Chinami Yoshida

Chinami Yoshida
Curler
Born	(1991-07-26) 26 July 1991 Kitami, Japan
Team
Curling club	Loco Solare CC, Kitami, Japan
Skip	Satsuki Fujisawa
Third	Chinami Yoshida
Second	Yumi Suzuki
Lead	Yurika Yoshida
Alternate	Mari Motohashi
Career
World Championship appearances	1 (2016)
Pacific-Asia Championship appearances	4 (2013, 2015, 2016, 2017)
Olympic appearances	2 (2014, 2018)
Medal record Women's curling Representing  Japan Olympic Games 2018 Pyeongchang Team World Championships 2016 Swift Current Pacific-Asia Championships 2015 Almaty 2017 Erina 2013 Shanghai 2016 Uiseong Asian Winter Games 2017 Sapporo

Chinami Yoshida (吉田 知那美, Yoshida Chinami, born 26 July 1991) is a Japanese curler. She currently plays third for Satsuki Fujisawa's rink.

Career

Yoshida began curling at age 7, at the Tokoro Curling Club in Kitami. During her junior days, she skipped a Kitami-based junior rink of Kaho Onodera, Yumi Suzuki and her sister Yurika Yoshida. They became a sensation by winning two straight bronze medals at the Japan Curling Championships when they were only in their early teens. However, on the national junior scene, the Yoshida rink was usually lagging behind other Japanese junior rinks such as Satsuki Fujisawa and Sayaka Yoshimura, and therefore never earned the right to represent Japan at the Pacific Junior Curling Championships or the World Junior Curling Championships.

After her junior career, Yoshida joined Ayumi Ogasawara's Sapporo-based rink in late 2010, for which she mainly played lead. At the 2014 Winter Olympics, where they represented Japan and finished 5th with a 4-5 record, Yoshida was officially listed as the alternate for Team Japan, but actually played second in 6 games and as lead in 2 games due to her teammate's flu.

After the 2013-14 season, Yoshida left the Ogasawara rink and returned to her hometown of Kitami. There, in June 2014, she joined Mari Motohashi's rink as third, reuniting with her former teammates Yumi Suzuki and Yurika Yoshida, both of whom had played for the Motohashi rink since 2010. With the team, Yoshida won her first World Curling Tour title at the 2014 Avonair Cash Spiel. Later in the 2014-15 season, at the national championships, they lost the final against the Ogasawara rink to miss a berth to the world championships.

In May 2015, the Motohashi rink added Satsuki Fujisawa, who was a 4-time Japanese champion skip at that point. Motohashi thereafter moved from skip to alternate because of her pregnancy, and Fujisawa took over the rink of third Chinami Yoshida, second Yumi Suzuki and lead Yurika Yoshida. During the 2015-16 season, they had success internationally as Japan's national team, winning a gold at the 2015 Pacific-Asia Curling Championships and a silver at the 2016 World Women's Curling Championship, which was Japan's first-ever world championship medal. Meanwhile, domestically, Yoshida with the team won her first national championship title at the 2016 Japan Curling Championships. The team would win a bronze medal at the 2016 Pacific-Asia Curling Championships and a silver at the 2017 Pacific-Asia Curling Championships. They also won a silver medal at the 2017 Asian Winter Games.

The rink would win the 2017 Japanese Olympic Curling Trials, and would represent Japan at the 2018 Olympics winning a bronze medal in the process.^[1]

Yoshida skipped the Fujisawa rink at the 2018 Humpty's Champions Cup with Fujisawa away playing in the 2018 World Mixed Doubles Curling Championship.

Personal life

Yoshida is employed as an office worker for a car dealing company in Kitami City that is one of her curling team's sponsors. Her younger sister Yurika Yoshida is her long time team mate from their junior curling days, and her older sister Natsuki is a curler who has competed in the PJCC and the WJCC before.

Teams

References

External links

• Chinami Yoshida on the World Curling Federation database
• Chinami Yoshida on the World Curling Tour database
• Chinami Yoshida on the CurlingZone database