Shizuka Arakawa

Shizuka Arakawa
nation	Japan
birthday	December 29, 1981
place of birth	Shinagawa , Tokyo
size	166 cm
Career
discipline	Single run
Trainer	Nikolai Morosow, Evgeni Platow, Nanami Abe, Tatjana Tarasowa, Richard Callaghan, Minoru Sano, Kumiko Sato, Hiroshi Nagakubo
status	resigned
End of career	2006
Medal table
Olympic games 1 × 0 × 0 × World Cup medals 1 × 0 × 0 × VKM medals 0 × 2 × 0 ×
winter Olympics gold Turin 2006 Ladies  World figure skating championships gold Dortmund 2004 Ladies Four continents championships silver Jeonju 2002 Ladies silver Beijing 2003 Ladies
Personal best
Total points 191.34 Olympia 2006  Freestyle 125.32 Olympia 2006  Short program 66.02 Olympia 2006
Placements in the figure skating Grand Prix
Podium placements 1. 2. 3.  Grand Prix Final 0 1 1  Grand Prix competitions 1 3 4th

Shizuka Arakawa ( Jap. 荒 川 静香 , Arakawa Shizuka ; born December 29, 1981 in Shinagawa , Tokyo ) is a former Japanese figure skater who started in a single run . She is the Olympic champion of 2006 and the world champion of 2004 .

Career

Shizuka Arakawa was born in Shinagawa, a district of Tokyo, the only child of Koichi and Sachi Arakawa and grew up in Sendai . It was named after Shizuka Gozen , a famous historical and literary figure of the 12th century, a court dancer and concubine.

At the age of five, Arakawa took an interest in ice skating and entered an ice skating school, from the age of seven she also took ballet lessons and trained with Hiroshi Nagakubo , a pair skater who had participated in the 1972 Olympic Games . Arakawa made her first triple jump when she was eight.

From 1995 to 1997 Arakawa was the Japanese junior champion. During the same period she took part in the Junior World Championships , but did not get beyond seventh place, which she reached in 1996. She made her first appearance at the national senior championships in 1997, when she was runner-up behind Fumie Suguri . The following year, Arakawa became Japanese champion for the first time and played her first Olympic Games in Nagano at the age of 16 and her first World Cup in Minneapolis . She finished the Olympic Games in 13th place and the World Championship in 22nd place. 1999 Arakawa defended her championship title. It was her last championship title. From 1999 to 2002 she did not take part in any world championships and for the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City she was not nominated. In 2002 and 2003, Arakawa won their first major international silver medals at the Four Continents Championships . In 2003 she played her second world championship and finished eighth. Previously, she had qualified for the first time in her career for the Grand Prix final , which she finished fourth.

At the 2004 World Cup in Dortmund she was only the third best Japanese woman behind Miki Andō and Fumie Suguri. At the Grand Prix final she had won the bronze medal behind Suguri and the American Sasha Cohen . After the short program she was in second place behind Cohen at the world championships, but landed seven clean triple jumps in the freestyle and became world champion. After Midori Itō in 1989 and Yuka Satō in 1994, she was the third Japanese world champion in history. Originally, Arakawa had planned to end her career after this World Cup because she was struggling with a foot injury, homesickness and motivation problems, and she also had problems keeping up with young, aspiring runners like Miki Andō and Mao Asada , her success made this decision but revise it again. At the Grand Prix final of the following season, she won the silver medal behind Irina Sluzkaja , at the 2005 World Cup , however, it was only ninth place for Arakawa as defending champion. However, she did not want to stop with this disappointment and switched from Tatyana Tarasova to Nikolai Morozov , who was supposed to prepare her for the 2006 Olympic Games .

Arakawa went to the Olympic Games in Turin as the third best Japanese woman, after Fumie Suguri and Mao Asada. After the short program she was in third place behind Sasha Cohen and Irina Sluzkaja, but less than one point separated her from first place. In the freestyle, both Cohen and Sluzkaja made mistakes while Arakawa showed a clean program and could even afford to forego two of the triple-triple combinations she had planned. Thus, she won the first Olympic gold medal for Japan in figure skating and was only the second woman after Tae Satoya to win a gold medal for Japan at the Winter Olympic Games. At the age of 24 she was also the oldest female Olympic champion in figure skating since Magda Julin 1920 .

After the Olympics, Arakawa ended her competitive career. Since then she has appeared in shows and ice revues and has commented on Japanese television.

Arakawa's trademark was the Ina-Bauer step , where she leaned back. The term "Ina Bauer" became famous in Japan and Arakawa's execution of the element gained cult status.

Results

Competition / season	1994/95	1995/96	1996/97	1997/98	1998/99	1999/00	2000/01	2001/02	2002/03	2003/04	2004/05	2005/06
winter Olympics				13.								1.
World championships				22nd					8th.	1.	9.
Four continents championships					6th		6th	2.	2.
Grand Prix Final									4th	3.	2.
Junior World Championships	8th.	7th	8th.
Japanese championships			2.	1.	1.	5.	2.	2.	3.	3.	Z	3.

• Z = withdrawn

Web links

Commons : Shizuka Arakawa  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Shizuka Arakawa in the database of the International Skating Union (English)
• Shizuka Arakawa in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Official Homepage (English)