#quad loop

Yuma Kagiyama is one of the fastest-rising young figure skaters, coming from relative obscurity in Japan to bronze at 4CC and two national bronze medals. He’s added the quad salchow this year, and has landed it practically every single event with high GOE. Now, he’s started working on the quad loop in earnest ever since the new year. Yuma first practiced it over the spring, but it was massively underrotated by over half a turn.

After the All-Japan Championships, Yuma was at the Nagoya Figure Skating festival morning practice with Shoma Uno. There, he noticed Shoma’s loop entrance, which was different from his current method, based on Yuzuru Hanyu. This new method worked for him, and he jumped a relatively clean quad loop. 

The entrance he is trying makes it easier to start the jump, but is harder in getting height, speed, and enough rotations. Obviously, these loops are under-rotated, but now by a quarter, not a full half turn. Yuma says he’s able to jump a quad loop because of his triple-lutz-triple-loop combination. This is a high-value, difficult combination that he added this year. With this combination, you land on your right foot from the lutz and then immediately jump into the loop. Practicing this combination helped Yuma push off into the quad loop.

He says it’s gotten “more stable” and he’s “falling less in practice”. It’s solid enough that he tried it in the morning practice before the National Winter Sports Festival competition in Japan, which is obviously a big risk to take as it was just before a competition. He landed it, although with a step-out, but he appears confident in his progress.

Despite having relatively high technical content, Yuma still doesn’t appear satisfied. I kid you not, he’s also now working on a quad lutz. Apparently, in that combination mentioned earlier, Yuma and his father noticed the height and ease of the triples, and decided to try for the quad lutz. He has yet to land it cleanly, but says it’s close, and feels like he will be able to jump both fairly well in the next few weeks. He’ll add the quad that is working better to his programs next season. 

Alexey Erokhov has a quad loop! It looks very good too which is a bit of a twist considering his junior rival tried and tried and failed at ever getting the quad loop.

Kazuki Tomono's 4Lo and Yuma Kagiyama's 4S at 4CC practice!