With a year to go until the Tokyo Paralympics kick off on Aug. 24, 2021, Yomiuri Shimbun sportswriter Masakazu Shimizu interviewed Seiko Hashimoto, minister for the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games, who expressed her thoughts, encouraging athletes to stay positive in preparation for the Games.
Seiko Hashimoto: After setting the schedule for the Olympics, earlier this month the schedule for the Paralympics was also officially decided. This makes it possible to picture the Games more realistically.
Over 365 days, it's not so often that athletes can reach their peak condition -- in my experience, only for four days or so. With the competition schedule set, athletes can now have specific ideas about their training more easily. We're making preparations in the belief that the Tokyo Games won't be successful without the success of the Paralympics.
I think there are many athletes who have lost motivation at least once as the Games have been postponed. Whether people like coaches and doctors can remain close with athletes is crucial. Should they strongly motivate the athletes or is it better not to?
It is necessary for those who know the situation surrounding athletes to discern their characteristics and stay close to them. To that end, besides governing bodies and the Japan Sports Agency, people like me who are preparing for the Tokyo Games should be near the people who are close to athletes.
It's like the image of a "circle." I think this is Japan's specialty. I believe Japanese athletes have the ability to win medals by taking advantage of their characteristic of never giving up.
The environment surrounding the Paralympics is improving gradually. When I set up a league of Diet members for the Paralympics in 1999, some countries already had national training centers for Paralympic athletes. Our league aimed to establish such a center in Japan. The NTC East, east wing of the National Training Center, is intended for Paralympic athletes and has now been built.
In the future, I want to see more training bases in various parts of the country for athletes who can't come to Tokyo easily.
One of the attractions of the Paralympics is that visually impaired athletes cannot see what others see in the world, but you can feel that they do see something. I have ridden a tandem bicycle for the visually impaired. When a sighted pilot was in front and I was in the back blindfolded, I was really scared. It is important that the two riders start pedaling at the same time when they start to accelerate. There will be slight time lag if they use voices as a sign to accelerate.
According to a visually impaired athlete I spoke to, an athlete knows when to pedal harder by putting the right cheek around the pilot's left lower back to feel the muscle movement just before the pilot starts pedaling harder.
I want people to know about such things. I also think such an episode can connect with Olympic athletes and will even help them improve.
I've heard that approval rating for holding the Tokyo Games has been low in various surveys due to the novel coronavirus. We want to continue to make thorough preparations to hold the Games safely so that athletes can feel comfortable.
I think athletes will get a boost from hearing people's eagerness for next year's Games. I want athletes to make preparations with a positive mindset as they have another year to improve further.
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