Midori Itō

Midori Itō
Midori Itō on April 6, 1989 at the show in the Werner-Seelenbinder-Halle in Berlin
nation	Japan
birthday	13th August 1969
place of birth	Nagoya
size	145 cm
Weight	44 kg
Career
Trainer	Machiko Yamada
status	resigned
Medal table
Olympic medals 0 × 1 × 0 × World Cup medals 1 × 1 × 0 ×
winter Olympics silver Albertville 1992 Ladies  World figure skating championships gold Paris 1989 Ladies silver Halifax 1990 Ladies

Midori Itō ( Japanese 伊藤 み ど り , Itō Midori ; born August 13, 1969 in Nagoya ) is a former Japanese figure skater who started in a single run . She is the world champion of 1989 .

Career

Itō began ice skating at the age of five and made her first triple jump at the age of eight. When she was ten years old, her parents separated and she moved in with her trainer Machiko Yamada .

Already at the Junior World Championships , in which she participated in 1981, 1982 and 1984, her enormous jumping talent was shown. She always won the freestyle, but always placed so badly in the compulsory figures that in the end it was only enough for a bronze medal at her last Junior World Championship in 1984. That year she also played her first senior world championship, finishing seventh. There, too, her problem became visible, in the compulsory she only came in 16th place, but in the short program and freestyle she was fourth.

In 1985 she won her first of eight consecutive and a total of nine national championship titles . Because of a broken ankle, she was unable to take part in the World Cup this year. At the 1986 World Cup she was eleventh, eighth in 1987 and sixth in 1988 . At her first Winter Olympics , she reached fifth place in Calgary in 1988 , where she showed the third best freestyle. She landed seven triple jumps, more than any other runner before her. Over the course of the year, she trained the triple Axel , which she had been working on from a very early age. At the 1989 World Championships in Paris , the three-time Axel was the first woman to win figure skating championships. She received the maximum score of 6.0 twice for her short program and five times for the freestyle in the technical components. So she became the first world champion in figure skating who did not come from Europe or North America. It was the first medal for Japan in women's competition since Emi Watanabe's bronze medal ten years earlier .

At the 1990 World Cup , she made a mistake in the mandatory figures and only placed tenth in this segment. Her victories in the short program and freestyle no longer helped her to compensate for this. She won the silver medal behind the American Jill Trenary . After this season, the obligation was abolished and so it was assumed that Ito would now dominate the women's competition at will. At the 1991 World Cup , however, she had bad luck twice: first she collided with a competitor while running in, then she landed on a TV camera in a jump combination in the short program beyond the boards. In the end, she had to be content with fourth place.

Itō went as a favorite in the 1992 Olympic Games in Albertville . After an imperfect short program, after which she was in fourth place, she needed a strong freestyle performance to win another medal. However, her freestyle started very badly when she did not succeed in triple Axel. To have another chance, she had to try the jump again at the end of the freestyle and did so successfully. She was the first female figure skater to stand a triple axel in the Olympics. In the end it was enough to win the silver medal behind Kristi Yamaguchi from the USA. It was the first Olympic medal in figure skating for an athlete who was not from Europe or North America.

After that, she became a professional runner and ran in some ice shows in Japan. For the 1995/96 season she returned to the amateurs, but could not build on her successes. As a Japanese champion, she finished seventh at the World Cup .

At the height of her career, Itō was a very sporty runner whose freedoms had almost the same technical content as the men's freedoms. In addition to the first successful triple Axel , a few years earlier she was also the first woman to land a triple-triple combination in a competition. Ito's powerful running style did not always resonate with the judges. Later she tried to adopt a more feminine running style, but she was clearly not feeling well and seemed to have lost much of the natural joy in ice skating that had characterized her so far. Itō had to struggle for a long time with the obligation, which was only abolished after the 1990 season, as well as with the attention of the Japanese press after winning the world title.

At the opening ceremony for the 1998 Winter Olympics , Ito was given the honor of lighting the Olympic flame in the stadium.

Ito has been participating in competitions again since 2011 and competed in the ISU Adult Figure Skating Competition several times . In 2011 she came in second in Masters Elite Ladies II, in 2012 in Masters Ladies II Artistic, in 2013 in Masters (Elite) Ladies II and in 2018 in Masters Elite Ladies II Artistic.

Results

Competition / year	1980	1981	1982	1983	1984	1985	1986	1987	1988	1989	1990	1991	1992	1996
winter Olympics									5.				2.
World championships					7th		11.	8th.	6th	1.	2.	4th		7th
Junior World Championships		8th.	6th		3.
Japanese championships	3.				2.	1.	1.	1.	1.	1.	1.	1.	1.	1.

Web links

• Midori Itō in the database of Sports-Reference (English; archived from the original )
• fan page

Individual evidence

1. ↑ IFS Magazine : Midori Ito Returns to Competition ( Memento of the original from September 25, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , September 18, 2011 
2. ↑ IFS Magazine : Adult Skaters Embrace Lifelong Passion ( Memento of the original from September 10, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , September 18, 2011 
3. ↑ ISU Adult 2011 : Adult 2011 Masters Elite Ladies II Free Skating scores (PDF; 42 kB), June 11, 2011
4. ↑ ISU Adult 2012 : Adult 2012 Masters Ladies II Artistic Skating scores (PDF; 44 kB), May 26, 2012
5. ↑ ISU Adult 2013 : Adult 2013 Masters (Elite) Ladies II Free Skating scores (PDF; 54 kB), May 18, 2013
6. ↑ ISU Adult 2018 : Adult 2018 Masters Elite Ladies II Artistic Skating scores (PDF; 44 kB), May 20, 2018