Japanese figure skater Miki Ando will part company with coaches Nobuo and Kumiko Sato and train under a foreign coach in a bid for a podium finish at next year's Winter Olympic Games in Turin, skating sources said Thursday.
The 17-year-old Ando, the reigning women's national champion who finished sixth at the world championships in Moscow last week, has already begun looking for a new coach after skating under the Satos for about four years. The switch was prompted by her failure to win a medal at the world championships, where Japanese skaters lagged behind top foreign rivals in coping with the new judging system introduced after the judging scandal in the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics.