World Champion Sema Uno won the home Grand Prix with falls. And then he apologized to the choreographer

Anastasia LoginovaSema, together with Sota Yamamoto, is already in the final of the series. The closer to the end of the international Grand Prix series, the fiercer the competition. Tickets to the final are at stake – and these are good prize money, points in the rating and a certain status in the world top. The Japanese stage became a real hack for single skaters. Six potential finalists came to Sapporo at once: in their first stages, three won bronze, one won silver, and two returned home with victories. NHK Trophy could immediately cut off the road to Turin for half of them. Sema Uno. For some reason, home ice turned out to be inhospitable for the Japanese, he had to fight hard with it. In a short Uno performed under the song “Gravity”, which turned out to be ironic in light of his rental. After a chic quadruple flip, Sema seemed to have lost control of gravity and fell off the quad toe loop. This mistake cost the world champion about 13 points: since he had already done the flip solo, he was obliged to attach a cascade to the sheepskin coat. Despite a serious flaw, the impression of the program did not deteriorate – Uno continues to amaze the audience with his artistry and soft skate. However, the judges assessed the performance quite strictly, not putting anything higher than nines in the components – only 91.66 points. The Japanese approached the free program with maximum concentration so as not to miss the victory. However, Sema still did not avoid mistakes – a “butterfly” on his favorite quad-flip, the loss of the third combination and levels on non-jumping elements. It was noticeable how the skater focused on the precise execution of jumps. After the release, Uno even apologized to the director for his negligent attitude to the choreography. There were so many things I could have done, but today I couldn’t. Today it was all about grades. In figure skating, ligaments and everything else is also important, this is the beauty of the sport, ”summed up the Japanese. 188.10 points – better than in Canada, but still far from top form. Uno imposed unexpected competition Sota Yamamoto. The 22-year-old Japanese had previously missed tournaments often due to injuries, and did not shine in competitions. In the post-Olympic season, Yamamoto finally began to reveal his full potential. For the short program, the skater chose the cult hit “Yesterday” and definitely did not lose. Sota played all the accents choreographically and did not make a mistake on the jumps, becoming the only athlete out of twelve with a clean skate – 96.49 points. It turned out worse with the free program. Lyrics by Rachmaninoff are a rather difficult thing to perform, and in case of mistakes, the music literally nails the impression of the performance. Compared to the French Grand Prix, Yamamoto’s performance became worse. On home ice, the Japanese did not work out with triple axels – two falls. Plus a couple of inaccurate exits and zeroing of the repeated triple toe loop. Thanks to three clean quads, Sota still scored good points – 161.36 for an arbitrary. And a good lead after a short one allowed him to keep silver, only Uno lost to Sota. Korean Cha Jun Hwan twice got to the strong competition stages. At Skate America, the skater remained with bronze, so for a ticket to Turin, he had to be guaranteed to get at least in the top 2. Chha got nervous in the short and failed two jump elements out of three at once: he fell from an under-rotated quad-salchow and inaccurately performed the signature lutz-rittberger. The bright image of Michael Jackson lost to serious mistakes – only 80.35 points and an intermediate sixth position. In the free program, Jung Hwan rehabilitated and was pleased with his performance. Only at the end of the program, the skater did not have enough strength, and he missed two trips. But in terms of impression and self-confidence, a completely different athlete came on the ice than in the short one. Unfortunately, the failure on the first day did not allow him to rise above the bronze place. For an arbitrary, the Korean received 174.41 points and improved the “sizn best” with the US Grand Prix. According to the results of the NHK Trophy, Sema Uno and Sota Yamamoto definitely earned trips to Turin, joining Like Miure. French Adam Xiao Him Fa according to additional criteria, he was higher in the ranking than Jung Hwang-cha. Both skaters are unlikely to make it to the series final as they are beaten on points by the winner of the British Grand Prix Daniel Grassl. And in a week they will compete for places Ilya Malinin and Sun Sato.Can you name all the countries that played at the World Cup? Take this World Cup 2022 quiz and get a bonus! You can tryLight!