Japan’s Mao Shimada makes one of the most anticipated debuts in Grand Prix figure skating history at Skate Canada this weekend, live on Peacock and NBCSN.

Shimada turns 18 on Friday, then on Saturday and Sunday skates on the sport’s top senior level for the first time.

2026 Skate Canada Broadcast Schedule

She has never lost an international competition, going undefeated in four full junior seasons, a run that included an unprecedented four world junior titles.

Shimada spent an extended time on the junior level due to the gradual raising of the senior age minimum between the 2022 Olympics and 2026 Olympics.

Had old rules been in place, Shimada likely would have been a medal contender at the Milan Cortina Games. Under new rules, she was four months too young, pushing her possible Olympic debut to the 2030 Alps Games.

It’s reminiscent of the woman she was named after, Mao Asada, who won the 2005 Grand Prix Final yet was three months too young for the 2006 Torino Games.

“Of course I want to compete at the Olympics, but I have time,” Shimada said in 2025, according to Olympics.com.

She visited the U.S. for the first time this past May, taking a selfie in front of another decorated Japanese athlete and indulging in In-N-Out Burger.

She also threw out a ceremonial first pitch. The Los Angeles Angels public address announcer told the crowd that she would train to compete “as a favorite in the Olympics in 2030.”

Shimada continues to deliver amid that kind of reverence (and scrutiny).

She won her lower-level senior international debut — the Kinoshita Group Cup in Tokyo in early September — with the world’s best total score this season.

She performed a triple Axel in the short program — a jump few senior women can land with consistency. Then she landed a triple Axel and a quadruple toe loop — an even rarer jump in women’s skating — in the free skate.

It has become annual tradition for Japan’s top figure skaters to write down and share a theme for the upcoming campaign at a preseason press conference.

For Mao Shimada, a 16-year-old already hailed as a 2030 Olympic favorite by the Los Angeles Angels public address announcer, the theme for 2026-27 is “challenge.”

“I took on many challenges during my four years as a junior,” she said, according to Tokyo Sports. “I was able to experience many good and bad things, so I would like to make use of that and take on new challenges in the senior category.”

At Skate Canada, she faces a field that includes American Isabeau Levito, who makes her season debut after being sidelined by an injury in the summer. Levito was 12th in her Olympic debut in Milan and fourth at her most recent event, last March’s World Championships.

The men’s competition is also headlined by an anticipated senior Grand Prix debut.

Japan’s Rio Nakata, who won the last two world junior titles, can become the first man to win in his first start on the Grand Prix since countryman Yuma Kagiyama in 2020 (against a domestic field) and 2021 (international field).

Stephen Gogolev, who was fifth at the Olympics and fourth at worlds, can become the first Canadian man to win Skate Canada since Patrick Chan earned his fifth title in 2016.

The pairs’ event could come down to world bronze medalists Lia Pereira and Trennt Michaud of Canada and two-time U.S. champions Alisa Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov.

Efimova and Mitrofanov, who missed the Olympics as Efimova doesn’t have U.S. citizenship, can become the first U.S. pair to win a Grand Prix since Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier in 2022.

The ice dance field is led by Brits Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson, who finished third or fourth at the last four worlds.