On August 11-12, &#8220;Kinoshita Trophy Contest&#8221; was held at Kinoshita Academy Kyoto Ice Arena in Uji City, Kyoto Prefecture, and &#8220;Gensan Summer Cup&#8221; was held at Kinoshita Kansei Ice Arena in Otsu City, Japan.
 These two competitions can be called the &#8220;summer camp&#8221; of figure skating, and are a prelude to the new season, where each skater will find out the results of their off-season and the issues they need to work on in their programs.
<figure id="attachment_328486" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-328486" style="width: 1024px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="17895909"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2024/08/a2a2bed1385ba85154947fcc5134816b.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-328486" class="wp-caption-text"> Kaori Sakamoto returns to the Summer Cup after a two-year absence.</figcaption></figure>
 My goal is to win the World Championships and the All-Japan Championships three times in a row,&#8221; said Japan&#8217;s women&#8217;s ace, Kaori Sakamoto.
 I want to win the World Championships and the All-Japan Championships three times in a row,&#8221; said Japan&#8217;s women&#8217;s ace, Kaori Sakamoto (23). If she wins the 2012 World Championships in Montreal for the third straight year, she will be the first Japanese woman to do so in 56 years, since Peggy Fleming of the United States. Last season, after winning the bronze medal at the Beijing Winter Olympics and her first victory at the World Championships, she suffered from a lack of motivation. Last year, she was late in making adjustments, and had to skip the &#8220;Gensan Summer Cup,&#8221; which she had competed in every year. Therefore, her return to the familiar stage this year shows that she is in high spirits.
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 The short program (SP) was &#8220;Kounodori,&#8221; a medical drama featuring an obstetrician/gynecologist, and the free skating program was &#8220;Wild Is The Wind/Feeling Good,&#8221; in which he played a mysterious adult character accompanied by female vocalists. Sakamoto explains how and why he decided on each performance.
 My niece was born in January of this year and my nephew in March. （The videos and photos sent to me from my two sisters, like the niece and nephew today, gave me a lot of strength, and I wanted to turn this strength into my performance, so I decided for the first time which song I wanted to perform. Free skating is sexy. I think I can do this song because I&#8217;m at this age (23), and I think it&#8217;s the choreography I think the choreography is perfect for me.
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 She had performed in &#8220;THE ICE&#8221; in Morioka until August 4, &#8220;Both short and free skating were like homework during the summer vacation, and I had to push hard right before the show,&#8221; she said!　In the SP, she had a rare misalignment of her double axel, which is regarded as the best in the world, and in the FS, she got stuck in a groove during a step, fell on her buttocks, and fell at the end of three jumps in a row .
 Still, to Sakamoto, &#8220;I need to know what I am missing now,
 I was able to grasp what I am lacking now,&#8221; said Sakamoto. It is very important to experience the tension in the beginning of the season, which you can only experience in competitions. My physical movements are better than they were in the beginning of the season, and I don&#8217;t have much hesitation. I feel like I&#8217;ve reached the point where I think I can make it if I keep practicing,&#8221; he said.
 He had time to look back with a cheerful expression on his face.
 He left the venue with a big smile on his face, saying, &#8220;I&#8217;m going to work him hard.
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" He was a big man as he left the venue."></div>
Yuma Kagiyama (20), who did not compete in any international tournaments last season due to a left ankle injury, made his return to competition at the &#8220;Kinoshita Trophy Contest&#8221; for the first time in 229 days since the All-Japan Championships last December.
 I&#8217; m very happy to be able to play in the games I&#8217;m supposed to play,&#8221; he said, but he was also confronted with the difficulty of the road to a full recovery.
<figure id="attachment_328487" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-328487" style="width: 815px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="a16b592c"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2024/08/3535547553e563b9061401112b172e1c.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-328487" class="wp-caption-text"> Yuma Kagiyama keenly felt the difficulty of his first competition after his comeback.</figcaption></figure>
 In the 6-minute practice session just before SP, Yuma was clearly on tenterhooks. In the official practice, he had shown his sharpness, landing not only his Salcoe, which he would incorporate into his performance, but also his toeloop, flip, and quadruple jumps,
 I wasn&#8217;t that anxious, but after my triple axel failure in the six-minute practice, I forgot my pace a little bit, and that&#8217;s when I got impatient.
 I was in a hurry,&#8221; she said, &#8220;and I forgot the pace I had been on.
 In the first part of &#8220;Believer&#8221;, she went into the quadruple sallecoe without getting off the planned course in the run-up, and fell down without getting the axis of rotation right in the air. He also made a mistake in the triple axel, &#8220;There is not a single thing I can praise. I still have a little bit of a weakness in it, so I feel I have to overcome it soon.
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 In FS the next day, she corrected her quad salcor beautifully, but made a lot of mistakes in quad toeloop, triple lutz, etc., and jammed her left calf in the spin at the end of the competition. The fact that she had experienced such an accident in practice, but had never seen such an accident in competition, was a proof that she had a blank period. Their total score was about 100 points below their personal best.
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 I am not in bad shape at all, so I am still inexperienced. （I have lost a lot of senses after a year of absence (from competition),&#8221; said Kagiyama.)
 On the other hand, his upper body, which he has trained during the period he was away from ice practice and could not jump, has grown bigger. Her skating expression, which is linked with her upper body, is so much better than before last season. If they can get it right, they have the potential to return to the highest level at once. As for the rest of the season, she has a lot to work on,&#8221; said Keyama.
 It was a good opportunity for me to rethink my plan on how to build up for All-Japan. Now I just need to get back into the game. Once I get a good feel for it, I think I will be able to do as I have practiced.&#8221;
 In September, the Lombardia Cup (Italy) will be the first international tournament in about a year and a half. He will take steady steps forward.
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" The MVP of the summer is Yoshio Miura."></div>
The most intense three days of the summer camp was probably spent by 18-year-old Yoshio Miura, winner of last season&#8217;s Four Continents Championships and World Junior Championships.
 He won two events in a row. Especially in SP, he scored 91 points. His new piece &#8220;This Place Was A Shelter&#8221; was choreographed by Benoit Richaud. Under the guidance of the famous choreographer, who gave Kaori Sakamoto, who was known for her dynamic jumps, the expressive power that led her to become the World Champion, Miura is now in the midst of a trial-and-error process to become a better skater.
<figure id="attachment_328488" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-328488" style="width: 836px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="ad7f6bb9"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2024/08/13511d48e515d29798299f49c3c72414.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-328488" class="wp-caption-text"> Yoshio Miura shows a new frontier</figcaption></figure>
 I have skated many programs in which I skated hard,&#8221; said Miura, &#8220;but I have been trying to change that. This is a program with contemporary elements, which is like a change from that, with a relaxed, spontaneous skating, with occasional action.
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 Miura said. It is a difficult program that requires a lot of slow and fast skating, but Miura has polished his expressive ability, which has been a challenge for him to win the All-Japan Championships for the first time, and has started to raise his performance points.
 The free skate, featuring the theme song from the popular anime &#8220;Shinkage no Kyojin,&#8221; was an ambitious work by Shae-Lynn Bourne, who has worked with many top skaters including Yuzuru Hanyu. In the &#8220;Kinoshita Trophy Contest,&#8221; she successfully executed a total of three quadruple jumps, a salcor and a toeloop. Behind her 180.91 points, which was only 9 points short of her personal best at this time of the year, was her extraordinary desire to make a leap forward from last season, when she finished 6th in All-Japan and missed the World Championships. She has also grown mentally, never getting complacent even after achieving good results.
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 There were some jumps that were not scored, though they were not big mistakes. If I review them properly, I think I can get more points. I will work hard on the tasks in front of me, to improve my score even more.
 The young warrior, who also aims to incorporate a loop into her third quad, is likely to be the eye of the typhoon in the figure skating world this season.

 Daichi Hadano

 Kyodo News

 The Kinoshita Trophy Contest was held on August 11 and 12, and the Gensan Summer Cup from August 11 to 14. In this "Figure Summer Camp," three world-class athletes made a splash.

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