Midori Ito

Midori Ito (伊藤みどり) is a retired Japanese figure skater.

Ito made her first appearance at a major international competition at the 1981 World Junior Championships.

She placed 20th in the compulsory figures but won the free skating with a triple loop, a triple salchow, and two triple toe loop combinations.

She finished 8th in the overall standings.

At this event, the 11-year-old Ito was only 3'11" tall and weighed 53 pounds. She was nicknamed the "Jumping Flea" due to her diminutive size and powerful jumps.

At the 1982 World Junior Championships, Ito won both the short program and free skating, but again weak compulsory figures kept her off the podium, in 6th place overall.

Her free skating at this event included a triple flip and a triple toe loop-triple toe loop combination, and she landed a triple Lutz in the exhibition.

Ito did not compete at the 1983 World Junior event, which took place in December 1982, after having sustained a broken ankle earlier that year.

In the fall of 1983, she made her senior international debut at the Ennia Challenge Cup in the Netherlands, a competition that featured the short program and free skating only, without compulsory figures.

She finished second to Katarina Witt, who went on to win the Olympic title a few months later.

Ito's free skating included six triple jumps—flip, Lutz, loop, Salchow, and two toe loops—and she also completed a double loop-triple loop combination in the short program.

At the 1984 World Junior Championships, she won both the short program and free skating but finished third overall due to a low placement in the compulsory figures.

Ito also competed at the 1984 World Championships, where she finished 7th.

Ito won her first national championship in the 1985 season, but was unable to compete at that year's World Championships after again breaking her ankle.

From that time on, she increased the number of triple jumps she would attempt in the free skating.

From 1985 to 1987, Ito's free skating included seven triple jumps, but she would not always perform them cleanly.

She would attempt a triple toe loop-triple toe loop combination, a Lutz jump, a flip jump, a loop jump, a Salchow jump in combination and another solo Salchow jump.

At the 1988 Calgary Olympics, she became the first woman to land seven triple jumps in an Olympic free skating competition.

She is widely recognised as one of the best figure skaters of all time.

Ito started skating at age four at a rink in Nagoya and approached Machiko Yamada, who would become her coach throughout her career, on the same day.

She landed her first triple jump at age 8.

She went to live with her coach after her parents' divorce when she was 10.

Ito placed 5th at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

In Calgary, she performed a double loop-triple loop in the short program, and seven triples in the free skating: Lutz, flip, double Axel-half loop-triple Salchow combination, loop, triple toe loop-triple toe loop combination, and another Salchow.

She received the best technical scores given, two 5.8 and seven 5.9 marks, despite skating before the final flight.

Her successful seven triple jumps were two more than any of the other skaters even attempted.

Figure skating writer and historian Ellyn Kestnbaum speculates that Ito's low marks in compulsory figures took her out of contention for a medal, which might have influenced the judges to award her lower scores in her short and free skating programs.

She became the first woman to land it in international competition at the 1988 NHK Trophy.

She is the 1989 World champion and the 1992 Olympic silver medalist.

She is the first woman to land a triple-triple jump combination and a triple Axel in competition.

She then repeated the feat at the World Championships in 1989.

Ito thus became the first woman to execute all six possible triple jumps in World competition: Axel, Lutz, flip, loop, Salchow, and toe loop.

She was 6th in the compulsory figures but made up for it.

She won the gold medal with a flawless free skating when she received 6.0s for technical merit from five of the nine judges, receiving 5.9s from the rest.

Her win at the 1989 World Championships was the first world title in the sport for an Asian competitor.

During the start of the 1989–90 season, Ito made history again at the 1989 NHK Trophy competition, where she received a rare 6.0 technical/6.0 artistic score from the Hungarian judge, and again landed seven triples, including the triple Axel.

At the 1990 World Championships, Ito was 10th after the compulsory figures but placed first in both the short program and the free skating and won the silver medal, second to Jill Trenary.

Kestnbaum also states that her technically difficult free skate would have held up well against the most difficult programs performed by female single skaters ten years later, and that as of 2003, "the quality of her jumps (apart from the less-preferred high wrapped position of her free leg while in the air) has never been equaled".

Ito's presentation marks also suffered, despite her "high energy and pleasing cheerfulness", due to her tendency to keep her back and shoulders stiff, which resulted in a lack of fluidity and sublety in her musical expressiveness.

Later that same year, she perfected the triple Axel, which she had been working on since her early teens, and landed it at a regional competition in the Aichi Prefecture.