“ASADA Mao has not gotten used to Russian Style, the anxiety obviously affected her jump.”

 Oita Godo Newspaper (morning edition on November 18th, 2008)

                The world’s Figure Ice Skating Princess, ASADA Mao (hometown: Aichi prefecture), finished the Grandpre Series, the first competition of this season, at the second place. However, as the one who possesses the highest score of 199.52 in her competition history, 167.59 score she got this time is deemed as very low and disappointing.  Surprisingly, the reason seems to be at her jumping which was not good enough though it is actually her adroit point ever.

                “I tried to do the Russian-oriented style but it seems I need to practice more and more until I get used to it.” Another obvious reason is that she has been trained in a different way from the last season.

                ASADA got a new coach from the beginning of this season, Tatiana Tarasova, a Russian figure skating coach who has coached more world and Olympic champions than any other coach in the world. Before the competition, she was trained in Moscow in order to heighten the jumping. The training was only in a short term thus intensive. She had to be trained Russia-oriented style for 2 – 3 hours per day which is more than others. She said she was actually worried pretty much about everything including the result. Then the anxiety noticeably affected her jump in the competition.

Comment:    Everyone gets unfamiliar and tends to fail when doing something new.  That is not wrong but natural. Absolutely, we can learn from our mistakes so that we can be successful on the next stage. Mao-chan, ganbatte!!

PUNTHUCHAT Siripun

Thailand

APS3, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University