Marin Honda, a professional skater, overcame “too high a wall”.

She has performed in many ice shows since she was a Novice (a class even lower than Junior), and has honed her ability to express herself . She is particular about the makeup she uses for competitions, and her technique and finish are so good that even the Olympic rhythmic gymnastics team uses her as a reference. Coach Mie Hamada, who once coached her, described her as “an artist with rich sensitivity and a high sense of beauty.

His flamboyant skating on the silver slate had earned him the nickname “Mao Asada’s second generation” among skaters, but it was at the 2016 World Junior Championships, where he competed in his second year of junior high school at Kansai University, that he quickly caught the public’s attention. Despite competing for the first time, she defeated the powerful Russians, who had won five consecutive titles, with a fearless performance, and became the first Japanese woman since Kanako Murakami (29) to win the queen’s title in six events.

In the 2017 competition, where two consecutive championships were on the line, she finished second behind Russia’s Alina Zagitova (21), who will win the gold medal at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang. With the birth of a new star just before the PyeongChang Winter Olympics season, TV stations rushed to the Kinki Championships and other regional competitions. As a “click monster” who garnered a large number of PVs, the sports press reported on her every move not only in print but also on the Internet.

I was with photographers at all times, and there were many times when I thought, ‘I’m glad’ or ‘I’m happy,’ but of course there were times when I thought, ‘This is hard’ when I was a little girl.

I was still in junior high school at the time. I was too young to accept the torrent of changes in my environment. Then came the 2017-2018 Pyeongchang Olympics season. She won her first US International, but at Skate Canada, her first Grand Prix Series, she finished in fifth place after a late start, placing 10th in the short program. The momentum she had gained up to that point was gone, and despite public expectations, she was unable to get her gears back on track once they had gone haywire. She struggled so much that for the first time, she told people around her that she wanted to quit skating.

At the All-Japan Championships, which also served as the final Olympic qualifying round, she placed 7th. Her path to the Olympics was cut short.

When I was 10 years old, skating was one of my lessons, and to be honest, I felt like I could quit anytime I wanted to.

When I turned 16, it was a very difficult season for me, and there was a time when I took a break from skating for the first time of my own volition (after All-Japan). But when I actually took a break, I felt guilty, or I felt like I had to practice faster, so I only took a 4-day break, and by the end of the year, I had already resumed skating.

He moved his training base to the United States. For the first time in a long time, I could concentrate on my own skating, without worrying about what others thought of me. It made me realize how much fun skating can be. She said, “I was able to return to the starting point of sk ating,” to skate freely, without being influenced by the results.