Speed Skater Yukino Yoshida Clinches Ticket to Milan

The Yomiuri Shimbun

15:29 JST, December 15, 2025

HAMAR, Norway — Speed skater Yukino Yoshida clinched her first trip to the Winter Olympics when she won the second of two women’s 500-meter races on the final day of a World Cup meet on Sunday in Hamar, Norway.

Yoshida clocked 37.65 seconds in racing to her first World Cup victory of the season, fulfilling the criteria set by the Japan Skating Federation for making the team to next year’s Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.

It was also the third time the 22-year-old Iwate Prefecture native made the World Cup podium this season, including in the first 500 race of the three-day meet on Friday, when she finished behind the Netherlands’ Femke Kok and Poland’s Kaja Ziomek-Nogal.

Kok did not enter the second 500, and Yoshida relegated Ziomek-Nogal to a second straight runner-up finish.

Yoshida joins star Miho Takagi in earning early tickets to Milan, after the 2022 Beijing Olympic champion completed a golden double of the women’s1,000 and 1,500 races to secure Olympic berths in both events.