[figureskatingandrainbows]

Today was the first Dreams on Ice performance! It was a competition-style event, so there was an official practice followed by the event. Yuma confirmed that his new SP is Sounds of Silence, featuring a reverse camel spin and a purple costume! One of his SP runthroughs was a standard 4S, 4T+3T, and 3A, and the next featured a 4F+3T . 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

 

[icewhite]

I just saw a video of this new program and although the music and the choreo are not stunning at all it took my breath away. He's just brilliant. Brilliant.

 

[Arigato]

 

[CrazyKittenLady]

Yuma's skating is ethereal

 

[Arriba627]

Wow. Nice program. Pristine jumps, spinning in both directions, lots of transitions. I think I would have maybe preferred no vocals. For me the vocals felt like an intrusion to the mood he was creating. Still, very nice.

 

[figureskatingandrainbows]

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 he’s 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 “cold”. He couldn’t 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 Carolina’s 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 coaches’ 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 wasn’t there, Yuma would take videos of his training, watch them together with Masakazu to discuss if there’s 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 he’s even more impressive than I thought…)
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). He’s 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 it’s heading in the future and where to place himself in the tide.