It’s a question Marcotte, now 48, has pondered many times during his 20-year coaching career, most notably when Canadians Meagan Duhamel, his future wife, and her partner, Eric Radford, sought a way to compete with powerhouse pairs from Russia, China, and Germany. By the 2012/2013 season, they had developed one: side-by-side triple lutzes. The jumps led them to their first world medal, a bronze.
“I always try to focus on something that will be very unique,” Marcotte said when interviewed after the pair won the Four Continents Figure Skating Championships in February. “For Eric and Meagan, at first, it was side-by-side lutzes, and then the (quadruple) throw.”
Piling up technical points with the lutzes and throw quad salchow worked for Duhamel and Radford, who retired after the 2017/2018 season with two world titles and the 2018 Olympic bronze medal. Duhamel now coaches alongside her husband.
Similarly, Miura and Kihara, underdogs from Japan—a country famed for its single skaters, but hardly a force in pairs—needed something that would brand them as contenders.
“What are we going to find that the Russians don’t have, the Canadians don’t have, the Americans don’t have?” Marcotte said. “And it was speed. The first two years I worked with them, it was like, we got to be the fastest team in the world.”
Asked whether speed was, indeed, their best asset, Miura and Kihara nod.
Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara of Japan compete in the Pairs Free Program during the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating - Skate America (Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images)
SPEED AND FLOW “Speed and flow,” Kihara, 31, said partly through an interpreter. “Actually, going into elements without speed would be scary. Our skating type (stroking) is very similar. We don’t have to push hard – it comes naturally to us, and we can build speed easily. So, we didn’t struggle too much with the elements. Our timing was always good.”
Watching practices at Four Continents, with four pairs per session sharing the Olympic sized (200’ by 98’) ice surface, it’s clear Miura and Kihara move at a fast clip. I’m not sure their speed exceeds that of top Russian pairs, like 2022 Olympic silver medalists Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov. That, though, is academic at the moment: Russian skaters have been barred from international competition since last March.
“It is unfortunate some top teams are missing, but I think we still have plenty of countries to compete against,” Miura, 21, said through an interpreter.
Speed, while useful, isn’t enough to lift a pair from middle-of-the-pack to the podium, or to build the kind of fanbase Miura and Kihara—known far and wide as “Riku-Ryu”—have in a few short seasons. It took more.
A closer look at their practice sessions tells part of the story. Miura and Kihara rarely skate far apart; if they are not holding hands, he is usually looking behind his shoulder and extending an arm to her. And if they are not running through their program, practising an element, or sidling up to the boards to confer with Marcotte, they are talking and laughing.
When competing, they move perfectly in sync. Some men toss their partners into triple-throw jumps the way that baggage handlers throw suitcases at LaGuardia Airport. Kihara treats Miura with near reverence, gently catching her in triple twists and setting her down after lifts.
“I always respect my partner, I respect my coach,” Kihara said. “Good partner, good coach, good team.”
Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara of Team Japan react after skating during the Pair Skating Free Skating on day fifteen of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics (Photo by Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)
COLORADO SPRINGS Colorado's 6,000-foot altitude is notorious for burning skaters’ lungs, often leaving them gasping for air at the end of their programs. After both the short program and free skate at Four Continents, Kihara immediately fell to his knees when the music stopped. The couple half walked, half crawled to the kiss-and-cry.
Fans seated near me thought Kihara might need medical attention. It’s not just the altitude, I tell them; he is physically and emotionally drained after every performance.
“The cheers from the audience keep our legs moving,” Kihara said.
“They are very popular, I would say, because the joy they radiate through their skating is genuine, and people feel that,” Akiko Tamura, a prominent Japanese figure skating journalist who has written eight books on the sport, said. “Their personalities come through in their skating.”
A LONG AND WINDING ROAD According to Marcotte, the key to his pair’s success lies in Kihara, a former singles skater who began training pairs in early 2013, when the Japanese Skating Federation teamed him with Narumi Takahashi, the 2012 world bronze medalist with Canadian Mervin Tran.
Despite their world medal, Takahashi and Tran had a problem: he was not a Japanese citizen, and the country’s strict citizenship laws meant it was nearly impossible he could become one. Both skaters in a pair, or ice dance team, must be citizens of the country they represent, in order to compete at the Olympics.
Takahashi and Kihara trained at the Detroit Skating Club (DSC), under two-time U.S. pair champion Jason Dungjen and Yuka Sato, the 1994 world champion, but the partnership didn’t click. Its nadir came at the 2015 World Figure Skating Championships in Shanghai, China, where the team placed 19th of 19 pairs in the short program and failed to advance to the free skate.
“The score shows our lack of ability,” a morose Kihara told the press in Shanghai. “We have to have a rethink and try to improve technically.”
Not surprisingly, Takahashi and Kihara ended their partnership a few weeks later.
A figure skating team event was added to the Olympics in 2014, and in order to qualify for it, Japan needed a pair. Kihara, still training at DSC, next skated with Miu Suzuki, a former Japanese junior singles skater. Suzuki and Kihara could jump – they landed side-by-side triple lutzes at the 2018 PyeongChang Games – but they often faltered on moves like triple twists and triple throws. They, too, failed to qualify for the free skate at the world championships, and ended their partnership in April 2019.
By the time Kihara arrived in Ontario, where Miura had been training for several years and competing in junior pairs with former partner Shoya Ichihashi, he had five seasons, more or less, of international pairs experience. Still, Marcotte considers he was “starting from scratch” with the skater.
“The one thing I did for (Ryuichi), is I definitely was able to give him confidence,” he said. “I think that’s one of my strengths as a coach, making my skaters believe in themselves. Because I did believe in him. Even when he had little success, I thought there was still something in him.”
“FORGET YOU ARE SKATING PAIRS” Marcotte’s approach was risky: he advised Kihara to return to his roots. “You try a strategy, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t work,” the coach said. “My strategy with him was to make him skate less like a pairs skater, to go back to skate more like he used to (as a single) skater. And so, we tried to free them up a little bit more.”
Photo credit: Michele Mintzer
Stop trying so hard to stay in sync with your partner; trust that she will be there, Marcotte said. Because Miura and Kihara both have strong basic skating skills, that helped unlock the team’s speed and flow. And, since Kihara had years of experience with his former partners, the rest was doable.
“If the boy has a lot of experience, it goes quicker to learn, because there are so many (elements) where the boy can place the girl,” Marcotte said. “You have (an anchor) that is stable. Like, with a death spiral, it could take me 15 minutes to teach. But, with a boy with no experience, it takes months.”
(Figure skating professionals often colloquially refer to “pair boys” and “pair girls” regardless of the age of the partners. Skate Canada has recently updated this language to “lifting partner” and “lifted partner.”)
The new partnership debuted internationally at the 2019 NHK Trophy, where they placed fifth, defeating several more established teams including two U.S. champion pairs. They next competed at the 2020 Four Continents, placing eighth. Then, the Covid 19 pandemic hit, and everything changed, again. Their next several events were cancelled. Looking back, both skaters consider this the turning point. Prior to the pandemic, Miura and Kihara trained in Ontario, but often returned to Japan to visit friends and family. No more. All they had was each other.
“For two years, we could not book trips to Japan,” Kihara said. “We were in a very hard time, we could not even go outside (to many places). We had to stay in the house, or at the rink. But we supported each other every day. Of course, our coach helped us, but our relationship got stronger. Covid was terrible in many ways, but it was good for our relationship.”
When they made their world championships debut in 2021, they placed 10th overall – the first time in four attempts, with three different partners, that Kihara had qualified for the free skate. From there, the pair took off: seventh at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, where they also helped Japan secure a medal in the team event, and second at 2022 world championships behind Team USA’s Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier. This season, they are undefeated, winning both of their Grand Prix events, Skate Canada and NHK Trophy, and the Grand Prix Final in early December, where they defeated Knierim and Frazier.
“IT'S ALL ABOUT THE CHEMISTRY BETWEEN PARTNERS,” Marcotte said. “It doesn’t matter how good they are individually. I always use this example: I love the Rolling Stones. Mick Jagger is not the greatest singer. Keith Richards is not the greatest guitar player. Same thing with Charlie Watts, same thing with Ronnie Wood. But together, they create magic.”
CHASING A WORLD TITLE This season hasn’t been easy for Miura and Kihara, despite all the gold medals. Miura dislocated her left shoulder while performing in a show last July, and the team missed two months of training. “We hit rock bottom,” Kihara said. “We considered ourselves on the chasing side (this season) and forgot about the highs from last year.”
They’ve had to play catch-up, particularly with a triple toe loop, double toe loop, double axel sequence they debuted in their free skate in Colorado Springs. “Our goal this year was to have more jumping content,” Marcotte said. “(The shoulder injury) slowed us down. And the main reason why we’re competing (at Four Continents) is to try the new combination.”
The sequence was flawed in Colorado Springs, but Miura and Kihara plan to try it again at worlds, in front of more than 20,000 fans in Saitama Super Arena. It could be the edge they need to again defeat Knierim and Frazier, as well as two rising Italian pairs. “The main purpose of every competition this year is to get ourselves ready for the world championships,” Marcotte said. “(To win) they have to trust the training and trust each other, and I think they do. At the end of the day – it’s crazy, what I’m going to say – but you should not try to skate clean. You should just trust your training and be in the moment and not overthink.”
RUSSIANS ABSENT With Russians absent, it’s likely they will never have a better chance to win a world crown. To win, they will likely have to skate better than they did at Four Continents; specifically, they will need to land all of their side-by-side jumps, in both the short program and free skate. “We are happy with the (Four Continents) title, but not happy that we did not skate our best,” Kihara said. “Of course, we want to make more history by winning the world title in Japan. We owe it to the fans.”
A world title could help transform their futures. After they retire from competition, Miura and Kihara say they want to coach pairs in Japan: “We have only had four singles skaters who claimed the title at a home-hosted world championship,” Tamura said. “If Miura and Kihara win in Saitama, that will bring a new level of spotlight to pair skating in Japan. There will be a lot of media attention, which reaches out to people outside of (diehard) figure skating fans. Hopefully, that will help make the next generation of skaters more interested in pair skating.”
Regardless of the outcome, Kihara and Miura, health permitting, hope to compete through the 2026 Olympics. And they want to develop a new technical weapon.
“I WANT TO TRY A QUAD THROW NEXT SEASON,” Miura said. Kihara looked at her quizzically. No pair has attempted a throw quad (salchow) — a move that would require Miura to take off from a back inside edge, make four full revolutions in the air within two seconds, and land on her opposite foot riding a back outside edge — at the world championships since Duhamel and Radford in 2017.
“Well, I want to try,” she said.
