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.
<figure id="attachment_350032" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-350032" style="width: 1024px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="3b26a8eb"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2023/12/73e81e4ca0f40f8994c1e7e203602839.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-350032" class="wp-caption-text"> Uno responds to cheers after his performance in the men&#8217;s free skate at the GP Finals.</figcaption></figure>
 Before the season started, I didn&#8217;t think it would be such a high-level competition, so it&#8217;s quite fun. It&#8217;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&#8217;s how I&#8217;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&#8217;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.
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 She said, &#8220;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&#8217;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 &#8230;&#8230;. It&#8217;s pretty much, &#8216;What&#8217;s going to happen?&#8217; I had a feeling of &#8220;What&#8217;s going to happen? Comparing the way we feel about the competition, I think everyone has a stronger sense of &#8220;I&#8217;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.
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 I hadn&#8217;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.
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" Change after losing the competition to Keyama"></div>
However, his mind must have gradually changed since he lost to Yuma Kagiyama (20, Oriental Bio/Chukyo Univ.) at the final round of the GP series, the NHK Cup on November 24 and 25, and said , &#8220;It has been a while since I was seen as a competitor.
<figure id="attachment_350035" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-350035" style="width: 1024px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="b88c6240"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2023/12/df58548c1c03883631e74a6048d35107-1.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-350035" class="wp-caption-text"> At the NHK Cup in November, he narrowly lost to Kagiyama.</figcaption></figure>
 After the official practice session on the day before the opening of the finals, she said, &#8220;This year, I think I have to perform at the level of maybe near no-mistakes, like one step out on a jump, or something like that. I think it is very interesting to watch. I think it is interesting from a man&#8217;s point of view to see such a high-level, last-minute competition in sports. He could no longer hide his competitive side.
 In the Finals, the battle was tight from the SP. Uno, who skated first, scored three perfect jumps, including a quadruple flip, and her spins and steps were Level 4, the most difficult, while her PCS, a measure of expressive power, was in the mid-9s in all three categories, showing her high overall ability, scoring 106.02 points, the world best this season. She also scored a quadruple lutz and a triple toeloop in a row, and her score of 106.90 points was higher than Uno&#8217;s. In the Free Skate, which was held two days later, she scored 106.90 points, higher than Uno&#8217;s score of 106.90 points.
 Two days later, in the Free Skate, Marinin was in a class of her own. Although she fell on her quad axel at the beginning of the competition, she landed a total of five quadruple jumps, including two Lutz jumps of the highest difficulty, all of them high, and all of them clean. He also attracted the audience with his expression, which had been an issue for him, and he scored in the upper 8-point range in all three PCS categories. His total score is the 3rd highest in the world history, following Chen and Hanyu. Uno, too, &#8220;I&#8217;d like to give myself 100 points,&#8221; she said, but she was unable to do so, partly due to her mistakes in jumps.
 Uno was pleased to see his rival, whom he would have had to give his maximum effort to beat, at the press conference the following day.
 I don&#8217;t think there will be anyone who can match him in jumping skill in a few decades. It&#8217;s such a big leap. In the figure skating world, there was a tendency that if someone could jump, he could jump more and more, but I think his jump is really terrible. I think she is a little too far out of her league, so I am sure that she will become a dominant figure skater in the future.
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 Uno, who was lifting up Mullinin, also said, &#8220;I think (a strong opponent) will appear.
 I think it&#8217;s more challenging when you have a strong rival. It&#8217;s more rewarding to have a goal. I don&#8217;t know how everyone else feels. I think Nathan is amazing, because he was the strongest for four years and kept the same quality. He kept the same quality. I wonder what motivated him. I don&#8217;t know what kind of thoughts you have to lead the skating world from now on. I don&#8217;t know what you are going to do in the future, but I don&#8217;t want to be in the position of chasing you, and I hope I can lead the skating world with you. I&#8217;m going to do my best to compete with Malinin for the rest of the season, for sure.
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 While laughing at times, she also shows her serious gaze from time to time. What kind of performance will she use to compete with him? I am looking forward to seeing her evolved figure at the World Championships in Montreal next March, where her third consecutive championship will be on the line.

 Daichi Hadano

 Kyodo News

 The Figure Skating GP Final ended with a crushing victory for rising star Ilia Mullinin. With this result, Masama Uno, who has led men's figure skating for a long time, is getting his fighting spirit back.

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