EVERETT — As the Skate America competition starts today in Everett, hundreds of thousands of people worldwide will be counting on a small army of journalists to keep them informed and entertained about the action on the ice.
About 400 journalists from Japan, South Korea, France, Canada and other countries on Thursday packed Comcast Arena to cover the three-day event for their audiences.
Anticipation is building fast in Japan, where figure skating has become big over the last few years. Japan has sent more journalists to Everett than any other country, Skate America organizers said. A major national television network, tv asahi, has brought about 40 people and rented a satellite truck to send images to Tokyo.
“It surprises me,” Laura Lee, chairwoman for the 2008 Skate America organizing committee. “It’s just huge. It just makes me feel like it’s happening.”
On Thursday, tv asahi crews kept busy interviewing three figure skaters from Japan — Miki Ando, Yukari Nakano and Takahiko Kozuka — and Mirai Nagasu, an American skater whose parents are Japanese.
The network is investing a lot of time and money because Japan, a nation of about 127 million people, has a great appetite for figure skating, said Hirotake Nakaguchi, sports producer for tv asahi.
“It’s getting as popular as baseball and soccer,” he said in Japanese.
The sport started becoming popular as star skaters such as Mao Asada and Shizuka Arakawa won competitions worldwide. Arakawa won the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. Her gold medal was the only medal for the Japanese team.
Arakawa, who retired from competitive skating after her Olympic win, is expected to arrive in Everett today as a commentator for tv asahi, Nakaguchi said.
Russian figure skater Alexander “Sasha” Uspenski, who attended competitions around the world, said he was amazed at how much attention skaters get in Japan.
“Entire crowds of people follow competitors, but the fans generally behave well,” Uspenski, 21, said in Russian.
Uspenski’s coach, Marina Kudryavtseva, said it’s been a long time since people filled the stadiums just to see practice sessions. That’s why it was nice to see so many fans cheering skaters Thursday morning.
An accomplished Russian coach with more than 30 years of experience, Kudryavtseva said that she and Uspenski arrived Wednesday night and haven’t had a chance to catch a breath.
The one thing they did get to enjoy was the night view of downtown Seattle while driving to Everett from Sea-Tac, Uspenski said.
“I’m mostly focused on the championship, but I’m looking forward to taking a walk around Everett when I get a free minute,” he said.
As female competitors practiced on the rink at Comcast Arena on Thursday afternoon, Masashi Inoue and Akihiro Nakamura took note. The two sports writers flew from Tokyo to Seattle to cover the first round of the 2008-09 International Skating Union Grand Prix of Figure Skating.
Inoue works for Kyodo News, a Japanese news wire service; Nakamura works for Chunichi Shimbun, a daily newspaper of about 2 million circulation, a mid-size regional paper in Japan. It’s unusual for the paper to send a reporter to cover an event abroad, Nakamura said.
Here’s the secret: The paper is based in Aichi Prefecture, where three popular stars — Ando, Nakano and Asada — were born and raised. Their popularity even prompted a local university to build a new ice skating rink, Nakamura said.
Figure skating has won fans in multiple generations in Japan, Nakamura said.
“It’s beautiful,” he said. “It’s fun to watch. It’s entertaining as well. And above all, Japanese skaters are among the best.”
Reporter Yoshiaki Nohara: 425-339-3029 or ynohara@heraldnet.com.
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