Shoma Uno Places 2nd at Rostelecom Cup

From November 4 – 5, this year’s edition of Rostelecom Cup took place in Moscow, Russia. This was the third event in the International Skating Union’s 2016 – 2017 Grand Prix Series. Shoma Uno took second place in the men’s portion, making him the only Japanese skater out of the four present to medal at this event.

Shoma Uno placed second with a total score of 285.07, 7.91 points behind the first place finisher, Spaniard Javier Fernandez. This score is currently Shoma’s personal best combined score. Shoma’s short program received a score of 98.59, putting him in first place, 7.04 points ahead of Javier. This score is now Shoma’s personal best short program score. He opened his program with his quad flip (a jump that only he has landed in competition), but lost some points for putting his hand down on the landing. “My performance today wasn’t exactly perfect, there are things to work on for me, but overall I think it was a good performance,” Shoma said afterwards. Shoma’s free skate was the second highest scored of the night with 186.48 points, 14.95 points behind Javier. Shoma started with the quad flip and tried for two more quads, but fell on the third attempt. He also did only one combination of jumps — a triple-single-triple that earned a bonus for coming very late, at the four-minute mark. At the end of Rostelecom Cup, it was announced that Shoma would be in the Grand Prix Final next month, making him the first singles skater of the season to be named to that competition. At a press conference, Shoma later said, “Luckily I have some time before the Grand Prix Final now and I’d like to work on the quad loop. Hopefully I’ll be able to add it to my program in the near future.” Yuzuru Hanyu became the first and only man so far to land the quad loop in international competition when he debuted it earlier this season. He’s had some problems executing it consistently though.

Keiji Tanaka finished in seventh place with a score of 224.91. Yura Matsuda finished in sixth place with a score of 177.65. Kanako Murakami finished in second to last place (11th) with a score of 151.03.

This coming weekend sees Takahito Mura, Mao Asada, Wakaba Higuchi, and Yuka Nagai taking the ice at Trophee de France, formerly Trophee Eric Bompard, in Paris, France.

Shoma Uno

Short program