Tomoki Sato started off his interview after winning the T52 category of the men's 400-meter wheelchair race at the Tokyo Paralympics on Friday, but he lost out to emotion on Friday night.
Sato began by saying, "Well ...," but he couldn't continue. His eyes then quickly turned red.
The memory of the moment he took the silver medal at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Paralympics must have popped back into his head.
He forced out the words "five years ...," but he trailed off again.
The gold medal he won at the Tokyo Games is the result of all the hard work he has put in.
As expected, the final was a head-to-head battle between Sato -- who holds the world record of 55.13 seconds -- and Raymond Martin of the United States, the Rio gold medalist.
Martin grabbed the early lead and was still out front as they rounded the last turn. As the race entered the final stretch, Sato frantically gave chase.
He gradually closed the gap and pushed into the lead over the last 10 meters.
"The race must have given spectators the jitters," he said after his dramatic come-from-behind victory.
Influenced by his father, a former wrestler who reached the National Athletic Meet, Sato wrestled in his youth.
But in 2010, he suffered from spinal cord inflammation and was forced to live the rest of his life in a wheel chair.
"It was at rock bottom for me in my life," he said.
However, he was shocked when watching the London 2012 Games on TV and thought, "A person who was thought to be socially vulnerable was out there running at the venues and representing his country," he said.
This was the starting point of Sato's career as a para-athlete.
He had bigger challenges rather than ridding himself of the failure at the previous Games. "I was my own biggest rival when I set the world record in 2018," he said.
That "rival" -- who is really tough -- threw challenges at him one after another and did not allow him to be satisfied, even when he won this event at the world championships after the Rio Games.
That is why he decided to quit his job and become a full-time athlete in February. To concentrate on competing, he broke away from all paths leading back to his past and brought in a personal coach to train on his own.
When asked how it felt to be at the top of the world after finishing the race in a Paralympic-record 55.39 seconds, he came back with the most natural of replies: "I want to set a new world record and win the gold medal at the Paris Games [in 2024]."
Read more from The Japan News at https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/
