The wait ended in Montpellier. Kaori Sakamoto delivered two career-best performances at the Sud de France Arena, capturing her first world title and becoming the first Japanese woman to stand atop the podium since Mao Asada in 2014.
Leading from the first note
Sakamoto seized control in the short program with a personal-best 80.32 points. She became just the seventh woman to break the 80-point barrier under the current judging system. She entered Friday's free skate as the marked favourite, with the field missing its reigning Olympic and world champions after Russian and Belarusian skaters were barred.
The 21-year-old never wavered. She closed her free skate with a season-best 155.77 points, collapsing to her knees as the audience rose. The combined total of 236.09 left no doubt.
A margin that told the story
Belgium's Loena Hendrickx claimed silver with 217.70 points, a gap of 18.39 that was larger than the distance between Hendrickx and fifth-placed You Young. Sakamoto put her head in her hands before raising both arms in celebration.
She told the crowd afterwards, "It was all very difficult, but it was worth it." She added that preparing for a world championships barely a month after the Beijing Olympics had been an uphill battle.
A title that opened the gates
The Montpellier gold arrived just weeks after Sakamoto's Olympic bronze, Japan's first women's singles medal since 2010. It also launched an extraordinary run: she defended the crown in Saitama in 2023, then won again in Montreal in 2024.
On that night in France, however, none of that was yet written. Sakamoto was simply the skater who had endured burnout four years earlier and had come back to repay her coaches on the sport's biggest stage.
