To us – and many of you there, we are sure – there were Kaori Sakamoto’s Worlds.
Her final competition, Kaori saying farewell (with a win, her 4th World title) to competitive skating, her fans and the entire skating world – and all of us are going to miss her dearly next season.
But 2026 World Figure Skating Championships in Prague stays as a memorable edition, for this author at least, for a number of other relevant reasons, and we’ll make a documented summary below.
For you to know, this was meant to be a feature, but turned out an essay instead, so bear with us: memories, emotions come in different forms and layers, and this recap of Worlds makes no exception.
And here’s a question to you before we get started: How will you remember the Worlds in Prague?
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by Florentina Tone, eyes on Prague still
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In order to fight the future nostalgia, fans came to see all of Kaori Sakamoto in Prague.
Her practices in the main rink, the competition itself, and then the exhibition. They came prepared, bringing flags and banners and messages and handkerchiefs.
After all, Kaori was about to skate to Time to say Goodbye in her short program, a music purposefully chosen by Benoît Richaud, and to Edith Piaf’s classics, La Vie en rose, Hymn a l’amour, Non, je ne regrette rien, as sang by the guttural voice of Patria Kaas, music saved by Kaori herself for her last competitive season.
And this journalist here was lucky – as all the other journalists in place – to have access to the practice rink as well, located in O2 universum, part of the huge complex that O2 arena in Prague is.
And on a particular afternoon during the World Championships, I get to watch Kaori Sakamoto’s last long program being skated in this rink and I am brought to tears.
The practice arena itself is so different than the main one with the noise, the buzz and the excitement. Just some tens of meters away, some stairs being climbed, some corridors to be walked, and you are here, in an entirely different world: universum is all black, rows of chairs included, and the chairs are also highly situated, whereas the ice, the whiteness of it, feels like a lake and also like a space that is somehow unreachable.
We can watch the spectacle of it, the making off, the skaters in their outfits, some in glam, most of them in black – but we cannot get near.
We’re watching from a distance, still close to see it all, but yet afar, so we can have the entire perspective, and we are moved.
And there’s this beautiful serenity in the practice rink on March 26th, with the last group of women refining their free skates before the actual event the following day, and when Kaori goes through her program, and Non, je ne regrette rien fills the arena, tears stubbornly say: We want out, let us out.
And you cry watching that free skate, watching Kaori for almost the very last time, and you are happy.
Happy for what she has given us, for the wonderful skater, human and sunbeam she is. And you mumble just for your ears to hear it: Just let us stay in this rink, in this moment forever.
(And you know just how much this journalist loves practice rinks and the magic they bring.)
KAORI SAKAMOTO – AND A CIRCLE THAT CLOSES IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC
And because symbolism never ends when it comes to Kaori Sakamoto’s last World Championships and her last competitive event, she’ll tell us all about it in the press conference that follows the women’s short program in Prague. Kaori is in first place, Mone Chiba in second, and Amber Glenn in third.
Listen.
“My first Junior Grand Prix competition took place not in Prague, but in Ostrava, also in Czechia.
And, at that time [2013], during the competition I could see maybe a few people dispersed in the audience. Today, to be able to be at the World Championships in Prague, and have so many people in the audience, I think that I felt a little bit of how far I came.
It was a good feeling to have”.
Kaori Sakamoto at the end of her short program in Prague, at 2026 Worlds – she truly felt the love around her. We say: a mantle of love, a mantle made of people wishing her well.
“There were a lot of people who traveled all the way to Prague to come and support me, from Japan and from many other countries. I did get a lot of power from their support and I would like to tell them that their love made it through to me.
But for me, I am a skater who wants to meet the expectations of people with the results that I get. So far, in the short program, I’ve been able to do that and I’m very happy about it”.
Kaori Sakamoto, Mone Chiba and Amber Glenn – press conference after the short program in Prague
And do you know what else happened in Ostrava, at the Junior Grand Prix, 13 years ago, and yet again in Prague, at 2026 Worlds?
Sweet serendipity and another circle that is closing: Kaori Sakamoto and Amber Glenn both competed then (in Ostrava) and now (in Prague) and shared this whole figure skating journey in between.
And they use the warmest, most beautiful words to describe what this meant to them, and the entire experience of it.
»» Kaori: “To be able to compete all these years together, I appreciate the great environment we find ourselves in. I think there’s a tendency in women’s figure skating that the career of a skater is not that long. But I think we, Amber and I, have been able to show that longevity is possible in women’s figure skating. And I’m really, really happy to be here with her today”.
»» Amber: “I was just thinking about the same thing. I think Kaori has been an incredible example of showing that you can be one of the top skaters for a long period of time, and do it in a healthy way, and for so many years I idolized her, I watched her Beijing program so many times, and to be here with her, and at these competitions for the last couple years, has been very, very, very exciting”.
FROM MILAN TO PRAGUE – THE UNEXPECTED JOURNEY
When plans were made for this last season, Worlds in Prague were not on Kaori Sakamoto’s competitive map.
“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”, she would say, answering to Inside Skating’s questions in an interview at the end of Worlds.
But even before that, during her week in Prague, Kaori described in detail how that thought process went – from the disappointment in Milan, when things didn’t go as planned and wished, to making changes on the way and calling the first alternate for Worlds, her teammate Rinka Watanabe, to let her know she was thinking about coming to Prague after all.
“The Olympics are, obviously, a very special event, and that’s the thought I had going into the Milan Olympics.
In the 2022 Beijing Olympics, I was able to get what I could call a miraculous bronze medal. Four years later, I’ve worked really hard to get a better colored medal. But the result that I got was: I was left feeling I would have wanted a better colored medal…
…Right after I finished my long program [at Milano-Cortina Olympics] and before going back to Japan, I decided to go to Worlds.
The substitute for Worlds was Rinka Wanatabe, and I had told her to be ready to be there. As soon as I got back to Japan, I contacted her and said that it’s my last Worlds and I wanted to go, and asked if that is OK for her.
Rinka said right away she wanted to see me competing.
Then I contacted my coach, and the coach told me to take a week off. I took that time off – in the end, it was 10 days completely off the rink, and I was able to reset my mind and my body.
After that, I had to restart my training, and due to being away from the rink for so long, I was out of shape. So I had to go back to the competition mode and that process was fun, I continued to progress.
Last week, I was able to do both my short and free programs completely clean, and that’s how I got to getting that medal.
…It’s really great to end on this note. It was a harder season than I had imagined, but at the end of the season, everything came together and I’m happy to put a closure on my career”.
She would detail what that meant for her, when we meet, on Sunday, at the end of Worlds:
“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”.
NEXT: WORLDS OF REDEMPTION