The Best Skate At Helsinki Wasnt Performed By The

Gold Medalist

There were many outstanding performances at Helsinki (2017 figure skating worlds), even

including two world records, one for men, one for women. The skating world was eerie with

excitement, all waiting to see just how many barriers were going to be broken, how many quads

your favorite skater was going to throw, or setting a new personal best.

In the mens event, Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan came out with the

gold medal after a rough short program, pulling through with a

world-record-breaking long. He nailed all his jumps, it was

technically beautiful. However, Shoma Uno, a slightly younger

member of Team Japan, brought the more captivating

performance. (Yuzuru Hanyu 2017 Helsinki)

These two always seem to be jumping about the podium at each event, leaving most other men in

their dust, urging us to only ponder on which of the two is going to get the gold. Yuzuru (who is

currently the reigning world champion) has quite a few quads and generally pulls ahead because

of technical points, while Shoma is only a few points behind him technically, Shoma is full of

potential.
 In the higher levels of figure skating, skaters are judged using the International Judging

system (IJS). Skaters have two different scores that add up to a total score for a program. One is

a technical score, which is basically the points earned for each individual element (spins, jumps,

footwork), and one is component score, which is how well the skater performed (transitions,

skating skills, presentation). Also, for each event, skaters compete with two different program,

one is the short program, which consists of fewer elements and isnt long, and one is the free

skate, or the long program, which is exactly what it sounds like. These two scores added together

make up a total score, meaning, if someone did very badly in one event they could potentially

still pull up their total score if they do well in the next event.

Even with the difficulty of his turns and clusters, Shoma still manages to show off his skating

skills. Hes about five feet tall, yet with the fullness of each and every motion, on the ice, he

looks ten feet tall: Shomas movements at worlds, filled out the entire ice. His steps are

complicated and graceful. You can see no evidence of any loss of balance or shake, unlike many

skaters. He is nearly parallel to the skating skills of Patrick Chan,

whose every move is effortless across the ice. Patrick Chan is a

figure skater, who is widely appreciated for his skating skills, but he

doesnt attempt as many difficult jumps as his opponents.

Earning 9.46 points for his skating skills, Shoma is a tad away from

Patricks 9.57 skating skills score, except Shoma has more difficult

(Shoma Uno 2017 Helsinki) elements in his program. He balances out his skating skills and
technical elements in a way that no other skater does. This speaks to how strong of a skater

Shoma is. In fact, he was only two points behind Yuzuru, meaning that if Shoma had landed his

Triple Lutz, one of the easiest jumps in his program, he would have beat Yuzuru and won a gold

medal (he didnt land his triple lutz and ended up getting points taken from his score because of

it). The only thing pulling Shomas scores down is his consistency, sometimes he nails

everything but sometimes he doesnt. He ended up winning a silver medal, and even though

Yuzuru broke a world record with his long program, Shoma was able to keep up with him, and

we can expect more of that in events to come.

Shoma skates with as much maturity as older skaters such as Patrick Chan or Javier Fernandez,

who are seven years older than Shoma. Shomas career is just getting started, but is already at the

level of these older skaters. At such a young age he has been able to earn multiple titles and also

be the first skater to ever land a quad flip in competition.

While he missed one jump in his free skate--Shoma really performed that program--the fact that

he was fully into the program made up for one technical mishap. You could see it, through his

facial expressions and body movements. He hit perfect music cues, even though his free program

is rather mature and particularly different from most. He was really into the moment throughout

the entire program. His composure remained constant and he put all his efforts into making it

look effortless.
Not to mention his short program, its beautiful. His extensions are astounding, he glides across

the ice and matches the music with his countenance, all of which adds to the connection with the

audience and judges. Its easy to make people bored while watching a

program with slow music, but his whole performance was simply

captivating, jumps, spins, everything. In Yuzurus program, as good of a

skater as he is, I found myself getting bored, only excited for the jumps.

In figure skating, it is important for skaters to maintain a balance between

skating skills and performance, and technical elements. Shoma has this

balance, not to mention the amount of potential he has, being only 19.

Between him and Yuzuru, Shoma was the stronger performer at worlds. Yuzuru might have

broken a world record at worlds, but I expect that Shoma can break even larger barriers in the

future.