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High-School Skier Happy with her High Finish (February 12)
"Hey, look--I came in seventh!" It wasn't until she finished celebrating her teammate's first-place finish that Aiko Uemura looked up at the finishers' board and found out she had made it into the top eight in the women's moguls skiing event. When the 18-year-old high school student heard her mother call out "Good job," she jumped up and ran over to where she was standing.Uemura first became interested in the moguls event when she saw the freestyle skiing world championships during a trip to Canada. She thought the sport looked cool, and after she returned to Japan, she switched from alpine racing to the bumps and jumps of the moguls.
In the 1995-96 season, she came in third in the last World Cup competition. Beginning last December, she appeared in a commercial aired on Japanese television, saying "Even though it's only my fourth year doing this sport, I'm going to the Olympics!" She quickly became a popular figure throughout the country.
During the competition on February 11, some of her classmates and other friends were in the stands watching her ski. "I was really nervous about the event, but I could hear my friends and skiing buddies cheering in the audience," says Uemura.
This spring the Olympic skier will graduate from Hakuba High School right here in Nagano. Plenty of people are already talking about her hopes for a medal in the next Winter Games, to be held in Salt Lake City in the United States in 2002. Uemura, however, says she hasn't decided what she's going to do in the future. But her fans hope to see the beads in her hair--in the five Olympic colors--bouncing down the slope four years from now as well. (Shinano Mainichi Shimbun)
Uemura smiles after making the top eight in the moguls event.