Not many years ago, members of Japan’s women’s ice hockey team were delivering pizzas to support themselves and keep their competition dreams alive.
Tomorrow, they are to take to the ice against Finland in the quarter-finals and make history as the first Japanese ice hockey team, men’s or women’s, to advance to the knockout round at the Olympics with their eyes firmly set on taking a medal.
“For us as a team, it’s only one stage along our journey,” defender Ayaka Toko, who, like a number of her teammates, also played in the Sochi 2014 and Pyeongchang 2018 Games, told Japanese media after Tuesday’s 3-2 win against the Czech Republic.
Photo: AFP
“We’ve been aiming at a medal these past four years and we’re only at the start,” she said. “We won’t want to say ‘we’re close,’ we want something tangible.”
It has been a long road to this point for “Smile Japan,” a nickname they gave themselves as encouragement during the qualifying process for Sochi.
First playing at the 1998 Nagano Games due to host nation privileges, where they lost all five games, the team qualified for Sochi despite their sport being perpetually overshadowed by soccer and baseball in Japan.
Working odd jobs, such as delivering pizzas, was the only way team members could earn money and gain the flexible hours they needed to keep their Olympic dreams alive.
After they qualified for Sochi, where they ultimately finished seventh, the Japanese Olympic Committee threw its weight behind them, helping all the players, except students, find full-time work at companies and businesses willing to hire Olympians.
The team climbed still higher at Pyeongchang to finish sixth, where they claimed their first Olympic win — against a unified Korean hockey team consisting of players from North Korea and South Korea in a match rife with political and cultural overtones.
Long-term national rivalry between the Asian neighbors spilled over into the arena, with boisterous chants of “Let’s Go Japan” being met with “Let’s Win Korea” — and an explosion of cheers when Korea scored, although Japan claimed the game 4-1.
This time, their world No. 6 ranking gained them an automatic qualification.
Although the Group B that Japan topped with its Tuesday win is comprised of lower seeds, including Denmark and the Czech Republic, the team have for years far outshone their male Japanese counterparts — who last qualified for any Games in 1980, outside of their automatic Nagano qualification.
The long popularity of men’s ice hockey in the northern hemisphere might work against Japan’s men, while modern ideas of gender parity likely help its women in a smaller competitive population, said Hirotaka Matsuoka, a sports marketing professor at Tokyo’s Waseda University.
“Women’s ice hockey has a smaller number of players than men’s, and there are probably not as many countries that are focusing on improving their athletic level,” he said.
Despite their success, “Smile Japan” still fights for attention in Japan.
Yesterday, all eyes were focused on men’s figure skating and the performance of double Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu, who ultimately finished fourth.
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