Blind swimmer Keiichi Kimura got his fourth Paralympic campaign underway with the support of tapper Masato Teranishi, who lets Kimura know when to turn or stop swimming as he is approaching the wall of the pool by tapping his head or other parts of his body.
Kimura, 30, finished 5th on Monday in the men's 200-meter SM11 individual medley for visually impaired swimmers.
Teranishi, 62, has known Kimura since his junior high school days and said the talented swimmer is like a son.
Teranishi was a coach of the swimming team at a school for the blind affiliated with the University of Tsukuba in Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo, when Kimura joined as a first-year junior high school student.
Teranishi thought Kimura's gangly frame would prevent him from being able to compete with the best, but his impression changed when he saw him practicing with former student Junichi Kawai, who has won 21 Paralympic medals.
Kimura was trying his best to keep up with Kawai, who could do two laps of the pool in the time it took him to do one.
Impressed with his ambitious spirit and strength of mind, Teranishi began to coach him in earnest.
Kimura started swimming when he was in the fourth grade of elementary school. One of his heroes was Australian swimmer Ian Thorpe, who won five Olympic gold medals, but after meeting Kawai, he wanted to be like the para-swimming legend.
Teranishi has supported both Kimura and Kawai as a tapper, using a stick modified from a fishing rod to let them know when to turn or stop at the end of the race.
As the swimmers could lose time or hit the wall if he taps them a fraction of a second too late, he worked on his timing while coaching swimmers.
Kimura asked Teranishi to continue supporting him as his tapper after graduating from the school as he considered him irreplaceable.
When Kimura won his first Paralympic medal at the 2012 London Games, they embraced each other in tears.
Teranishi said he was most satisfied with his tapping in the 100-meter freestyle at the 2016 Rio Paralympics. Kimura was in fourth or fifth place before the turn, but he had passed several swimmers by the time he had surfaced.
Kimura has earned three silver and three bronze medals in the past three Paralympics and is aiming to win a gold medal in the Tokyo Games.
Teranishi, who said he would devote his life to helping Kimura realize his dream, took early retirement from coaching at the school in 2018 to focus fully on tapping.
"With [Teranishi] at the wall, I can approach it with peace of mind," Kimura said. "He is a man who has built the project to win gold with me."
Kimura missed out on a medal in the men's 200-meter individual medley on Monday but said it's not about the number of medals at this Games.
"I'm aiming for gold. I'm not feeling much pressure," said Kimura, who will compete in the men's 100-meter breaststroke SB11 on Wednesday and the men's 100-meter butterfly S11, his specialty, on Friday.
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