Sports Japan - 2013/01/19

Jan. 20, Sun.

Women's ski-jump
[Focus]
1. Sara Takanashi - An Ace at 16
Sara Takanashi's extraordinary qualities have already made her one of the leading women's World Cup ski jumpers at the age of 16. She is Japan's ace and a medal hope at the Sochi Winter Olympic Games, where the women's ski jump has been adopted as an official event for the first time.
She became the first Japanese jumper to win a World Cup event against a star-studded field in March, 2012 just before her graduation from junior high school. People say that it helps to be tall in the ski jump but Takanashi is petite at 1m52cm and that supposedly huge disadvantage doesn't seem to matter at all. In Japan, her best jump of 127m places her far ahead of her rivals. Masahiko Harada, a team gold medalist at the Nagano games, attributes her success to the compactness and timing of her jumps and smoothness of her forward-leaning posture on the approach, which minimizes air resistance on the upper body.
She grew up in an area of Hokkaido which has snow cover for a third of the year and started jumping with her elder brother from the age of 7. She took part in competitions and kept a diary at home of reflections on how to keep on jumping further, developing her own special feeling and techniques through that process to become the jumper we see today.
2. Izumi Yamada, Pioneer of Women's Ski Jumping in Japan
Former national team member Izumi Yamada blazed the trail for women ski jumpers in Japan. Born in 1978, Yamada, like Takanashi, grew up in Hokkaido. She was drawn to the ski jump from an early age but was the only girl to carry on. Ski jumping was considered too dangerous for girls in those days and she was already the last by the time she reached the upper years of primary school. There were no girl's divisions at competitions but she took part with the boys and drew attention with several good performances, including a second place at a junior contest. The situation was slow to change in either training or competitive jumping but other girls did see her compete, the only girl among the boys, and others eventually had a go. At long last, in 2000, the first domestic women's competition was held with six women taking part. Yamada was the first champion but says it gave her something even bigger to celebrate than that. While also still working, this ski jumping pioneer now also strove to nurture successors and, as a jumper, competed in tournaments both at home and abroad. The new generation grew up following Yamada's lead. Women's ski jumping was made an official Olympic event in 2009, 2 years after Yamada's last jump in Japan ended her 25-year competitive career.
[Science Lens]
High Platform Diving
Platform divers who leap from a 10m high board hit the water at a speed of 50km/h. That's equivalent to a 3 ton shock upon impact. By comparison, the impact of two 100kg plus sumo wrestlers at the start of a bout is only 1 ton. The knack lies in entering the water painlessly in spite of that huge impact. A high-speed camera shows how it is done.
[Guest]
Tanaka Oulevey Miyako

Tanaka Oulevey won the synchronized swimming duet bronze at the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games with Mikako Kotani and later coached in the United States and France. She is now a mental trainer and Guest Professor of Sports Psychology at the National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Kanoya.

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