Favourites Kagiyama, Sakamoto look at ease in practice ahead of World Championships

There were no surprises as Kagiyama Yuma and Sakamoto Kaori garnered most of the attention on the first day of practice on Monday (21 March) for the 2022 ISU World Figure Skating Championships.

As the athletes took to the ice at the Sud de France Arena in Montpellier, it was the Beijing 2022 Olympic figure skating medallists – the two Japanese winning individual silver and bronze, respectively, in the Chinese capital last month – who looked to have maintained their form from the Olympic Games the best.

In the men's field, Kagiyama, one of the favourites for gold in the absence of double Olympic champion Hanyu Yuzuru and three-time defending champion and Olympic gold medallist Nathan Chen, will be closely watched this week to see if he can convert his two Grand Prix gold medals into a first major championship title.

Sakamoto likewise holds the favourite tag in a women's event without Olympic and reigning world champion Anna Shcherbakova.

While neither Kagiyama nor Sakamoto were perfect in practice, both falling, they unsurprisingly looked among the most at ease on the ice.

Sakamoto looked comfortable during her practice session, despite a fall on a triple flip and turning out of the same jump during her music run-through.

The Japanese skater repeatedly practised that jump on the ice after her run-through, both alone and in a triple flip, triple toe loop combination.

Sakamoto's route to the world title will be complicated by three women with triple Axels in their repertoire: her teammate Higuchi Wakaba, South Korea's You Young, and the American Alysa Liu – who is also the only skater in the field to have landed a quad jump in international competition.

On Monday, Higuchi – who in Beijing became the fifth woman to land an