Yūki Sasahara has been competing in international skeleton races since November 2005. He made his debut at the America's Cup in Calgary , where he finished 19th. At the Junior World Championships in February 2006 in Igls , he finished eleventh. The Japanese achieved his first outstanding result with third place in a European Cup race in January 2007 in Winterberg . A year later he reached a third and a first place in the framework of the Skeleton America's Cup 2007/08 in Park City and finally won the overall standings in front of Chris Burgess and Yuzuru Hanyūda . In the 2008/09 season Sasahara started mainly in the European Cup , where he took part in six of the eight races of the season and was seventh after placing between 5 and 13 in the final classification. In 2009/10 he returned to the America's Cup and finished fourth in the overall standings after single-digit results in all of his seven appearances. In January 2010 he started in the Intercontinental Cup for the first time and achieved four results between 11th and 15th place.
Sasahara also contested the following three winters in the Intercontinental Cup. In 2010/11 he reached his first single-digit placement in Whistler in ninth place, in 2011/12 he came in the overall standings in tenth place for the first time in the top 10 and in 2012/13 he climbed to eighth place overall, although he skipped the last race of the season. Instead, he started at the Skeleton World Championship in St. Moritz in 2013 , where he made it into the decisive fourth race in 20th place, and made his debut in the World Cup in the last race of the season with 21st place in Sochi . In the 2013/14 World Cup , Sasahara achieved a first top 10 result in ninth place after fluctuating results in the course of the season at the last race in Königssee . He then took part in the Olympic Games in Sochi, where he finished 22nd. He also competed in the World Cup the following season, but did not get past results between 16th and 19th place. In the 2015/16 season Sasahara returned to the Intercontinental Cup.
Japan
