In 2021, Kyonosuke Morita found himself lost for words around para-athletes in Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. Having spent the past three years interviewing many as the host of Toyota Times Sports, he shares his thoughts in the leadup to Paris.
4. Judo Grand Prix in Yoyogi (Dec. 2023)
I reported on visually impaired judo or para judo international competitions. Both judoka enter the contest area holding the arms of the referee and start the bout holding the opponent’s judogi. Judo at the Olympics starts with judoka fighting to get a hold, and if one does get a good hold, the throws or points can be clearly seen. The exciting thing about para judo is that you start with a hold and the throw or point can happen any time from the beginning.
The highlight of this sport is not just the bout. Shizuka Hangai of Toyota Loops is a blind judoka who has participated in three consecutive Paralympics from London 2012. One might wonder how she masters throws and technique despite her inability to see. She told me there are several steps she follows.
“Touch, feel, test, and talk.” She touches the coach’s body and checks the body movements, then feels the direction of the strength, tests the throw on the coach, and gets verbal feedback. She evaluates move by move and analyzes how the move is working on the opponent in detail. Her coach, Yuko Isozaki, who used to coach able-bodied judoka, realized that in para judo, she was able to achieve moves that she had not paid much attention to before and found it fascinating. There are things that you perceive because you don’t see. This might be the purest pursuit of judo itself.
5. Para alpine skiing in Sapporo (Feb. 2024)
Japan hosted the World Para Alpine Skiing Championship for the first time in seven years. Taiki Morii, a para skiing legend who has participated in six Paralympic Winter Games, talked about his skiing and many other topics with the next generation of para-athletes. In the sport, the athlete sits atop a chair ski with just one board as it flies down a cliff-like slope at unbelievable speed. Morii showed his skills in Japan with top-level para-athletes from around the world and also at the skiing camp for young para skiers that was held alongside the championship. He is now involved in training and helping the next generation of para skiers.
Morii’s lower body was paralyzed in an accident, and he was devastated. He was reluctant and negative in his rehabilitation and almost gave up on himself when he saw para-athletes competing in the Nagano 1998 Winter Paralympic Games. He wondered if chair skiing could help him regain his former outlook on life. From that point on, his rehabilitation became training for competition. Some children at the camp had also become impaired due to accidents, but I was able to feel the power of sports and what it can do when I saw the smiles on their faces and how they were making strong first steps to move forward.
6. Tomoki Suzuki’s special class lecture for kids at Harumi West Elementary School (Jul. 2024)
Three years ago at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics, Suzuki participated in the universal relay* and won the bronze medal to become a Paralympic medalist. However, with the wheelchair marathon, the highlight of his individual competition, he ran through the rain and came in 7th. He was unable to bring an individual medal back with him to the Athlete Village in Harumi, only disappointment and regret. After the Games, the town of Harumi built a new elementary and junior high school on the site of the former Athlete Village. On July 8, 2024, he came back to the place for the first time in three years. In front of 1,100 students, he whizzed passed in his racing wheelchair and enthralled the children, who were seeing a wheelchair racer for the first time.
*Relay run by 4 para-athletes in different impairment categories. Became a Paralympic competition at Tokyo 2020.
At the special class lecture, he introduced three years of collaboration with OX Engineering’s Toru Ozawa and Toyota Motor Corp.’s Hiroki Hashimoto (BR GT Development Div.). They built a full carbon fiber racing wheelchair to beat the reigning undisputed champion, Marcel Hug of Switzerland. Suzuki shared every request without holding anything back, and the development team tried to address them all. Suzuki promised the children that he would be back with a gold medal using this new chair, which is the result of completely honest and open communication.
After the special class lecture, I wondered if there were any children who thought of Suzuki as a disabled person. They most likely just saw a super cool guy with huge upper-body muscles.
All I could see was a superhuman, aiming like a sharpshooter for a medal.
Para-sports is Sports like any other
Keita Sato said, “I was able to hear the crowd cheer and rock the ground at London 2012.”
The entire stadium was full, with 80 thousand spectators. The British TV broadcaster Channel 4 made a trailer video called “Meet the Superhumans,” which went viral. The London 2012 Paralympics was considered to have been especially and extremely popular in the UK. Suzuki, who participated in the London Marathon, recalls how people came up to him in the streets of London and felt firsthand how the mindset of people in London changed.
Ashida has told me that having impairments increases the difficulty of any sport. Sports have rules to make the game fair. They sometimes become restrictions to allow records to be made and are used to adjust difficulty levels. The impairments that the para-athletes have are just another set of rules, and the greatness of sports is seeing athletes give their best to overcome challenges.
Over the last three years, I have seen and heard from many Toyota athletes aiming to make their dreams come true at a higher level of competition. Each and every message that they share during the process of their challenge has made a strong impression on me. I wanted to broadcast their voices as far as I could.
I am no longer at a loss. The more I learn about the world of parasports, the more I realize I see athletes in the purest form. After three years of learning about parasports, I have come to love Sports more than ever. I cannot wait for all the new stories that we will see at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games. I want to see with my own eyes all the excitement of superhumans performing in the purest form of sports. I want to tell it to the world, and this time I need no help or guidance to do so.