The Japanese national championship is about to start, and someone pointed out this article to me.

True, if Shoma Uno were to win, he would tie Yuzuru Hanyu in number of national championships won, six each. Which doesn’t mean their victories have the same importance. To explain what I mean, I checked some data.

I have compiled a list of the top five finishers at the Japanese Championship, the three skaters on the podium and the two just below. I started from 2012, the year of Hanyu’s first victory, onwards. For each of these skaters I first watched the age, to understand if they were young and inexperienced, in the prime of their career, or a little too old to be competitive. Considering that Kagiyama won an Olympic medal at 18, and that both Hanyu and Kagiyama won a World medal at 17, I would say that a 17-year-old skater is young but can be competitive at the highest level. On the opposite side, Javier Fernandez won an Olympic medal at 26 years and 308 days, he didn’t miss that much to be 27-year-old, and at 27 Hanyu won his last national championship with a score that neither Uno nor Kagiyama have ever achieved, and he finished fourth in an Olympic Games in which he completely missed a quadruple due to a hole in the ice and skated the free skate with a sprained ankle. So while each individual skater is unique, and Hanyu is proving this, in general skaters between the ages of 17 and 27 can be competitive at the highest level. First they are inexperienced, then it is difficult for them to maintain optimal physical shape.

Age is a marginal detail, what interests me most is the last column. For each skater I checked the results obtained in their career up to and including the season of that specific national championship. So when I look at the top five skaters from the National Championship that took place in December 2012, I check what results they achieved up to and including the end of the 2012-2013 season. Previous results tell us how strong the skater is, unless he obtained them too long before, and if a skater obtains important results between February and March, we can reasonably say that he was already a strong skater two-three months before, in month of December. In the fourth column I therefore indicated the best placing obtained by each skater in any competition including the Olympic Games, World Championship and Grand Prix final (OG/WC/GPF). Why these competitions? Because for better or worse they are equally difficult.

True, the Olympics are the most prestigious competition, and are held only once every four years, but generally all the best skaters in the world are always present in these three competitions. Absences only happens due to injury or, sometimes, in the post-Olympic World Championship. So going on the podium in one of these three competitions means truly being among the best skaters in the world. For each skater I have indicated the best placing – the meaning of the colors I have choice is quite easy to understand – and, in brackets, the total number of medals won by the skater. Obviously if a skater has won many medals, it means that he has remained among the best for a long time.

I have indicated the best placing even for those who did not reach the podium. Only for those who have participated in the most important competitions without ever getting on the podium have I indicated in brackets if they won a medal at the Four Continents Championship. In this case the background is light green. For those who have never participated in one of the three most important competitions, I have indicated the best placing at the Four Continents Championship, to say that they at least have a minimum of international experience at a certain level. If there is no indication, the skater up to and including that season has not participated in an Olympic games, an ISU Championship or a GPF at the senior level.

This means that to win the National Championship in 2012, Hanyu had to overcome skaters such as twenty-six year old Daisuke Takahashi, already winner of a gold in one of the main competitions (WC 2010, but also GPF 2012) and two skaters such as Nobunari Oda (GPF 2009 and 2010) and Takahiko Kozuka (WC 2011), both winner of important silvers. Hanyu had to overcome strong rivals, all older than him, but not so old that they were no longer competitive. The oldest, Takahashi, had won gold in the GPF two weeks earlier.

In the Olympic season the fight was particularly close, all the top five skaters have a truly important palmarès.

As often happens after the Olympics, several skaters left the competitions. In this case it’s Takahashi and Oda. This means that the number of really strong skaters has decreased. There are still Tatsuki Machida, who won silver at the last World Championships and placed fourth at the GPF held in the same month, and Takahiko Kozuka. The silver was won by Shoma Uno, who began to place himself in the important positions. As for Takahito Mura, even he has never won a medal in one of the three most important competitions, an eighth place in the world is still a good position, and he won a gold at the Four Continents Championship, albeit in the Olympic season, the one in which the field of participants is poorer. To say that Hanyu was unwell is an understatement. The free skate was held on the 27th, on the 30th he underwent surgery to remove the urachus residue, he didn’t even participate in Medalist on Ice, but he was the one who won.

Tatsuki Machida has retired, a strong rival is gone. Uno grew up and became an important skater, the bronze at the GPF is testimony to this. Kozuka and Mura are still present, and both of them are good skaters. The weakest is Keiji Tanaka, Hanyu’s peer. We didn’t know it at the time, but Hanyu already had major problems with the Lisfranc injury in his left foot.

Kozuka has retired. Hanyu did not participate in the competition because he had a fever. This means that Uno won his first national championship ahead only of skaters who had never stood on one of the major podiums. The strongest was Mura, and with all due respect to Mura, at the time of two of Hanyu’s successes, in the top five there were three other skaters stronger than Mura, on another occasion the skaters stronger than Mura were two. That is, among Hanyu’s strong rivals, Mura was one of the weakest, among Uno’s strong rivals, Mura was the strongest. After him there is Keiji Tanaka, with a 19th place at the World Championship. In an absolute sense, just participating in a World Championship indicates that a skater is good, but could Tanaka be a credible rival for a skater of the level of 19-year-old Uno? No. And Ryuju Hino or 18-year-old Kazuki Tomono were of lower level.

Hanyu was again absent, this time due to a sprained ankle which threatened to exclude him from the Olympic Games. And again Uno’s strongest rival is Mura. Tanaka and Tomono have grown, even if Tomono obtained that fifth place in a post-Olympic World Championship in which two of the three PyeongChang medalists were absent and the fourth place, Boyang Jin, was not exactly in the best condition. As for Murakami, he has never participated in a World Championship and his only participation in the Four Continents Championship ended in fourth place. He achieved that sixth place in a Grand Prix Final. We are again with a much weaker field of participants than those faced by Hanyu.

Hanyu is still absent with a new ankle sprain. As for Mura and Murakami, they both left the competition. There is the return of Takahashi, but it is impossible to consider him as an important rival as he was for Hanyu. Takahashi has been away from competitions for four years, he was 32 years old, he was no longer competitive. The proof comes in the TES of his free skate: 63.60 points, when the minimum to participate in the World Championship was 66.00 points. It is impossible to consider a skater who does not reach the technical minimum for the World Championship as a strong rival. The strongest are Tomono and Tanaka, who have not won any important medals. And then there is seventeen-year-old Koshiro Shimada, who has never even participated in one of the most important competitions. In 2018 the field of participants in the competition was really weak, at least by the standards of recent years, so for Uno it was really easy to win.

This time Hanyu is present and Uno won his fourth title. For now I won’t focus on the competition. There would be a lot to say about program scores, but it’s something I’m calmly doing on Twitter, although I suppose I’ll repost it all on the blog later too. For now I’ll just say that in this case Uno beat a really strong skater, and a young but growing one as Yuma Kagiyama, so unlike the previous three this is a significant victory. It would be, but… okay, I’ll write about it another time. Let’s say that after three easy victories, of very limited importance, here is Uno’s first important success.

In 2020 Hanyu returned to success. Tanaka and Shun Sato are not strong rivals as they had not been for Uno, but to win Hanyu overcame Uno and Kagiyama, who by this point had become a major skater. Therefore, while in 2019 Uno had only one strong rival and one potentially strong one, in 2020 Hanyu had two strong rivals.

In 2021, the field of participants is once again as strong as the one Hanyu faced when he first won before Sochi. A skater capable of winning a gold in one of the most important competitions, Uno, and another of winning multiple silvers, Kagiyama. Tomono and Kao Miura reached the podium of the pre-Olympic Four Continents Championship, a competition of not particularly high level. This is still a very significant victory.

Hanyu has decided that he is more interested in creating and producing his own shows than in continuing to participate in competitions. It’s not a problem of physical form, less than a year ago he skated Boku no koto, a technically superior program compared to the one with which Uno won the World Championship in 2023, and skated much better. And yes, we only saw the video, but in the subscriber section of Hanyu’s YouTube channel it is possible to see the video without editing, taken from a single camera. There’s no trick, Hanyu skated that routine from start to finish, with his five quads and everything. And in November he skated The Darkness of Eternity. It’s almost a competition program. It’s not as difficult as a free skate, but it’s not so much easier, and it’s part of a long show, so he can’t risk using up all his energy there. In both cases he made a mistake on the second 4T. It happens.

Let’s see who Uno’s rivals were in 2022. Not Kagiyama. Kagiyama was present, but was injured. In fact, that was his only competition of the season, and obviously he wasn’t able to skate well, so it’s like he wasn’t there. None of the others skated well in both programs, so much so that in second place was Koshiro Shimada, not exactly one of the strongest skaters in the world. The only one capable of getting on one of the most important podiums (GPF 2022) was Sota Yamamoto. Two, Miura and Sato, are potentially strong, but have yet to prove they are truly strong. This was a more important win than the first three Uno had, but it wasn’t all that tough a competition.

For ease of reading I have reported all this data in a table, and then I summarized them and from the synthesis I created a graph. Hanyu’s victories are much more significant than Uno’s because Hanyu has always faced strong rivals, while Uno almost never had really strong rivals.

After this edition, both Hanyu and Uno may have won six national championships each. Uno won three golds in Hanyu’s absence. I ignore the competitions that took place until the 2014-2015 season, when the age difference between the two skaters was really significant in determining the outcome. These are the competitions in which both of them are present:

	Hanyu	Uno
2015 GPF	1	3
2015 Nat.	1	2
2016 WC	2	7
2016 GPF	1	3
2017 4CC	2	3
2017 WC	1	2
2017 WTT	3	1
2018 OG	1	2
2019 WC	2	4
2019 Nat.	2	1
2020 Nat.	1	2
2021 WC	3	4
2021 WTT	2	7
2021 Nat.	1	2
2022 OG	4	3

Hanyu preceded Uno on 12 occasions, the opposite occurred 3 times, which I highlighted in bold. At the 2017 WTT Hanyu was the best in the free skate, but he had made disasters in the short program, and therefore Uno preceded him. I will write about the 2019 National Championship in the future, I have already written about the 2022 Olympic Games. These are the Grand Prix Final, Olympic Games, and ISU Championships which took place in the three seasons Uno won the National Championship in Hanyu’s absence.

Two clarifications: In 2017 Hanyu did not qualify for the GPF because the injury caused him to miss the NHK Trophy, otherwise we know he would have qualified. He has always qualified from the 2011-2012 season onwards. To participate in the 2017 competition it would have been enough for him to finish fourth, that is, to score more than 245.94 points, a score that he has always exceeded without problems since the 2014 NHK, a competition in which he participated in poor physical condition. And even if he had not been injured, he certainly would not have participated in the 2018 4CC because it was just before the Olympic Games, while he would have participated in the 2019 edition, just as he participated in the 2020 one. Given these results, we can be reasonably certain that Hanyu would have won at least one of those National Championships, probably even all three.

This being the case, the numbers will say what they say, the competition is not over yet, but Uno’s successes can be compared to those of Hanyu in terms of number, certainly not in importance.