The champion Uno Shoma is on fire again after his defeat at the Finals!

Shoma Uno (26, Toyota Motor Corp.) finished the Grand Prix Final of figure skating held in Beijing until December 9. He finished in second place, 17.32 points behind 19-year-old Ilia Malinin of the U.S., with his back-to-back championships on the line, but at the press conference immediately afterward, he gave a powerful speech.

Before the season started, I didn’t think it would be such a high-level competition, so it’s quite fun. It’s fun to compete with each other like this, but also to be friends with each other, to work hard as friends, and to aim for a higher level. That’s how I’ve been working with Nathan and Yuzu. （I was totally left behind (at that time), but this time, I will do my best not to be left behind.

With the rise of a rising star who will lead the men’s figure figure skating team for a long time to come, the heat from the days when he was training hard to beat Yuzuru Hanyu (29), winner of the Winter Olympics in Sochi 2014 and Pyeongchang 2018, and Nathan Chen (USA, 24), the Beijing 2022 champion, was welling up.

Last season, she won all the tournaments she participated in. He won the Finals for the first time and the World Championships for the second year in a row without a hitch. He had to fight a lonely battle, and at times he spoke of his lack of motivation for competitions. This was also the case after the GP4 China Cup on November 10 and 11, her first competition of the season. Even after coming from the top in the short program (SP) to lose to Adam Xiao Yim Hwa (FRA, 22) in the free skate, she showed no sign of regret.

She said, “I feel more happy when I see someone close to me, someone I train with, or someone like Adam this time, win and be happy, than when I win myself. That’s how little I feel about my own results, and how little competitive spirit I have for the competition. There are days when I practice with a sense of fulfillment and enjoyment, but what motivates me is ……. It’s pretty much, ‘What’s going to happen?’ I had a feeling of “What’s going to happen? Comparing the way we feel about the competition, I think everyone has a stronger sense of “I’m going to do my best here. I was motivated by Nathan and Yuzu.

I was sad to see that he had not found a way to face the competition as a competitive sport, and that he had somewhat reached a point of mastery. She looked back on her new season, in which she publicly declared that she was seeking her ideal expression, not the result.

I hadn’t found my goal, so much so that I set the theme of this season as self-satisfaction. What do I want to do? I spent more than a year searching for motivation within myself.