Japan reaches new heights in Pyeongchang

why do Olympic committees have to target a number of medals? What does this accomplish?

Yuzuru Hanyu carved his name into the pantheon of men's figure skating legends

He certainly did! More power to him, and I would love to see him try for an unprecedented 3rd. Very few can maintain that high of a level for one, let alone two Olympics, yet Hanyu is still young and if he stays healthy could quite possible accomplish a feat no one has ever done.

Meanwhile, girl power brought success on the speed skating track. Nao Kodaira won the 500 meters, Nana Takagi won the mass start and was part of the group, alongside her younger sister Miho, that clinched the team pursuit gold medal two months after the same crew had rewritten its own world record for the second time.

Please, get off with the "girl" thing! The WOMEN power is what carried them through. People already have enough images of "girls" and Japan, and it's about time that media does it's part in calling them women.

Without these women, the "goals" that the JOC set would never have been accomplished, and I highly doubt anyone would call Hanyu's accomplishments "Boy's figure skating legend".

Hopefully the beautiful moment of friendship and mutual respect shown by Takagi and Lee is a glimpse into the future between the two nations.

Dango

Why? Simply because winning medals (without doping) obviously means a country's sports program is effective and world class. Kids and other athletes get inspired by people winning medals so targets are natural.

why do Olympic committees have to target a number of medals? What does this accomplish?

It puts pressure on everyone involved. Which by itself is a national sport in Japan.

Otsukaresama all Japanese team heroes! Unbelievable performances by the record-breaking Japanese team. This new generation of young Japanese is hungry for success, the rising force in world sports, showing the world they can be the best, and it is showing in medals and PBs. They will inspire many millions of Japanese kids, to a new level of dominance.

Move over traditional sports nations, the Japanese new Generation has arrived! I can hardly wait for Tokyo 2020 now!

I would also also love to see Hanyu take another gold at the next Winter Olympics. His feat of getting back-to-back golds hadn’t been accomplished since Button did it

Of course, another man achieved this unique feat, double golds in back-to-back Olympics (Summer). The legendary Japanese, Kitajima Kosuke. 7 olympic medals in total. Unbelievable!

Congrats to the athletes. Hard work doesn't always pay off, but it certainly helps.

Just a few observations re the olympics from a Japan view.

Now many athletes have broken the shackles of Japan Sports Inc and travel overseas and engage the best coaches / trainers available. As Nana Tagaki (I think ) said she couldn't have had success if she stayed in Japan, which means there is still room for coaching improvement here. How big a thing this is, is easily shown by the non selection of Swimmer Suzu Chiba for the 2000 summer olympics. Although she passed qualifying time (swimming with the flu) and had posted the 2nd fastest 200m time in the world not long before, she was overlooked. Why? She dared to train individually overseas with a top foreign coach and spoke her mind. If it was 2000 this year Hanyu would have been left off the team for his "selfish" non-team attitude. Thankfully times have changed.

Some degree of success for the Japanese athleetes for these games must lie with the fact that they were almost the "home games". Thousands of supporters filled the stands many travelling to Korea for just a day or two. With little culture shock, no jet lag and being an hour or so flight away is a big bonus. If the same games were in Lillehammer Norway(1994 Olympics) there may well have been a different story to unfold.

And while there has been great growth in the sports - primarily skating - Japan as an overall winter sports country is still probably not up to it's potential. As one of the richest, highest educated, most hi-tech, most populated countries in the world with a glorious abundance of winter sports zones - 100s of ski resorts etc etc - Japan should be way above it's standing. Norway with the population of Hokkaido punches way way above it's weight. I'm not sure with all demographics and bits & pieces taken into account, what weight Japan is in, but not at it's natural level I suppose.

So keeping all things in perspective, Japan should continue to grow, with the next winter games also "local" in China.

The new generation of athletes are a breath of fresh air from the stale constricted teams of years gone by. Stepping outside of the box is the way to go.

@ Educator thanks. Those young ages would seem Japan will be dominate at olympics for years to come, as long as the young athletes stay hungry of course.I cant think many (or any) other nations would have such young athletes winning medals already. And of course for the Summer Games there are many young Japanese possible medalists, for example Kiryu-chan in 100 metres sprint is highly favored to be in the mix for Gold in 2020. Also, the girl skateboarding Champion is only 12. The Japanese school sports system is producing world level professionals from the ages of 16 or 17.

Overall I think this was a great Olympics for Japan, so many great stories told and it should give a lot of positive role models to the younger generation, especially women who are traditionally given second-rate standing in sport. Well done to the Olympians!

Incredibly successful Olympics for Japan, really well done!

Good Olympics although the lack of public support at some events (alpine skiing, cross country, biathlon etc) was a bit disappointing.

One thing i particularly love about Winter O is that most athletes are 'country ppl' who often grew up in mountainous, isolated regions i.e they are 'true' locals. Which means a/ nations are less likely to poach talent from Africa and other remote/poor countries and b/ greedy mercenary athletes after big $ simply don't have the skills to compete in those sports. All in all, much better than what we see in most other sports which are quickly becoming a joke at international level. Also love the North Am vs old Europe rivalry at winter O, healthy/playful banter between ppl who respect each other.

One last thing: no more 'sports' that rely solely on often biased and corruptible judges to determine the winner please (figure skating, freestyle and some snowboard disciplines).

@JoeInTokyo what about weighted based on country population?

On another note, i love snowboarding but the olympic snowboarding events did nothing to motivate me to get better in pipe or big air. However, i watched a lot of curling for some reason (timing? always seemed to be on when i switched on the TV). And now i am thoroughly intrigued. Skill, strategy, and sliding around on slippery shoes, i think it would be a lot of fun. Unfortunately i am guessing curling places will be full for the rest of winter, i dont think i was the only one that got hooked on it.

An excellent, entertaining and well-run Games - I thoroughly enjoyed watching it! So many nations had their best ever Winter Games: Japan, Norway (best overall ever!), South Korea, Great Britain, New Zealand - possibly Germany and Canada? Australia equalled their best ever. Im sure there were many more too.

My favourite event was short-track skating, absolute chaos but hugely fun to watch!

Rising force in world sports, showing the world they can be the best, whoa! hold on lets not get to ahead of ourselves yet, Japan has a long was to go before it can challenge the top 3~4 countries. Summer Olympics is far more competitive than the Winter

I quite enjoyed these winter Olympics and are sad they had concluded. I really feel that curling is the big winner in Japan. Both men's and women's teams did great, and the bronze medal was the icing on the cake. I also think that of all the sports, curling must be the most exhaustive mentally. While other sports, require more physical attributes, curling last the entire two weeks, and each game is pressure packed, without a minute to let down your guard(pun intended). Off by a cm and you lose the bronze medal as Muirhead experienced. So good for all the participants, hope they do better in Beijing!

Why? Simply because winning medals (without doping) obviously means a country's sports program is effective and world class. Kids and other athletes get inspired by people winning medals so targets are natural.

That is not necessarily the case. The classic example is Team GB which is winning an increasingly high number of medals by throwing money at minor sports like rowing, canoeing, luge/skeleton and track cycling. The Guardian recently reported that Norway's summer and winter Olympic teams combined run on less money than the UK spends on rowing and canoeing. Norway is plenty cold but has no bobsleigh track in the whole country. UK is gung ho for minor sports medals while there is a child obesity epidemic, schools are selling playing fields off to developers to pay for staff, and potentially mass participation sports like basketball and volleyball get very little funding. The last time I looked, the UK men's volleyball team was about 100th in the world, just below the Maldives (population 300,000). England famously has a tiny percentage of the qualified soccer coaches Germany has. Spending money on sports halls so lots of kids can play volleyball and get less fat would be far better than sponsoring some kid from private school to beat twenty other rich kids from other countries in an Olympic sailing event.

Anyway for me, the two best stories were the team of what looked like dads (led by a former bartender) winning the curling for the USA and Ledecker winning the super G and in the alpine snowboarding. Japan does not get the idea of doing multi sports at all, so I hope coaches finally sit up and take notice.

@Ganbare cool your hubris for a moment please. Japan isn't going to be 'dominating' any Olympics any time soon. Although the team has done very well and should be rightly commended, they could still be considered to be underachieving massively considering the population, funding and winter sports resources that this country has. Japan consistently gets outdone by S.Korea for example in both Olympics. They should be doing better at several sports such as speed skating and alpine sports.

That said, with 2020 coming up I'm certain this is a great time to be a young athlete in Japan, they must be getting funded very well.

It was a great performance by Japan's athletes. My question is, did Australia even turn up? LOL

It was great to watch. I think South Korea put on a good Olympics.

Hopefully the beautiful moment of friendship and mutual respect shown by Takagi and Lee is a glimpse into the future between the two nations.

That would be a move forward.

My question is, did Australia even turn up? LOL yes they got two silver and a bronze. considering Australia has almost no ski fields , very little snow and a population 1/5 of that of Japan, they did pretty well.

My question is, did Australia even turn up? LOL

With respect, you do realise the most medals Australia have ever won in a Winter Games is 3? Which they matched this time, albeit with no Gold. Realistically that is about their limit. For a nation with very little alpine sports tradition, and minimal funding for winter sports, they do pretty well down under (same goes for NZ).

*My question is, did Australia even turn up? LOL **yes they got two silver and a bronze. considering Australia has almost no ski fields , very little snow and a population 1/5 of that of Japan, they did pretty well.*

Was just a lighthearted comment (from Matt), good on him for not taking himself/oz too seriously (much better than the 'mate, we punch well above our weight' bs we get all year round on 7,9, 10 and fox channels).

Bottom line is, oz doesnt have a strong winter sports culture (snow and ice) and will never match euro and north american nations at winter O. A couple of medals here and there is probably the max they can get. Agree they did well though, and so did nz who were unlucky and could have got a couple more medals.

Re your 'we have no ski fields, snow etc', let's not forget the Netherlands are in the exact same situation yet they excel at a couple of niche winter sports. So it's not only about $ and/or geography but also culture (the Dutch are pretty ordinary in rugby, league, basketball and many other sports aussie athletes are good at). We're all different.

Also note, the # of medals increased from 291 in 2014 Sochi to 307 in 2018 Pyeonchang

The next Winter Olympics is again nearby, in China, so that should give Japan an advantage not needing long travel and acclimatize over farther away countries

Although host China would have more athletes and local support in the sports Japan medaled in

And in terms of efficiency, here are the results based on points per team size

I'm not sure the reason for this metric - team size should not be a penalty

Larger team size just means a nation qualified more of its athletes into Olympic-level ability. If a nation doesn't qualify its athletes like, say a hockey team, that's actually more a demerit that nation didn't develop its athletes to be good enough

One thing i particularly love about Winter O is that most athletes are 'country ppl' who often grew up in mountainous, isolated regions i.e they are 'true' locals. Which means a/ nations are less likely to poach talent from Africa and other remote/poor countries and b/ greedy mercenary athletes after big $ simply don't have the skills to compete in those sports.

Another barrier is the athletes have to had grown up in climates with ice or snow, so that limits the places where such athletes could come from

Ok, Japan did well, not great, for several reasons,  as lostrune2 mentions above,  There were more medals up for grasps, but secondly, about 2/3rds of the Russian team was not present. 

Someone here says , Japan will " dominate " for many years ??? Norway, a country with 8 million people is nr 1 in the medal table.  Please keep a bit of realism. Japan does well, not well enough and it certainly does not dominate. 

In Beijing, Japan will not make more but less medals probably as the Russians return and the Chinese will be preparing very very well.

And again, while Hanyu is certainly the best figure skater of the moment, he was not the best in Pyeonchang and he knows it. He should have been bronze, with the Spanish skater winning. But of course no one in japan will agree with that.

Japan did very well also because it engaged more foreign coaches and Japanese athletes go to train abroad. If the Japanese coaches finally learn how to coach, Japan can double its medal intake.  The Japanese coaches do not train athletes, their policy is  " last man standing "  so, very promising talents are destroyed early on and either are overtrained or give up all together on the sports at an early age.    

japan should do better in the alpine events, and it will in the coming years and cross country as Japan is a skiing nation.  Some models in snow boarding must also be taken into perspective. In some world cups, there are not even 30 women taking the start. 

But all in all, japan can be satisfied, not elated.