Cha Junhwan became the inaugural men’s Kinoshita Group Cup 2025 champion on Sunday (7 September) in Osaka although he was left shaking his head after what turned out to be a comfortable win over his peers.
As the Republic of Korea’s two-time Olympian did in the short program, Cha topped the free skating by more than 10 points over runner-up Tomono Kazuki for a score of 165.55 and a total of 253.31.
Tomono was a distant second with 236.78 as Cha lifted his first trophy of the Milano Cortina 2026 season.
But the 23-year-old Cha was not particularly pleased with his performance on the night when he popped his opening jump – a quad Salchow-triple toeloop combo – and faltered on a couple of other combinations.
“I was a bit disappointed about that,” said Cha, who has chosen “Moulin Rouge” for his free skate music.
“I popped the first jump and at practice it was very consistent but I made a mistake. I had to really focus so I was a little bit disappointed with myself. It could happen in the future too so I will work on that.”
Still Cha, who has been assigned to the Cup of China and will be back in Japan in November for the NHK Trophy, thinks there were plenty of takeaways from Sunday’s outing that he can build on for the rest of the campaign.
He said: “It’s really early in the season. So from today I can get a lot of feedbacks and I can work on so many things.
“I made mistakes and can make the quality of the jumps better, and the footwork. I think two days ago in an interview I said I was like 60, 70 per cent ready but today I was like 40, 50 per cent.
“So I will keep pushing through and then it will get better and better and it will be improved more by the end of the season.”