Paul Oberjuerge: Tough Trip for Japan
Shizaku Arakawa's victory in women's skating Thursday night was notable for a couple of reasons.
1. It was Japan's first Olympic women's skate gold.
2. It was Japan's first medal -- of any sort -- here at Turin.
We're talking about a country of 127 million people, a country with plenty of winter and significant money. What's the deal?
I'm sure the large contingent of Japanese journalists here have been investigating the situation. I can only imagine what the U.S. media would do to U.S. Olympic Committee officials if we showed up somewhere and got ONE medal. They would be verbally flayed, run out of Colorado Springs on a rail.
(Even so, look for some tough questions, tomorrow, when the media gets its closing session with USOC leadership here. Like our failure to be competitive in entire sports -- biathlon, cross-country, ski-jumping, Nordic combined, etc.)
ONE medal?
Turns out, it's not all that shocking. Japan one only two medals at Salt Late City in 2002, and neither was gold.
When Japan hosted, in 1998, it managed 10 medals, five gold. But maybe that was a function of the home-country-advantage.
What the Japanese were good at, back in the day ...
Speedskating (two medals); ski-jumping (two or three more), short track (two medals). Etc.
Now, the Japanese are competitive really only in women's skating, where they had three women in the finals, and someone apparently better than any of them still at home -- Mao Asada, who at 13 is too young to get into the Olympics.
ONE medal in 13 days? Let's just guess Winter Olympics viewing is not a nightly habit in the Land of the Rising Sun.
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