Paris – Team Japan’s gymnasts may have been missing their captain and ace at their Olympics debut in Paris on Sunday but they put in a solid performance that qualified them for the team final.
The teenage athletes’ Olympics journey had got off to an inauspicious start after 19-year-old captain Shoko Miyata was sent home just days before the Games for smoking in violation of the team’s code of conduct.
Kohane Ushioku, the oldest on the team and less than a month shy of her 20th birthday, said she did her best to make sure the hole Miyata left did not bring down the mood.
“I see my role as one to get the team’s spirits up,” the vault specialist said. “I said to my teammates, ’If we talk to each other a lot and stay calm everything will be OK.’
“We just really had a fun competition today that made the time fly by so quickly. There were nerves but more than that, we had fun and that was the best part.”
Her 16-year-old teammate, Haruka Nakamura, was satisfied with her performance on the big stage.
“I was able to pull off a big move on the parallel bars today that I haven’t used much in Japan, so that gave me a lot of confidence,” she said.
Nakamura said Miyata had sent the four-woman squad messages of encouragement throughout their pre-Games training and just ahead of the competition, pulling them along from afar.
Rina Kishi, who qualified with the highest score on the team, said the women completed their 16 routines without any major mistakes and were able to enjoy their moment in front of the huge audience, with a level of cheering and applause they weren’t used to back home.
“That was really great,” she said. “We’re still aiming for a medal, and I don’t know what will happen in the final but we’re not going to give up until the end.”
Japan qualified in fifth place out of the eight teams that advanced to the final, with Simone Biles’ U.S. squad positioned as the favorites to take the gold. The women’s team final takes place on Tuesday.
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