By Chang-Ran Kim
PARIS – Japan may have outdone themselves at the Tokyo Olympics. After a record haul of 58 medals at home three years ago, Team Japan is expected to take far fewer back with them from Paris.
With some veteran titleholders missing from the delegation, karate dropped from the Games, and a rising gymnast sent home last week after she was caught smoking and drinking in violation of team rules, the most Japan is hoping for is to top its record performance on foreign soil.
Nielsen’s Gracenote forecast on Tuesday that Japan would win 11 fewer medals in Paris, with the tally of golds more than halving from 27 to 13.
Senior Japan Olympic Committee executive Mitsugi Ogata is a bit more optimistic and recently told local media that Japan was hoping for 20 titles.
Host countries typically shine at the Olympics thanks to greater athlete representation and the home crowd advantage, and Japan delivered in 2021 despite being deprived of the latter by the COVID pandemic.
Where Japan might differ from other recent hosts is in their performance at the subsequent Games.
If the modest forecasts are correct, Japan will not improve their results at the following Olympic Games by turning fourth and fifth places in Tokyo into Paris medals.
At the Rio Games in 2016, Britain improved on its 65-medal haul at London 2012 by two despite competing with 175 fewer athletes. Brazil also added two medals in Tokyo with just two-thirds the athletes they fielded as hosts.
Team Japan will have 409 athletes in Paris versus 552 in Tokyo, where they came in third behind the United States and China on the medals table.
Gracenote expects Japan to drop to seventh in Paris, though the expected haul of 47 total medals would be their second-best on record and best overseas.
Missing from the delegation will be 19-year-old Shoko Miyata, the would-be captain of the women’s artistic gymnastics team who flew back home last week after being caught smoking – a breach of the team’s code of conduct even for those above Japan’s legal age for smoking of 20.
Hopes had been high for her to help Japan win a women’s team medal for the first time since the 1964 Tokyo Olympics – now almost certainly off the cards.
The nation’s eyes will be on the men’s team led by individual all-around defending champion Daiki Hashimoto.
Wrestling will remain a strong event but the team will be without two-times Olympic champion Risako Kawai, 29, and her sister – and fellow Tokyo gold medallist – Yukako, 26.
Japan will be counting on another family win, by judoka Hifumi Abe and sister Uta Abe to defend their titles on Sunday after making Olympic history at Tokyo 2020 by becoming the first siblings to win gold medals on the same day in an individual sport.
Elsewhere, karate’s exclusion will hurt after Japan won three medals at the last Games, though that could be offset by medals in skateboarding, which it dominated in Tokyo, and a medal or two in breaking, debuting in Paris.
(Reporting by Chang-Ran Kim; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
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