Japanese

"Athens Olympic Games"

The Athens Olympic Games ended. Although most of the games in which Japanese player played an active part had been broadcasted at midnight because of the time differences, this Olympic Games drew high degree of attention as shown on the high audience rating every night. The main reasons of popularity must be Japanese athletes' remarkable activities. The number of the gold medals 16 that Japanese athletes won at this Olympic Games tied a record for the highest number of gold medals ever at Tokyo Olympic in 1964 and 37 of total number of medals became the greatest number in history which broke former record of 32 medals at the Loss Angers Olympic Games in 1984. For your information, our Olympic team finished with 5 gold medals and 18 medal totals at the last Sydney Olympic Games. What made them achieve this remarkable progress?

An economist advances the opinion that the number of medals acquisition of the Olympic Games is being proportional to the population and GDP ratio of the country. After the Sydney Olympic Games' crushing defeat, JOC (Japanese Olympic Committee) decided upon the "Gold Plan", which is comprehensive strengthening program of Olympic athletes to redouble an acquisition of medals within next 10 years. By utilizing a part of the profit of the soccer lottery (named toto) as the source of revenue, JOC has raised the sport promotion budget, which used to be a minimum level among the advanced countries in relation to GDP. Especially, since the Japan Institute of Sports Science (common name JISS) was established in 2001, the full-time coach system has been provided to the high priority games, and form analysis as well as nutrition managements and the medical treatment services have been given to the athletes. Thus, Japanese athletes was able to get supports correspond to the nation's economic power finally. On the other hand, JOC has decided to allow individual athletes to use Olympic athlete's portrait rights, which used to be managed by JOC as a single package. Therefore, Olympic athletes have been able to use it for the commercial purposes freely after registering themselves as professional players. Thus the way for obtaining the income, which balances the efforts of the player individual, was paved and the environment where they can concentrate on a game, without holding the uneasiness to a future life was put in place. However, I think a bigger factor than above change of the environment is in the change of a player's consciousness. Conventionally, most of Japanese athletes carries Japanese flag and expectation of Japanese nationals on their back. Those sense of responsibility made them harden up and they could not take out original power at the games. However, at Athens, there were many Japanese athletes who demonstrated toughness beyond their power and left the results beyond our expectation. It seems to me that the fact that brought these remarkable results was that they have prepared for this Olympic games not for other people but for themselves. I think the factor that determine winner at the last moment of the game is not coach's instruction nor sense of responsibility but individual judgments and sense of purposes. I would like to express respect to the players who attached impudence in a good sense. (End)