Japan Olympics mulls Paris hangover after record catch in Tokyo

Nielsen’s Gracenote predicted Tuesday that Japan would win 11 fewer medals in Paris, more than halving its total gold medal count from 27 to 13.

Mitsugi Ogata, the senior director of the Japanese Olympic Committee, is slightly more optimistic, recently telling local media that Japan is hoping for 20 titles.

Host nations typically shine at the Olympics thanks to their larger athlete representation and large home crowds. Japan performed exceptionally well in 2021, despite having no chance of a home berth due to the COVID pandemic.

Perhaps the difference between Japan and other recent hosts is their performance at subsequent Games.

If the modest predictions come true, Japan will not improve its results at the next Olympics by converting fourth and fifth places in Tokyo into medals for Paris.

At the 2016 Rio Games, Britain improved on its 65 medals at London 2012 by two, despite having 175 fewer athletes to compete. Brazil also added two medals in Tokyo with only two-thirds of the athletes they had fielded as hosts.

Team Japan fielded 409 athletes in Paris, compared to 552 in Tokyo, where they finished third behind the United States and China on the medal tally.

Gracenote expects Japan to drop to seventh place in Paris, but the expected 47 medals would be the second-highest total ever and the most abroad.

Missing from the delegation is 19-year-old Shoko Miyata, the would-be captain of the women’s artistic gymnastics team. She flew home last week after being caught smoking, a violation of the team’s code of conduct, even for people over Japan’s legal smoking age of 20.

There were high hopes that she would help Japan win its first women’s team medal since the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, but that is now almost certainly not possible.

The eyes of the country are on the men’s team led by individual all-round champion Daiki Hashimoto.

Wrestling remains a strong event, but the team will be without two-time Olympic champion Risako Kawai, 29, and her sister – and fellow Tokyo gold medalist – Yukako, 26.

Japan is counting on another family victory: judoka Hifumi Abe and her sister Uta Abe will defend their titles on Sunday. They made Olympic history at Tokyo 2020 by becoming the first siblings to win a gold medal in an individual sport on the same day.

Elsewhere, the exclusion of karate will be painful, as Japan won three medals at the last Games. That could be offset, however, by medals in skateboarding, which the country dominated in Tokyo, and a medal or two in breakdancing, which made its debut in Paris.

(Reporting by Chang-Ran Kim; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

Disclaimer: This report was automatically generated by the Reuters news service. ThePrint is not responsible for its content.

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