Anyone who had been watching on CATV’s TV Asahi Channel 2 until just now the international figure skating competition hosted by the Kinoshita Group, the first international competition of this season, must have realized that the following chapter of mine about Mao Shimada had hit the mark precisely.
17-Year-Old Mao Shimada Cannot Compete at the Milan Olympics… The Folly of the “Age Restriction” That Shuts Mao Shimada Out
2025-11-04
Seventeen-year-old Ami Nakai won the opening event of the Grand Prix Series and took her first step toward the Milan Olympics.
However, Mao Shimada, who possesses the greatest ability in the world, has been deprived of the right to compete because of the age restriction requiring athletes to be “17 or older.”
The same situation that occurred with Mao Asada is happening again.
The president of the ISU is Korean, and there is no one among its council members who will protect Japan’s interests.
To impose an “age” restriction on art or sport is an act that tramples on the historical fact that Heifetz astonished the world at the age of 13.
How long will Japan continue to tolerate this folly?
The other day, I saw on the sports news that 17-year-old Ami Nakai landed a magnificent triple Axel and defeated Sakamoto to win the first event of the women’s figure skating Grand Prix Series, which also serves as a competition for determining the skaters who will participate in next year’s Milan Winter Olympics.
As readers know, I have been watching women’s figure skating for an extraordinarily long time.
After all, I can still vividly remember the scene at the Nagano Olympics when 15-year-old Tara Lipinski dramatically defeated Michelle Kwan, who had been regarded as the overwhelming favorite, to win the gold medal.
Perhaps that was also why.
Not long after the Ritz-Carlton opened in Kapalua on the island of Maui, Hawaii, I was drinking cocktails and talking with a friend at a balcony table beyond the entrance overlooking the swimming pool and the ocean when I felt an extremely intense gaze coming from behind me.
When I turned around, Michelle Kwan, flanked on both sides by young American men—or perhaps commanding them?—was directing toward me what could only be described as a burning, intensely passionate gaze.
Never in my life have I been looked at by a woman with such passion in her eyes.
Had I been Italian, I would have begun talking to her without a moment’s hesitation and would probably have become her greatest lover.
That was how intense, how intensely passionate, her gaze was.
But I digress.
Ami Nakai then competed immediately afterward in the Canadian event…if she finished within the top three there, she would qualify for this year’s Grand Prix Final, which will be held in Nagoya.
It was not listed on terrestrial television, BS, any app, or any television schedule.
When I searched, I found that it was available only through TV Asahi’s paid streaming service.
I hesitated, but there was no alternative, so I purchased viewing rights for the Canadian event for about 1,750 yen.
She failed the triple Axel in both the short program and the free skate, but somehow managed to finish third…qualifying for the Final = moving one step closer to the Milan Olympics.
Mone Chiba won after delivering perfect performances in both the short and free programs.
She, too, moved one step closer.
That was when I thought, “Wait a minute.”
The best skater in the world right now is overwhelmingly Mao Shimada.
After all, at present she is the only skater who can perfectly land both a triple Axel and a quadruple jump.
I have nicknamed her the Hibari Misora of the figure-skating world, in the sense that Hibari Misora was a genius singer from childhood.
Even their facial features somehow resemble each other.
The reason I thought “Wait a minute” was that, if Mao Shimada were included, there would be four candidates, meaning that someone other than her would have to be eliminated.
Mao Shimada should have become a senior skater…
Yet her name was nowhere to be found in the Grand Prix competitions.
Again!
When Mao Asada was overwhelmingly the best skater in the world, she was unable to compete in the Winter Olympics in Italy because of an age restriction.
At that time, the president of the International Skating Union was Italian.
He stated that if Japan had made a request, he would have considered allowing Mao Asada to compete, but Japan submitted neither an application nor a request of any kind.
That fact led to my denunciation, at the bar of the Hotel Okura Tokyo, of Ms. Shirota, who was the empress of the figure-skating world at the time, as readers already know.
This time, I could instantly imagine what was going on.
Korea must be involved.
So I searched.
As of June 2025, the principal officers and committees of the ISU (International Skating Union) that could be publicly confirmed were as follows.
ISU Council
- President: Kim Jae-youl.
- First Vice President, Speed Skating: Tron Espeli.
- Second Vice President, Figure Skating: Benoît Lavoie.
Council Members - Speed Skating: Suwanna Silpa-Archa / Sergio Anesi / Stoytcho Stoytchev / Albert Hazelhoff / Alexander Kibalko
- Figure Skating: Patricia St. Peter / Tatsuro Matsumura / Susanna Rahkamo / György Elek / María Teresa Samaranch
ISU Office
- Director General: Colin Smith
Omitted below.
At the time of Mao Asada, Korea had Yuna Kim.
Today, although there is no skater of Yuna Kim’s caliber, there are at least two skaters with potential.
As readers know, my argument that anti-Japanese propaganda existed in order to keep Japan confined as a political prisoner within the international community has proved to be right on the mark.
There was, barely, one Japanese person among the council members, but he is someone whom 99.99 percent of the Japanese public has never heard of.
Looking at his career and appearance, I surmised that there was a strong possibility that he was an anti-Japanese Japanese person.
He does not appear to be the kind of person who would protest furiously when decisions disadvantageous to Japan are made.
Seventeen-year-old Mao Shimada cannot compete at the Milan Olympics.
Why…
Rules Concerning the Age Restriction
- The International Skating Union (ISU) decided to raise the minimum age for senior-level competition—including the Olympics, World Championships, and Grand Prix—and from the 2024-25 season onward, the rule requiring competitors to be “17 years old or older as of July 1” is being applied.
- For Olympic participation, documents state that eligibility for the 2026 Winter Olympics / Milano Cortina requires athletes to have been “born on or before July 1, 2008.”
Mao Shimada…born October 30, 2008.
How can Japan tolerate something this absurd!
The ISU Council must read the following historical fact with shame.
When Fritz Kreisler, who happened to be attending a concert in Berlin together with Efrem Zimbalist, heard the still only 13-year-old Heifetz perform, an episode remains in which he said, “You and I might as well take this”—the violin—“and smash it,” and described him as “a genius who took my ultimate point of attainment as his starting line and went on extending the record without limit.”
Itzhak Perlman has said that violinists who lived in the age of Heifetz suffered enormously because of his almost divinely inspired playing and, without exception, contracted “Heifetz disease”—an inferiority complex toward Heifetz.