Exclusive - Sakamoto Kaori on how she's faced down mounting pressures: 'I've come far to a special place'

It’s the day following Sakamoto Kaori’s second consecutive ISU World Figure Skating Championships title win and the Japanese star is on the run.

No, literally, she’s running.

It’s between sessions on Saturday afternoon during the ice dance inside the Saitama Super Arena in the Tokyo suburbs and – there she is! – the two-time world champion is taking a victory lap: High-fiving fans after she tossed out souvenirs into the crowd.

She’s beaming. She’s also having the time of her life.

The sport hasn’t really ever seen a world champion (and Olympic medallist) quite like her.

Sakamoto Kaori’s full circle

It wasn’t always clear that Sakamoto’s season was going to come to a crescendo like this. After claiming Winter Olympic bronze in the women’s singles event at Beijing 2022 and catapulting to her first world title to close the 2022 season, something was off.

Sakamoto was slumping.

“Early in the season, I’d get down when things didn’t go right,” she told Olympics.com in an exclusive interview after claiming that second world title. “I wanted to do better but couldn’t. The results, the performances weren’t great either.”

After stumbling to a silver medal at NHK Trophy, Sakamoto won the short program at December’s Grand Prix Final only to falter in the free skate, dropping to fifth.

She called the moment “rock bottom.” But it was also a turning point.

“It made me sharpen up,” said Sakamoto, who turned 23 last Sunday (9 April).

Two weeks later, Sakamoto would claim a third national title in an abundantly stacked Japanese field.

“I got into a groove,” Sakamoto admitted. “Ever since, I’ve had no worries and have been able to compete with my usual fight.”

A change in an Olympic quad

Sakamoto can trace her experience with adversity year back. A highly-touted junior, she was sixth at the Youth Olympic Games Lillehammer 2016 before placing second at the Japanese Championships in 2018 – which meant a trip to PyeongChang 2018... at age 17.

“It’s rare for someone to be at the Olympics in their first senior season,” Sakamoto reflected. “I never expected to be there; I was at the bottom of the rung and trying to keep up.”

“I went at it like crazy, as hard as I could.”

She would finish sixth at those Games, and over the next several seasons would establish herself as one of the top skaters in the world, taking a whole different perspective into Beijing when she qualified for a second Olympics four years later.

“To me, there was a huge difference between PyeongChang and Beijing,” Sakamoto said. “I was passionate about going a second time. I wanted to not only go... I wanted to win the [Japanese] nationals and then go. And in Beijing, I wanted a clean skate in both the team and singles.”

She got nearly all of that, helping Japan to a team medal in the first week, then becoming the first Japanese woman to win a figure skating medal at the Olympics since Asada Mao, who she looked up to as a kid, at Vancouver 2010.

'I was gambling out there'

But that medal – coupled with her world title a few weeks later – added weight for Sakamoto, and not just around her neck.

“I’ve never wanted to say this but I was pretty burned out at the time,” Sakamoto said, revisiting the beginning of the 2022-23 season. “I was practicing, but… I didn’t feel like I was getting better. I was static or getting worse.

“I would want to be on the up for a competition, but I’d get there, not having a true grasp of the form I was in. I didn’t know how I’d turn out. I was basically gambling out there.”

That was what precisely came to be in Torino at the ISU Grand Prix Final, when Sakamoto had a smattering of errors in the free skate after delivering a strong short program.

But the gamble turned into the wake-up call, which is what champions do: They adjust when it’s needed the most.

“The Final was the most infuriating,” Sakamoto said. “But there I decided to just forget about everything and start from scratch. Then I felt the weight of the Olympics come off me. And just stopped overthinking everything.”

Sakamoto makes history - and looks to more

Fast forward to Sakamoto running – and she did, around the entire bowl of the arena – and there is no overthinking. There is just being in the moment.

And this moment belongs to her. With the win, she became the first-ever Japanese woman to win back-to-back world titles, something not Asada, Ando Miki or any of her other predecessors were able to do.

Long having admired those Japanese greats that came before her, Sakamoto is beginning to understand her place in history.

“People were telling me how no one’s done it before,” she said of the consecutive wins. “For me to accomplish that, I feel like I’ve come far... to a pretty special place.

“That really, really makes me happy.”

What would make her even happier is to continue that momentum into the 2023-24 season and – further down the road – at Winter Olympic Games Milano Cortina 2026.

“I want to get off on the right foot next season,” she said, “so I need to think about how to spend the off-season.”

An off-season she’ll run towards after this weekend’s World Team Trophy. And – having now freed herself of the various internal pressures she’s felt – a season in which we may truly see her fly.