Here’s the Latest From the 2023 World Figure Skating Championships

Defending Japanese and world champion Kaori Sakamoto entered the free skate in first place, nearly six points ahead of Haein Lee of Korea, the current Four Continents champion. Point fractions separated Lee (73.62) from Mai Mihara of Japan (73.46) and US champion Isabeau Levito (73.03); the other American women, Bradie Tennell and Amber Glenn, were in eighth and tenth place respectively after the short program, and Loena Hendrickx, the 2022 world silver medalist, seemed shocked to find herself in fifth. In the free skate those fractions scrambled, with Hendrickx onto the podium as bronze medalist. Because Glenn moved down to 12th place and Tennell to 15th, Levito needed to finish no lower than third to guarantee three spots for US women at next year’s Worlds, but a fall on her opening jump kept her in fourth place. Mihara, too, made mistakes that pushed her down to fifth. But Haein Lee held on to second place and became the first Korean since Yuna Kim in 2013 to medal at Worlds. (Her impressive young teammate Chaeyeon Kim moved up from 12th to sixth place.) 

Levito, Mihara, and even Lee are small, delicate skaters. Kaori Sakamoto is sturdier and more athletic, with intense speed and a fearless double axel. Her jumps have great ice coverage. All that was enough to keep her in first place over her competitors (and her sobs afterward showed how much stress she had had to harness to win).

The dominant coaches and choreographers in ice dance are Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon, who, along with their colleague Romain Haguenauer, have trained many of the world’s top ice dancers at the Gadbois Centre in Montreal. Not all of them were in Saitama (last year’s world and Olympic champions, Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron; Kaitlin Hawayek and Jean-Luc Baker, whose injuries caused them to withdraw in favor of Gadbois skaters Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarenko). Some of them have retired from competition and now coach at Gadbois (US champion and Olympic bronze medalist Madison Hubbell; her fiancé, former Spanish champion Adrían Díaz; two-time Olympic champion Scott Moir). Eight of Dubreuil and Lauzon’s teams were competing in Saitama. (Dubreuil also choreographed Sakamoto’s free skate, to “Elastic Heart” by Sia.)