Athlete Bios
Figure Skating
Triple Axel to propel Japan's Asada at Games
Last Updated: Friday, February 5, 2010 | 4:43 PM ET
New York Times for CBC Sports
Japan's Mao Asada started out as a ballet dancer, but switched to figure skating. (Yuri Kadobnov/Getty Images)Mao Asada, the 2008 world champion from Nagoya, Japan, has been one of the world’s top figure skaters for several years. She is known for her ability to land a clean triple Axel, the most daunting jump for a female skater.
Asada, 19, started out as a ballet dancer but switched to figure skating, following her sister, Mai, who is two years older.
The change served both of them well. Mai is also an elite figure skater. But Mao became the biggest star of the family — and a star in Japan.
Mao Asada began skating when she was five, then realized she had a gift for jumping. She easily nailed jumps that posed challenges to other skaters and landed her first triple Axel when she was 12. Now she is the only woman to have landed two triple Axels in an international competition.
As a young skater, she won the 2005 Japanese junior national championships as well as the 2005 world junior championships, ahead of South Korea’s Kim Yu-na, who was the runner-up. Kim and Asada remain fierce rivals.
Asada was too young to compete at the 2005 world championships at the senior level. Later that year, having turned 15, she competed as a senior skater, winning the 2005 Trophee Eric Bompard Grand Prix event in Paris. She also won the 2005 Grand Prix Final. That season, she proved that she was one of the world’s best skaters, defeating the future 2006 Olympic champion, Shizuka Arakawa of Japan, as well as the 2006 Olympic silver medallist, Sasha Cohen of the United States, and the 2006 Olympic bronze medallist, Irina Slutskaya of Russia.
Still, Asada was not old enough to be eligible for the 2006 Olympics, missing the age cutoff by 86 days.
In 2006, Asada left Japan to train with the skating coach Rafael Arutunian in Lake Arrowhead, Calif., escaping the searing spotlight that was focused on her in Japan. But in 2008, before the world championships, she left Arutunian to train in Japan. She became the 2008 world champion without a coach.
In 2008, Asada began working exclusively with the Russian coach Tatiana Tarasova, who had started helping Asada when she still trained with Arutunian. Recently, though, Asada has been struggling. Under Tarasova, she finished fourth at the world championships last March, failing to defend her world title.
This season, Asada, a three-time national champion of Japan, finished second to Kim at the Grand Prix event in Paris. She was fifth at the Grand Prix event in Russia, performing so badly in the short program that she received her worst score in a senior-level event. She failed to qualify for Grand Prix Final.
Specifically, Asada has had trouble with her triple Axel, which was once the highlight of her performances. Although she landed two triple Axels in her long program at the Grand Prix Final in 2008, Asada has been unable to rediscover that success.
She has said she plans to try a triple Axel in the short program at the Olympics, and will try two more in her long program. She will perform her short program to Waltz from Masquerade Suite by Aram Khachaturian. Her long program will be set to The Bells of Moscow by Sergei Rachmaninoff.
While training for Vancouver, Asada remains a celebrity in Japan. She is featured in television commercials and print ads for items such as paper, cameras and chocolate bars. One of her three dogs, a miniature poodle named Aero, is named after a chocolate bar. The two have been in commercials together for that candy.
Asada is also a student at Chukyo University in Japan.
