The battle for Japan’s competitive swimmers at the Paris Olympics ended in a crushing defeat. The only medal won was by Tomoyuki Matsushita (Toyo University), who won a silver medal in the men’s 400m individual medley. This was the lowest number since the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, when Japan had zero medals. Takayuki Umehara, chairman of the swimming committee, said, “We were far from our goal. We need to think about what the key points will be and the content of our training program.” His expression was stern.

Fading “team focus”

“It doesn’t feel like we’re fighting as a team,” “It’s like we’ve gone back 20 years.”

Former Japan national team head coach Hiromasa Hirai has been repeating these words with a sense of crisis for the past few years. In recent years, there have been many players who practice individually regardless of their team, and players who are given “special treatment” even within their team. Due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of national team training camps has decreased, and the national team’s emphasis on team strength has faded.

At the Atlanta Olympics, they fought individually and lost. Player development was considered the exclusive prerogative of the club to which the player belonged, and coaches rarely gave advice to players from other clubs. It was because of this reflection that they shifted their focus from “individual” to “team.” They increased the number of national team training camps and gave advice to players beyond the “walls” of their clubs. At the same time, they also increased their sense of belonging to the national team. One player who played for the Japanese national team for about 10 years until the 2012 London Olympics remembers being told after joining the national team, “From now on, you belong to the Japanese national team.” Players held meetings and shared their goals. When they achieved their goals, their teammates rejoiced as if they had achieved something for themselves, and they gained momentum.

Absence of Leadership Behind the Scenes

There was a scene like this. At the 2002 Asian Games, on the night that Kosuke Kitajima set a new world record in the men’s 200-meter breaststroke, the athletes and staff gathered at the hotel where they were staying, and talked over a meal until the morning. The topic was, “How can we set a new world record like Kosuke?” Everyone was conscious of improving each other.

Since the Sydney Olympics in 2000, they have won medals in every tournament. At the Athens Olympics in 2004, they won a total of eight medals, including three golds, and at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016, they won a total of seven medals, including two golds. At the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, they managed to hang on with two golds and one silver, but one former Japanese national team coach reflected, “Their training had already started to fray.”

The reason behind this is a lack of leadership. Since the Tokyo Olympics, the national team has not had a permanent head coach, but rather has had a coach for each tournament. As a result, there is a lack of people who can comprehensively identify issues and manage the team in the medium to long term.

Even at the national team selection meeting in March this year, few athletes had their sights set on the “world,” and even then, only a few staff members saw it as a challenge. The positioning of the European Grand Prix in May and June was also unclear, and “some athletes were just going with the flow.” There was no sign of a fighting spirit.

28 years have passed since the disastrous defeat in Atlanta, but the Japanese swimming team is once again facing a challenge. (Marina Kubo)