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Japan’s silver medalist figure skater has no time for love because he’s busy playing video games

Casey Baseel Feb 22, 2018
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With an Olympic medal on his resume, Shoma Uno says he’d like to enter a video game tournament.

While he didn’t walk away with best-in-the-world honors, figure skater Shoma Uno’s silver medal performance at the PyeongChang Olympics gave Japan a 1-2 finish in the men’s single competition, which is only the third time that’s ever happened at the Olympic level. As such, Uno is currently being showered with praise by his compatriots, some of whom are going so far as to see his talents as representative of the amazing abilities of the Japanese people as a whole.

https://twitter.com/notgneissatall/status/964738364413902849

That neigh-superhuman persona is bolstered even more by comments the Nagoya native made in speaking to reporters from his hometown’s major newspaper, the Chunichi Shimbun. Despite competing in the Olympics for his first time, the 20-year-old Uno said he didn’t feel particularly tense when he was out on the ice. “I’ve been giving it my all in every performance this season,” he said. “In that regard, there was nothing different about the Olympics, and that’s probably why I didn’t feel nervous.”

Later on in the interview, though, Uno offered another possible reason for his lack of nervousness. “Maybe it’s because the Olympics isn’t my ultimate goal. I’m still not sure what that goal should be, but every day I’m doing all I can to become a better skater…I’d like to forget about having won a medal, and start preparing for my next competition.”

Sounds like a stoic, singularly driven young man, doesn’t he? But Uno’s response to another question showed that in some respects, he’s just a regular dude. Japanese figure skater Mao Asada, whose well-publicized successes were an inspirational part of Uno’s decision to pursue figure skating at an advanced level, remarked after winning a silver medal at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics that aside from figure skating, one of her goals was “romance.” When reminded of this, Uno remarked:

“Romance, huh? I’ve got my hands full playing video games and skating right now. My interest in games is still growing, and I’d like to try entering a video game tournament.”

Uno has also been quoted as saying that paying for in-game power-ups through microtransactions isn’t a sign of weakness, but simply a method for better performance. As for financing those power-ups, maybe with Japan’s recent success in the sport, some ambitious software publisher will sign Uno to an endorsement deal and revive the largely abandoned genre of figure-skating video games.

Source: Chinichi Shimbun via Jin, Twitter/@magoichi00
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