Asada’s Influence on 13-Year-Old Rena Uezono’s Pursuit of Unexpected Figure Skating Predecessor

In the big competition, a gem in the rough shined a ray of light.

The All-Japan Figure Skating Championships were held at Big Hat in Nagano in late December last year. While Kaori SAKAMOTO (23, Sysmex) won her third consecutive title, 13-year-old Korina UEZONO (LYS) came in a very strong 4th place.

In both SP and FS, she showed her full potential, and her total score reached the 200-point mark for the first time in her career. She was only 1.49 points short of the podium, the first time in 43 events that a girl under junior high school age has made it to the podium since Midori Ito, who placed 3rd in the 5th grade, but it was refreshing to see her say with an innocent expression on her face, “I just have to give everything I can right now.

I was thinking only of giving everything I could now, and I wasn’t concerned about the score, so I was very surprised (to exceed 200 points). I am so grateful to have skated amongst so many good skaters, and I hope to make the most of it in the future.

Born in Kitanagoya City, Aichi Prefecture, a “figure skating kingdom,” she started competing “as it should be,” when she was 4 years old. She took to the ice at the age of 5, unable to forget the moment Mao Asada, then 24, waved to her directly.

She has been on the ice since she was 5 years old, and it wasn’t until she was 7 that she began to seriously train at the rink, where coach Mihoko Higuchi, who trained Masama Uno (26, Toyota Motor Corp.), discovered her talent, and she has been improving rapidly. In addition to her ability to jump all five types of triple jumps without any habit, her greatest weapon is her expressive ability, which she says without hesitation, “I like to express myself, so I’m conscious of my skating.

In her first year as a junior skater, she has been taking advantage of her slender 158cm height and long arms and legs to perform “New Moon” in the short program and “Pray” in the free skate. In September last year, she competed in two rounds of the Junior Grand Prix (GP) series, and after finishing 2nd in the first round, she won the second round in Poland. In the Junior GP Final (Beijing), where she also decided to compete for the first time in a blink of an eye, she marked personal bests in both SP and FS, and reached the podium. After the competition, she said with a big smile on her face, “I was able to perform my best on this stage.

I don’t really feel like I got the 3rd place, but I was so happy to see the medal. I am happy that I could enjoy skating, and that I could show my charm.