HIROSHIMA -- Bobsledding is sometimes referred to as "Formula One on ice," as athletes race sleds down icy tracks at speeds of up to 150 kph to beat each other by just hundredths of a second.
Tatsuya Sasaki, 25, who made a career move from firefighter to bobsledder three years ago, serves as a brakeman, pushing a two-person bobsled at the start of a race to accelerate it.
In Hiroshima, which has no training facilities and little snowfall, Sasaki practices hard with the aim of competing at the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022.
Since childhood, Sasaki enjoyed exercise. He began playing volleyball in elementary school, and started athletics in junior high school. In a prefectural athletic event when he was a third-year junior high school student, he won first place in quadrathlon, a combined event comprising four competitions including a short-distance sprint and hurdles.
Hoping to go as far as he could as an athlete, he enrolled in the physical education course at Hiroshima Municipal Numata High School. In his third year of high school, he broke the high school record in the Chugoku region for octathlon, a combined event consisting of eight competitions.
In his final inter-high school competition, Sasaki thought, "I'll be able to win a medal if I set a personal best." However, he could not produce his desired results, and thereafter retired from competition.
Sasaki wanted to become a firefighter as he had been drawn to the energetic firefighters he had met during a junior high school class that allowed students to experience actual workplaces out in society. Moreover, he liked the occupation because firefighters use their own bodies to help other people.
He passed the civil service examinations with top marks, and was assigned to the Asaminami fire station of the Hiroshima fire department in 2012. While there, he had a life-changing experience.
In the wake of landslides in Hiroshima in August 2014 that claimed 77 lives, Sasaki worked on the scene as a third-year firefighter. He saw corpses and photo albums strewn in the mud.
"I felt how powerless I was," Sasaki recalled.
He still has dreams in which he is looking for part of a victim's body at the disaster site. He remembers the soil smelled like something burning.
"The victims must have had things they wanted to do. We only live once. I want to think that I had a good life," Sasaki said.
Sasaki had some lingering attachment to a career in competition. He thought about what sport he could be successful at -- given his large stature, good running ability and sheer strength -- and took part in tryouts for the national bobsledding team. Many track-and-field athletes switch to this sport. In the winter of 2014, Sasaki and his teammate won first place at the national bobsled championships. Subsequently, he decided to resign as a firefighter to focus on the sport.
The following year, he and his teammate won the national championships for the second year in a row, and he was selected as a member of the national bobsled team in the winter of 2016.
Sasaki took part in the Europe Cup in the 2017-18 season, aiming to qualify for the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. However, he failed to crack the top 30 in the world ranking -- a condition for qualifying -- so he could not realize his dream of competing in the Games.
"The Olympics is a stage I'm longing [to compete on]. I truly realized that it's impossible to get an Olympic spot by luck alone," Sasaki said.
Usually, Sasaki works full time as a trainer at a gym in Hiroshima. When there are no customers, he works out doing squats and other exercises. After returning home, he does sprints on a slope in front of his house to build up his muscles. There is no facility in Hiroshima Prefecture where he can actually practice bobsledding, and he takes highway buses to the Kanto region for events.
"My mission is to make bobsled known to many people. I'd like to produce good results and create a better environment before the Olympic season starts," Sasaki said, with an eye on the Winter Games in four years time.
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