ROAD TO BEIJING: Final training for Japan

Japan’s badminton Olympians began their final training camp on July 20 at the National Training Centre in Tokyo. They will be training there for two weeks but both players and staff took some time out to talk to the press about their methods and their objectives.

Story and photos by Miyuki Komiya, Badzine Correspondent Live in Tokyo

Throughout the camp, they will be working on reinforcing their physical strength and improving both technical and mental aspects of their game.

Park Joo-Bong, the former Olympic gold medallist in men’s doubles who is now in charge of Japan’s national team, suggested some of the ideas for this camp. One of them is image training using DVDs of the players’ matches.

"There is so much pressure in the Olympics," explains Park. "Players need to remove the pressure and to have confidence in themselves to perform well. As one way of helping them do this, we have prepared a DVD for each player to easily remember their best performance."

The DVD for Ogura/Shiota has been prepared. One match featured on it is from their bronze medal performance at the Asian Badminton Championships in 2006. Another one is from the 2007 Malaysia Open when they defeated defending Olympic champions Yang Wei and Zhang Jiewen.

"I agreed with the selections for us,” Shiota said. “I believe that I had my best performances in those matches."

Ogura and Shiota don’t feel they are at their peak performance level yet. The pair of beauties lost to Japan’s other Olympic doubles pair Suetsuna/Maeda in a tournament two weeks ago. That tournament was Ogura's first after she sustained a lower back injury. Her lower back is getting better, but still has not healed completely. Ogura had been focusing only on physical training for about two months without ever hitting a shuttle so, needless to say, she wasn't able to play at the same level as before she was injured.

"We will rebuild our combination to get back to our top level in this camp,” Shiota said. “We will do it with positive thinking".

"I feel my back is getting better. I am sure that I will be going to Beijing with confidence," Ogura added.

After these comment, the pair returned to the court to resume their training. Ogura performed a powerful smash and moved quickly, making it appear that she is perfect condition.

The Japan Badminton Association is expecting a Japan’s first Olympic medal in Beijing. Despite the international success that Japanese shuttlers have enjoyed recently, they have yet to send their flag flying above the Olympic podium. However, it has been mainly since the introduction of the rally point system, which will be used for the first time at these Olympics, that the Japanese players have recorded most of their best international results.

Suetsuna/Maeda reached the finals of the Djarum Indonesia Open Super Series last month while Ogura/Shiota and Sakamoto/Ikeda both won bronze medals in the 2007 World Championships. The latter pair also reached the semi-finals of the All England this year. Masuda/Ohtsuka got a win from Malaysians Koo and Tan at the French Open last fall, just a few weeks after beating Korea’s Lee/Jung at home.

Singles stars have also seen some success. Shoji Sato beat Peter Gade in the Thomas Cup this year while Eriko Hirose won bronze in two Super Series events last year, including the Singapore Open, where she beat both Wang Chen and Zhu Lin.

At the press conference that kicked off the training camp, each of the Olympians - all sporting their new Olympic uniforms (pictured below) - reiterated that they want to get a medal in the Beijing Olympics. To do this, they will all need to put in performances that will warrant easy selection for their next “Best of” training DVDs.

Kinji Zeniya, who has supported the Japanese National Team for a long time, said "We believe all of them have a chance to get a medal when they can play decisively and with courage. This rally system has an element of chance. Our players may surprise everyone with some good results."

All of the Olympians, as well as the staff who are working with them, are determined to inscribe the name of the first Japanese medallists on badminton history.

Masuda/Otsuka have even enlisted the help of Candra Wijaya. Candra is their teammate on their professional team in Japan. Although he had to leave Japan for his own preparations, he helped to train this Japanese pair until last week.

In fact, Japan has decided to send take a group of analysts to the Olympic Games. Their task will be to analyze the game of the Japanese athletes’ opponents. In other sports, in volleyball in particular, the Japanese team has seen some recent success with this method.

The Japanese team will use every idea they can think of. Can these ideas really help the nation’s Olympians? We only can wait to see the results of the Olympics themselves to answer that question.

Many players and staff members, not all of them Japanese, have helped the Japanese Olympians to improve their performance. Instead of thankful words, the players themselves must show their appreciation by performing at their very best. In order to accomplish this, they are giving it their all in this last two weeks of training.

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