When Jimmy Ma woke up last Monday, it was already a special day for the seven-time U.S. Championships competitor. Ma had just completed another trip around the sun, and instead of celebrating, the Team USA veteran's first priority was to head to the rink for another day of training.
With two international events already in the books this season, Ma was training hard in preparation of his Challenger Series assignment next month in Poland, his final international before the 2022 Toyota U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Nashville, Tennessee. By day's end, Ma had answered the call as a last-minute replacement entry into this week's 2021 Guaranteed Rate Skate America competition in Las Vegas.
"It was definitely a pleasant surprise," Ma said of the invitation. "I was disappointed not to have been selected over the summer, but I used it as a wake-up call that pushed me to train harder to be the best athlete that I can be. This will be my third time competing at Skate America, and I am excited to go back."
Ma is coming off a career-best sixth place finish at the 2021 U.S. Championships in January and hopes to continue to build on that momentum as this pivotal Olympic season begins to unfold. The 26-year-old has already pocketed two silver medals this season—in August at the Cranberry Cup International and a month later at the U.S. International Figure Skating Classic, both on home ice in Norwood, Mass. In doing so, he established new personal bests for the short program, free skate, and total competition score.
"This season I am trying to go full out with what I know that I can do," Ma explained. "I don't want to leave anything on the table. I want to take the artist aspect and technical side of my skating to a whole new level."
The Long Island native continues to work with Alexei Letov and Olga Ganicheva at the Skating Club of Boston and created two new programs this season with his longtime choreographer Nikolai Morozov.
"I think that I have found the right coaches who fully understand me," the typically outspoken Ma said. "They respect me, and I respect them, and that mutual respect makes things work very well. I've spent a lot of time trying to figure things out for myself, and at one point I thought about hanging up the skates. I forced myself to have some self-reflection, and it made me realize what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it."
Part of that, Ma believes, is due to the wisdom that has come with age and experience.
"I know that I am unpredictable and brash—I'm me. I have a personality that does not like to conform, and I am in a sport that has very specific rules," he said. "I've learned that when you try to make everyone happy, that you end up pleasing nobody, so I'm focusing on doing what makes me happy. I strive to improve every day not only as an athlete but as a person."
This season's short program is a stark departure for the Ma, whose signature style has been to perform to music by contemporary artists like Daft Punk, Kanye West and DJ Snake. He expects to raise a few eyebrows when the audiences realize that he has selected music from the
Black Swan soundtrack.
"I genuinely feel this music and I want to do it justice. I wanted to create a story, but I am not taking the traditional approach.," he explained. "I watched a lot of videos of ballet dancers performing this piece, and I decided that I was not going to watch anymore. I wanted my own interpretation, and it turned out to be an incredibly organic experience. I'm kind of going for what Natalie Portman portrayed in the movie—in the beginning she was soft and well-spoken and in the end, she was completely different and free from the construct of the music."
The free skate is a bit more 'Jimmy Ma', as he describes it, and is set to music from
Attack on Titan by Hiroyuki Sawano. The program is his tribute to the weeb community—those who are fans of animae and Japanese culture.
"I love the show. It has a lot of mature themes to it that can be very intense," Ma described. "I want to do it justice by acknowledging that intensity in my program. I don't want to disappoint myself, the skating community, or anybody who is a fan of animae."
Ma has high hopes for strong performances in Las Vegas, but he is not focusing on the results with such a packed field.
"These guys are tough," he said. "I will be competing against some very strong veterans of the sport along with some guys who are new to me. I want to skate well and enjoy the event for myself. I'll be going for the quadruple (toe loop) combination and triple Axel in the short, and I will shoot for two quads and two triple Axels in the free. I also want to make sure that I do everything that I can to earn solid GOEs. If I can do that, I will be happy."
As Ma looks beyond Skate America® to the rest of the season, he plans to continue to push himself in every aspect of his skating.
"I see improvements even if they come a little bit at a time," he said. "I am hoping to add a third quad—a flip to the free skate later in the season, and it is coming along nicely. I want to have good GOEs, and everything needs to be in tip-top shape. I don't really like to talk about placement, because I think that it puts focus on the wrong thing, but I know that I am going to put my heart out there every time I compete."
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