INTERVIEW: Japanese Paralympic Chief Aims to Expand Fan Base

August 31, 2018

Tokyo- The Japanese Paralympic Committee aims to expand the fan base for Paralympics in the two years until the 2020 Tokyo Games, its president, Yasushi Yamawaki, said in a recent interview.

Although people's interest in Paralympics is growing, partly following the Pyeongchang Games in South Korea in March, most people have yet to watch actual sporting events, and the fan base is still limited to supporters from sponsor companies and related people, he said.

"We want to win more fans in younger generations with the help of influential people and school classes," Yamawaki said.

With the training environment now improved for Japanese Paralympic athletes, they are making up ground on their rivals from other countries, he said.

This month, Japan won gold in the Wheelchair Rugby World Championship and earned silver in a World Boccia Championships event.

But it is still difficult to secure training spaces for wheelchair rugby, boccia and wheelchair basketball, Yamawaki said.

Even when spaces are available for three hours, for example, only two hours can be spent on actual training as one hour is needed to clean tire marks from facilities, he explained.

A gymnasium built exclusively for Paralympic athletes opened in Tokyo's Odaiba waterfront district in June, providing an ideal training environment, he said.

Paralympic athletes are now able to use the National Training Center and the Japan Institute of Sports Sciences, which also has training facilities, he said. "With home-field advantage, we want to add momentum." Jiji Press