Akiko Suzuki ordered a steak dinner at an airport restaurant on her way home from a figure skating competition in Croatia. Not long after the meal, she walked into a bathroom and vomited in the toilet.

It was the spring of 2003. Suzuki, who was 18 at the time and still competing on the junior circuit, told herself it was a reaction to eating red meat for the first time in months. But the incident turned out to be a harbinger of something more serious.

Her appetite dwindled after she returned home. During her first weeks as a student at Tohoku Fukushi University in Sendai, her weight dropped from 48 kilograms to 40.