On a sunny Sunday in Prague, around noon – and not just any Sunday, but the one that marked the end of 2026 World Figure Skating Championships –, I felt the luckiest journalist on Planet Earth.
The reason? There you have it – there you have her: Kaori Sakamoto, after she had answered our questions in Prague
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Inside Skating had been asking for an interview with Kaori Sakamoto since the beginning of the week in Prague – these were Kaori’s last Worlds, and also the very last competition of her illustrious career, with the emotions and the symbolism attached to it.
The end of a radiant era, in which we all gravitated around Kaori Sakamoto and her beaming personality – the sun of the skating world, people described her, Kaori herself choosing the sunflower to say who she is – and we felt the end of that acutely close. Painfully close even.
Of course we wanted to talk to Kaori Sakamoto.
Hundreds of fans travelled to Prague with this reason only: to be here for Kaori’s final bow, to have her feel supported, love, appreciated – and a palpable wave of love and gratitude surrounded her like a mantle from the start of the week up until the end of it.
People brought gifts and flags and banners, attended all Kaori’s practices – and they would have come to the practice rink too, had they been allowed – and held Kaori’s heart through and through.
They held their hearts as well, finding it difficult to envision a major skating competition without the one that really made us love women’s skating again, the feel-good mood of it, the light, the positivity (yes, these were entirely possible during Kaori’s era).
Of course we wanted to talk to her.
Kaori brought all that to skating – ever since her playful Amélie short program at the Olympics in Korea, in 2018, when the skating world, the fans worldwide discovered Kaori in her red dress and fell in love with her, until her final competitive free skate, an ode to love, to skating, on March 27th, in O2 Arena, in Prague, where Patricia Kaas’ raspy voice filled the air.
Patricia sang (La Vie en rose, Hymn a l’amour, Non, je ne regrette rien), Kaori skated, and we just couldn’t stop the tears.
We cried, and laughed, and cried again, thousands of people standing up for minutes, cheering, waving, applauding, showering Kaori with love and sending her off to the next chapters of this adventure called life.
And Kaori Sakamoto herself seemed like she didn’t want to go.
She waved us back, she cried, she laughed, she covered Mone and Ami with flags, nesting them under her arms, she wiped her podium companions’ tears, she recorded us all, took photos with her coach, her teammates, Team Japan on the spot, people she worked with over the years (and Benoît Richaud kneeled in front of her, a symbolic gesture that says so much about the influence Kaori Sakamoto had on everyone in the skating world).
And she even lay down on the ice, eyes to the heights of the arena, for a couple of seconds, cheeky, happy smile on her face – one last #KaoriMoment from the long series of smiles, and pranks, and faces, and laughter, and bursts of joy from her repertoire, with which she spoiled us from the moment she set one foot, and then the other on the ice, and ice became hers.
Of course we wanted to talk to her.
And on a sunny Sunday, at the end of March, we do just that – this Inside Skating journalist sees Kaori from up close, dimple on her left cheek, listens to her answering carefully, detailed, to our questions and feels the luckiest person on Planet Earth. The luckiest journalist in Prague, at least.
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This marks the first time Inside Skating has asked for a proper interview with the (now) four-time World champion Kaori Sakamoto – the language barrier had always been a challenge that we found rather difficult to overcome, with the logistics of it all.
Plus: how could have we dared to ask for a one-on-one conversation with the star of skating that Kaori Sakamoto is, when everyone (metaphorically) wanted a piece of her at every competition, tens of Japanese journalists following her scrupulously anywhere in the world, and especially in her last competitive event.
It felt daring, impudent even, a tense, thin line to follow in between Should we do it / We should, that’s our last chance / How much can we push for it – but the regret of not requesting an interview convincingly enough would have been even higher.
And so we asked and asked, we didn’t consider ourselves too small of a (foreign) media to ask, we followed the procedures with a tenacity we didn’t know we had, we’ve also been carefully guided through and through, and on the 29th of March, when the skaters had ended their practice for the exhibition, we find ourselves – two foreign journalists, alongside a number of Japanese colleagues – facing Kaori Sakamoto in the mixed zone, for an interview, Kaori’s answers carefully translated by Ms. Momo Podolsky, press officer of the Japanese Skating Federation.
A CIRCLE CLOSING
These were Kaori Sakamoto’s Championships, 2026 Worlds in Prague, the final chapter of a competitive career that spanned over 13 years, and over two decades of skating, if we count them all.
And she was only 12 when she first left Japan for a skating competition abroad, in Estonia, as an advanced novice, she remembers.
A year later, she would go to Ostrava, Czech Republic – see the circle that it is now closing? – for her first Junior Grand Prix, the moment when she realized: “If I want to compete in this kind of world, I’m going to have to be much tougher mentally, so I have to train my heart”.
Ah, the beauty of this metaphor, and also the amount of work she has put into skating since then.
Because work has really become the leitmotif of Kaori Sakamoto’s career – especially when having nearby, in her youngest years, someone like Satoko Miyahara, the hardest of workers, “who was the top skater in Japan and her nickname was Miss Perfect”. And, once again, Kaori thought: “If I want to be at that level, this is how much I have to train – and I really started training much harder thanks to her”.
And we find ourselves amazed, struck by the maturity she answers with – figure skating has been Kaori Sakamoto’s job, her daily work, her duty, and she has always treated it like that, the utmost respect to her responsibilities – but also wearing a smile on her face through and through, this almost always present brightness, serenity that has become her trademark.
At times during the interview, she confers with the interpreter, clearly someone she knows and trusts, they discuss when elaborating an answer, or the interpreter wants to know if she had it right here and there, and sometimes you get the feeling that even the interpreter finds nuances and details she didn’t know before about Kaori Sakamoto, a trusted member of Team Japan for nearly a decade and a half.
Time in which, just to remind you, Kaori Sakamoto has become a legend of the sport – although she genuinely says she doesn’t consider herself one.
We say she should – we say she is.
What follows is Kaori Sakamoto answering Inside Skating’s questions – and those questions followed a specific path, bringing Kaori’s personality to the forefront, the kind of skater, person she became over the years, how does she want to be remembered by the skating world.
To say you’ll like this interview, to say you’ll like Kaori Sakamoto even more is definitely an understatement – we surely were on cloud nine during this detailed conversation, and remained there for the entire day.
No doubt about it: this Inside Skating interview with Kaori Sakamoto at the end of her competitive career has already become one of our dearest and most cherished ones – you’ll feel it too.
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Story and interview by Florentina Tone / Prague
Interpreter: Momo Podolsky
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Florentina Tone: Kaori, you talked in the press conference room the other day about debuting on the Junior Grand Prix circuit in the Czech Republic, in Ostrava, and, 13 years later, you are in Prague, at Worlds, and so many things have happened in between.
And I was wondering: who was Kaori Sakamoto back then, in her first international year(s)? What were your dreams, what did you want to do, to accomplish?
[Kaori laughs when listening to our question – a quiet laughter, she understood where we were heading – and then she laughs again, after having had the question translated in full. And then she paces herself with the answer, taking the time to think it through, and also giving time to the interpreter to convey the message in its entirety.
The mixed zone is still pretty loud when our meeting with Kaori starts, other interviews happening nearby, and yet, she doesn’t want to take up more space or cover the voices around her: she talks quietly, peacefully, an inner rhythm to it – and this whole interview feels so serene.]
Kaori Sakamoto: Actually, the first time I went overseas for a competition was when I was 12. It was in Estonia, I was an advanced novice back then.
But in Ostrava, at my first Junior Grand Prix event, I was 13 – that was my second time competing overseas. And I remember I could absolutely not understand any English, all I could do was to follow the people who took me there, the adults around me.
And once I got on the ice and the music started, I just did my own thing.
But all the other people who had gone with me there were much older than myself, so what I thought really at that time was: If I want to compete in this kind of world, I’m going to have to be much tougher mentally, so I have to train my heart.
[Laughing while offering the second part of the answer:] But, personality-wise, character-wise, I was absolutely the same that I am now – and if I can qualify my personality, if I may say so myself, I’m kind of fun person, and I’m pretty loud, I talk a lot.
But who do you credit your personality to? This way of being? Your parents, grandparents, your childhood, your upbringing? How come you have this sunny personality? Because your teammates often call you the funniest member of the team, and you always look so joyful and genuinely happy…
[Smiling:] I have two elder sisters. They’re both teachers, actually – my eldest sister is a kindergarten teacher and the second one is an elementary school teacher.
So I think I attribute [my way of being] to my daily communication with them – that sort of brought out this personality in me, and I learned to communicate better through my interactions with my sisters.
So I think that’s where it comes from, mostly.
And you also seem to have this special bond with Yuma Kagiyama [Kaori is laughing at this point], do you think your personalities somehow resemble? Because we always see you having fun together, laughing a lot…
I would include Riku and Ryuichi in that conversation, Yuma and Riku and Ryuichi…
I think that our bond, let’s say, it’s due to the fact that we found ourselves often in similar, very big events like that, so we naturally got to interact a lot.
And also that we were aiming for the same thing – specifically, the Team event or individual medals at the Olympics…, that kind of topic comes more and more often in our conversations. So I think that’s where the bond comes from.
[Note to readers: this interview is such a multilayered conversation, almost like a resonance box, where Kaori Sakamoto offers her answer in Japanese, and then she gets to hear it again, as it takes shape in English – and that process is accompanied by lots of smiles, also in layers, from all of us present.
Sometimes, elaborating the answer becomes an impromptu dialogue in between Kaori and Ms. Podolsky, the interpreter, to make sure all nuances, ramifications are conveyed – and that “making of” is also fascinating to witness.]
“I LEARNED A LOT JUST FROM WATCHING SATOKO”
Kaori, in the first Olympics that you took part in, in 2018, you had Satoko Miyahara as your teammate and the more experienced one. Is there any lesson that you learned from her there, something that she told you in order to make the experience of your first Olympics easier?
And – comparing to these Olympics – you were now the more experienced teammate compared to Mone Chiba and Ami Nakai. What advice, if any, did you give them in return?
As you said, Satoko was my teammate at my first Olympics, but even before that, at the start of the season, we went together to Skate America.
And what I learned really at that point was that she trained so hard! The amount of training was just shocking to me – and that had a very big impact on me.
At that time, Satoko was the top skater in Japan and her nickname was Miss Perfect. And so I learned that [work] was behind her perfection, and I thought: Ok, well, if I want to be at that level, this is how much I have to train, and I really started training much harder thanks to her.
But having said that, Satoko is not the type of person who gives advice or tells you what to do – she shows with her behavior, with her actions, so I learned a lot just from watching her.
And then Satoko eventually retired, and it was faster to count where my placement was in Japan from the top, and I was progressing more and more – and then, before I knew it, I was a World champion and, before I knew it, I had all those cute younger skaters around me.
And I really tried to show by example what to do, not so much tell them what to do.
“IF I’M ASKED TO BY MY STUDENTS, I WILL”
Coach Nakano’s pat on the back? We feel it too: it sends encouragement, but also lots of love to her student. Photo taken at 2024 Worlds
You also seem to have such a wonderful relation with your coaches, we’ve seen it through the years, so you never felt the need to leave the crib. And we have in mind this recent image of you and coach Sonoko Nakano at the Olympics, when she really tried to pat your back, your longtime ritual, but the board was too wide and made it difficult… When did you start having this particular ritual – and will you keep it, will you use it when becoming a coach yourself?
As far as the ritual goes, I am not really sure when it started for me, but I know that the same ritual was being done for skaters before me, so maybe it’s almost like a tradition here as well.
And will you pass the torch somehow…?
[Kaori bursts into laughter:] If I’m asked to, by my students, yes, I will.
How do you want people to remember you, Kaori Sakamoto? Because I might have read that you don’t put yourself on the same pedestal as Mao Asada, as Shizuka Arakawa…
But I think you should! Because people love you, they love your performances, they love the way you are – so how do you want people to remember you?
Hmmmm…
[Kaori really takes the time to think about this one, and her voice softens even more, as if she becomes even more modest than she is.]
I find it very difficult to say, because I have this particular thing about me, I can’t call myself a legend. So it’s very difficult for me to pinpoint that one thing, but…
I think one thing that I can say I tried to do, and I did, was: in this world of figure skating, I tried to make a more sort of sunny atmosphere, a more sort of bright atmosphere, so that everybody could compete in a positive way, and looking kind of forward-way.
So that’s probably what I tried to achieve.
Glimpse of sunny Kaori Sakamoto in Prague, at 2026 Worlds, the last competition of her career. She carried that smile throughout the entire week, whether in practice, performances, Kiss and Cry, press conferences, medal ceremony
“I REALLY THINK IT WAS A GREAT THING THAT I DID TO COME HERE”
How do you leave Prague, Kaori? How do you leave these last World Championships? With a happy heart, because you won it, with a sad, already nostalgic heart, because it’s your last one…? How would you describe your state of mind?
So, to begin with, I was thinking that the Olympics would be my last event and I absolutely wasn’t thinking of coming to Worlds.
But at the Olympics I didn’t get the result that I wanted, so, even though I haven’t thought about coming to the Worlds, I decided to.
And now I have gotten the result, the best result possible, so I was able to pay back all the things that my coaches have done, all the people who supported me, and so really this is the best result I could have imagined.
And, also, I just want to mention that the crowd’s reaction was amazing, so I really think it was a great thing that I did to come here.
TO FOLLOW: Prague 2026. These were Kaori Sakamoto’s Worlds
[© Story and interview by Florentina Tone / Inside Skating
Interpreter: Momo Podolsky
Photos by Alberto Ponti, Wilma Alberti, Florentina Tone
Photos by Jurij Kondrun and Joosep Martinson for International Skating Union
Other photos embedded from Getty Images
Homepage and featured photo by Joosep Martinson © International Skating Union]