Japanese Ice Skaters come in first in ISU team competition

Ice skating fan and Vice President of our group, Kazuko Green, noted that the Japanese eight person ice skating team won the 2012 International Skating Union’s Team competition held in Tokyo about a week ago. This type of competion has teams from various ISU competing countries made up of 2 men’s and 2 women’s individual competitors, a pair of ice dance and pair of ice pair skators. The competition was close, with Japan coming in just two points ahead of the USA, followed by Canada’s team. 

Team Captain and men’s figure skater Daisuke Takahashi scored an amazing 94 points in the short skating program portion, a personal and ISU best performance. Kazuko said that he didn’t make any mistakes from his quad and triple jumps, sophisticated steps and his energy to the crowd. After each performance, the score was read to the competitor while sitting with his/her team. Garish costumes and cheering was the norm. 

This competiton, whose formal name is: ISU World Team Trophy 2012 was last held in 2008. Here is a link to the decriptive ISU Press Release (.pdf) [click here] and the summary of the event [click here]

The team competition will be an Olympic event starting in 2014 winter games. Those games are in Sochi and Krasnaya Polyana, Russian Federation from February 7 until the 23rd.