[Feature: Sports and Science] Roundtable: The Power of Science Considered with Athletes

The Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games are finally approaching. When discussing modern sports, science and technology have become indispensable themes. Today, I would like to have you talk about the present and future of sports, specifically from the perspectives of science and technology.

First, please start with a brief self-introduction.

I am currently serving as the head coach for the Japanese men's gymnastics team for the Paris Olympics. Exactly 20 years ago, I won a gold medal in the men's team gymnastics event at the Athens Olympics as an athlete. I am providing guidance based on those experiences, and I am also working with Ms. Tanimoto at the JOC to support athletes.

Beyond just technical coaching, I am involved in supporting athletes' careers, performance, and more recently, how to best provide things like well-being and integrity to them.

Also, since I work with Mr. Kato as part of the physical education staff at SFC, I find myself teaching everyone from students to elite athletes.

After graduating from the University of Tsukuba, I was able to win two gold medals in Olympic judo. After retiring, I became a coach and obtained a dietitian license at Hattori Nutrition College, while simultaneously studying sports medicine at the Hirosaki University Graduate School, which has conducted sports medicine research for many years.

My mentor was Toshihiko Koga, who won a gold medal at the Barcelona Olympics. He always gave such divinely inspired guidance that I had a very hard time understanding it at first (laughs). In that sense, I love talking about the field of science and have been looking forward to today.

Over the last five or six years, leading up to the Tokyo Olympics, I had the opportunity to study the brains of para-athletes. I discovered that the brains of athletes with disabilities undergo tremendous changes, and that is currently the main focus of my research. Since I originally did research in rehabilitation, I thought this was an excellent model and have been researching it with great interest.

On the other hand, through my connection with Mr. Kato, I am also doing quite a bit of scientific research on baseball.

I began my career working on training for injured athletes, the elderly, and pregnant women at a rehabilitation facility in a medical university. This led me to deepen my involvement in the field of sports science, which applies science to exercise and training.

Since my specialty is "muscles," I don't provide scientific support for just one specific sport; instead, I support athletes in various disciplines such as track and field, baseball, swimming, and golf.

Now, for the first topic, what changes do you feel science or technology have brought to the world of sports?

I have been involved in gymnastics for a long time, but gymnastics was, if anything, at the opposite pole of sports biomechanics and sports science. For a long time, focusing on one's inner self and sensations was valued more than scientific aspects, making it a sport that was slow to accept science.

In this context, the fairness of scoring and the rules of gymnastics are becoming increasingly complex. The types of judging are constantly increasing, and to ensure fairness, the current rule involves discarding the scores of four judges to calculate the final mark. This means that a competition cannot be easily held unless there are 8 to 9 judges per event.

As a solution to these two challenges—fairness and the sustainability of the sport—there was a discussion about introducing AI scoring support. In fact, at the Tokyo Olympics, AI scoring support was introduced as reference judging for some events. For the Paris Olympics, there is a move to introduce AI scoring support as reference judging for all men's and women's events.

Gymnastics rules have also evolved. Thirty years ago, because definitions of mastery and originality were vague, scoring changed to quantitative evaluations, such as whether a hold lasted for two seconds or whether a reference joint angle deviated by more than 45 degrees. Since that foundation already existed, the idea emerged that computers should judge angles and measure precise two-second holds.

However, while the rules specify a two-second hold or a 45-degree angle, the scoring by judges with the highest-level licenses can actually differ from an actual two seconds. This raises the issue of whether we should score based on an actual two seconds, or whether we should change the rules since humans perceive 1.8 seconds as two seconds.

Furthermore, since the definition of which points are connected to form a 45-degree angle has not been clearly defined, the introduction of AI support is creating a situation where we must establish clear definitions.

In any case, I believe things will progress gradually in light of the sustainability and fairness of gymnastics—such as securing judges and the associated costs—as well as the entertainment value of making it easy to understand. Putting aside emotional arguments, the important point is whether we can have a flat discussion about what is best for us.

In fact, at Wimbledon in tennis, in/out calls are judged by machines; soccer has VAR (Video Assistant Referee); and even in baseball, talk of introducing machines is gradually emerging.

In my field of research, it is known that an illusion called the flash-lag effect often occurs during offside judgments in soccer, which inevitably makes humans more likely to call an offside. There are things that human cognition and judgment simply cannot eliminate. I believe that is exactly the brain mechanism that Mr. Nakazawa is working on.

I think serious discussion is needed on how to use machines there, but does this mean that a reconciliation with the feeling that "humans are more important, after all" will become more prominent in the future?

That's right. Also, gymnastics has an artistic side, and I think the question of whether a machine can truly evaluate artistry will remain a challenge until the end. However, looking at recent video generation software like OpenAI's Sora, I feel we are entering an era where people might think AI can do that easily as well.

In judo, angles have finally been introduced for judging Ippon and Waza-ari. The definitions were revised, but as a result, people began to question what the essence of judo is in the first place.

To change the subject slightly, in the case of judo, under the implicit pressure that Japan must win gold medals, we take a focused perspective on how to secure that gold. While sports like baseball and soccer study the opponent's weaknesses to build strategies, in judo, we focus our analysis on the opponent's "habits" rather than their weaknesses.

Since habits are ingrained, the scientific research department analyzes hundreds of matches per tournament to identify the habits of not only the athletes but also the referees. They identify things like whether a referee always gives a penalty (shido) during a certain time frame or from which angle they view the action. For athletes, they list everything: what technique they use first, or which part of the collar they grab when they are panicked. By doing this, the way to win gradually becomes clear. I think that has changed significantly in the judo world as well.

However, in the end, it is still the most capable athletes who rise to the top at the Olympics. I think my own victory was a fluke, but research apparently shows that at the Olympics, the strongest person at that moment wins.

On the other hand, some athletes were forbidden from watching video footage because it was believed that preconceptions would create a moment of hesitation. I was one of them, but when I watch videos now that I'm retired, the way to win is easily apparent. But when I was an athlete, they wouldn't let me see them at all. It was to ensure that intuition—the split-second reaction—would not be clouded by doubt.

That's interesting. We often talk about peak performance; is there also a focus on what to do to become the person in the best condition at that specific moment?

Yes, there is. In my case, I think controlling "happiness hormones" is probably how I would put it into words. I think entering "the zone" is ultimately about that. Anyway, I was extremely conscious of fighting with a calm mind.

There is something I would definitely like to get everyone's advice on. Earlier, I mentioned that in gymnastics, people tend to value their own sensations, which I think connects to Ms. Tanimoto's story about "not watching videos."

In gymnastics, many athletes still feel that their own sensations are more important than the actual measurement of how many centimeters something was. Some coaches feel the same way. However, there are naturally times when showing things scientifically with numbers makes them easier to understand or more convincing.

I think if you do nothing but measure, you become dependent on it, and if those numbers don't appear, you might get dragged down thinking you're in bad shape—there are negative aspects. So, I want to convey only the truly important scientific information to the athletes. But I feel that often science cannot be introduced because of the fear of the negative effects of conveying it.

I'm sure video has definitely positive aspects if used well. But conversely, because it can erase the good parts, I think both coaches and athletes fear change. Athletes going to the Olympics have their own established ways of doing things, and coaches are afraid of what might happen if an athlete's condition worsens due to a change, so they sometimes can't bring themselves to step in.

Based on that psychology, how should we engage with science? I feel this is a challenge where the sports world is struggling to progress. What are your thoughts?

What you're talking about is the case of ultimate, high-level skills at the very top level. In the case of high-level skills, the skill might not be executed due to a tiny difference in the person's sensation; it's extremely delicate. This is well understood in neuroscience as well.

In the gymnastics example, if you can't imagine it in your head, you definitely can't perform the technique. Only the individual knows what kind of sensation comes back when they try to move according to that image. I think they are constantly cross-referencing, thinking, "I did it this way and it felt like this."

Even if they are told numerically that an angle was off by a certain number of degrees, it probably won't click. They only truly understand it after cross-referencing it with how it felt when they actually moved 10 degrees. That's why I think the more elite the level, the more difficult it is, because numerical or visual information from videos ultimately isn't truly understood unless it is cross-referenced with the person's internal sensations.

Certainly, there are fields where it's easy to introduce science and areas where interpretation is difficult. My field, which deals with the physical, has relatively lower hurdles, but even so, I don't think there are that many findings that can be immediately applied to top-level competitive sports.

What Mr. Mizutori said is an essential point about how scientific support should be. I think it shows the importance of whether the people involved as a team—athletes, coaches, analysts—share an understanding of how to face what science is seeing (or trying to see).

Also, it's common for athletes to become too conscious of the data collected from them, but that is not the intention of the researchers taking the data either. Training is likely necessary for how to perceive and digest objective information, and more easy-to-understand ways of communicating and presenting it are also important. I want to believe that through such repeated alignment, the gap between the objective and the subjective will be filled, leading to true understanding.

By the way, whether it's gymnastics or judo, I feel that compared to the past, modern Japanese athletes don't seem to think they have a weak mentality anymore. I think they are truly mentally strong, but since when have they been doing special mental conditioning?

I'm not sure if I count as a "modern" athlete, but I was quite involved in what you'd call sports psychology. The Athens Olympics were a year and a half after I tore my ACL. During the preparation period for that, I visited the psychology lab at JISS (Japan Institute of Sports Sciences), made a plan for self-analysis and technique analysis, and worked backward to prepare for the Olympics.

First, as a premise, it's actually very scary to think about whether you can truly perform in a match. So, to address that, I got to know my own characteristics and thought about what kind of way I would win and how I could achieve maximum performance, saying, "Let's prepare so I can face it with confidence." I would confirm that if I performed this way at the qualifiers, I would surely make the team. To achieve that, I worked backward to decide what to do by when.

In that process, as a psychological challenge, I realized I had characteristics like getting nervous easily in matches and being prone to worrying about scores and other athletes. So, while imagining the Olympic qualifiers, I simulated how I would handle it during the actual event before performing. In that way, I approached it with psychological preparation, accumulating simulated experiences so that I could compete with composure.

As for current athletes, my overall impression is that they have a sense of agency. They do it because they enjoy it. There's an atmosphere of "I came this far because I wanted to achieve a goal with my teammates," which is completely different from the past.

Communication among teammates to share dreams and move toward them is very active, and sharing information on techniques and encouraging each other during matches has clearly increased. I think it's possible that these aspects are having a positive influence.

Is there anything you are doing as a team?

For the team building I'm currently working on, I try to ensure that everyone shares what their required roles are and what they want to achieve.

At the first training camp, we bring out what we truly think and verbalize things like the actions we should take and post them up.

Gymnastics looks like an individual sport, but by doing it as team building and as an organization, a mood or a pushing force can emerge.

That's right. It's an individual sport, but the importance of sensation is high, so it's vital how that information sharing is generated within the team. Therefore, having athletes teach each other is important for improving competitive ability, and I want to create a friendly atmosphere as much as possible.

In that sense, the team event is indeed important.

Yes. The motivation of "let's all win the team event together" has become the most important part.

Judo also has team events, doesn't it?

Yes, but since it's a combat sport, it's different again.

There's one thing I'd like to ask. Based on experience, athletes demonstrate incredible power when they receive affection. I've always wondered what this is. When you look for commonalities among successful athletes, this definitely comes in as a condition. Also, I think winners have luck on their side, but what is this luck driven by?

For example, to win at the Olympics, we prepare to attract luck, practice sleeping so we can sleep even the night before a nerve-wracking match, and even practice eating so we can eat breakfast—the source of energy—even if we're nervous on the morning of the event. It was a world where you couldn't win unless you pushed things to that extent, so I want to convey this in scientific terms.

When you say affection, whose affection do you mean?

From coaches, family, and people around them.

For example, I've heard that even if 99% of people on SNS are slanderous, if you feel a kind of affection from the 1% who believe in you, you are very strong. Kaori Icho, the wrestler, says the same thing. Having someone who believes in you and having affection there creates something inside yourself. I wonder what that is.

Looking at the people around me, I also think that people with a sense of self-esteem, or a groundless confidence that they can do it, are quite strong. Hearing your story, I thought that being able to believe in yourself might be about someone believing in you immensely.

Isn't that how children are? By praising them and saying, "That's great, you're amazing, you're a genius," a sense of self-esteem that "I can definitely do it" is nurtured.

In psychology, we often use the term self-efficacy. Whether or not you think you can do it is indeed very important, but perhaps having people around you think "this person can do it"—like collective efficacy—leads to affection. I wonder if that transforms into something like the person's own confidence.

So the point is that the fulfillment of the heart through affection leads to high performance.

Exactly. If we knew what that was, I'm sure we could consciously bring ourselves into that state.

As Mr. Mizutori said earlier, the parts that deviate slightly from scientific evidence are important, and as Mr. Nakazawa also said, everyone still believes there are parts that cannot be turned into data.

I think so. Personally, I am currently very interested in and trying to research how to bring out one's power in the actual event. Ultimately, it's about emotions like feeling affection or self-efficacy; the emotional system acts on the brain's emotions, and if these emotions are in a good state, performance can be well executed.

However, fear or negative emotions move the body in a bad direction. I am currently researching that very fundamental area, but I think this part is actually very late in becoming a subject of science. I am also very interested in the interaction of influences between the emotional system and the motor system.

We have now reached a point where it seems possible to bring about good performance by applying electrical stimulation to a certain part of the brain and changing the activity of the emotional part. The possibility is definitely there, but since it's an unknown world, we are at the stage of approaching it from now on.

It's already being done as a treatment for things like depression, isn't it?

It's called Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), where stimulation is applied to a certain part of the brain. For depression, it has become a standard treatment now; it has no side effects like medicine, and it doesn't involve opening a hole in the brain.

This could also be used by athletes to increase motivation.

So you would directly manipulate the brain to increase motivation.

Clashing right before the match. But that era is also close, isn't it?

Technologically, it's already possible. TMS is used as a matter of course in the field of physiology.

I've experienced it myself, and what's surprising is that while you don't feel any pain, when the motor cortex is stimulated, your hands move regardless of your consciousness. It's truly mysterious, or rather, a bit scary.

Professor Junichi Ushiyama at SFC is also doing that. I was a subject as well, and it seems that gymnasts have different reactions than usual because they undergo training that activates degenerated neural circuits.

Among long jumpers with prosthetic legs, it's known that some people's muscles that move the prosthetic leg are activated by brain stimulation on the same side. That's where I started my research on the brains of Paralympic athletes.

There are definitely people who are strong in matches, so if that mechanism could be elucidated, it would be truly amazing.

It's a question of how far we can delve into the mental aspect. For example, mental training and applied psychology are difficult to turn into data, so they don't easily become science. However, it's interesting to see the people on the front lines of mental training change.

The talk about intuition and entering the "zone" is exactly like that. When I spoke with Yoshiharu Habu, the shogi player, I initially thought that shogi players played while thinking about many things, but he said that they actually try not to think as much as possible to let their intuition work. Making a judgment in one or two seconds on the spot is very important, and that intuition is said to be correct about 70% of the time.

That's quite similar to sports; I think if you can react instantly with intuition without thinking about unnecessary things as much as possible, you can move your body well. I think that part is actually important in terms of mental attitude.

I'd like to ask one thing there. Ms. Tanimoto mentioned "watching for habits." Watching for habits means you move when you feel like "Okay, it's coming soon" or "That movement" has arrived, right? So, what is the relationship between the importance of preparation and intuition? Is it correct to understand that you definitely keep in mind through analysis that such-and-such a player has such-and-such a habit?

Basically, I am the intuitive type. So, at the practice stage, I prepare so that my body can react first in any situation.

I think Ms. Tanimoto probably had many "drawers" of options. You don't constantly focus on the opponent's habits, but rather keep them ready so you can use them instantly when the time comes. In psychology, this is called long-term working memory—things that are in long-term memory but can be used temporarily within working memory. In short, it means having many drawers prepared.

Perhaps intuition is about keeping those drawers open and always being ready to use them without thinking about unnecessary things. I think that's probably something you have as experience.

So, it's because you have drawers that you've naturally acquired that you can react when you see the opponent's movement.

In fact, in experiments where people are shown a clip for about a second and asked, "What will you do next?", those with a lot of experience have many more options and are faster.

Regarding the talk about "entering the zone," the word "zone" is actually used in psychology as well, but we can't clearly say this is the zone. This is because not everyone can enter it, and the person themselves cannot explain how they enter it. Therefore, it cannot be evaluated objectively.

Perhaps you two have experienced it, but many people describe a mysterious sensation, like their body moving on its own, or their consciousness fading as a result, so I think it probably does exist. What do you think?

I'm also curious about the zone. I describe it as the "door to the zone," and occasionally it opens when I knock. When I asked Tadahiro Nomura, the judoka who won three consecutive Olympic gold medals, what it was like, he said, "Basically, it opens for me if I knock."

Then, being curious, I asked Saori Yoshida, the wrestler who also won three consecutive titles, and she said she couldn't even see the door to the zone itself. However, she said that only when she lost in the final at the Rio Olympics with a fourth consecutive title on the line, she could see that the door to the zone was closed.

That must be a sensation felt by those at the very, very top. Since not everyone can experience how to reach that ultimate state, I think it's a difficult area. It would be amazing if everyone could do it.

I'm looking forward to the elucidation. It would be amazing if we could enter it by stimulating this part of the brain (laughs).

I don't know what the zone is either, but I was talking with Kohei Uchimura, and sometimes when standing at the start line for the vault, he gets a feeling like, "Oh, I can definitely do this." Uchimura said that he can see the trajectory of his own performance when he stands there, so he's just following it. I can't see my performance that vividly, but I have a sense of knowing whether I can do it or not.

That also happens for the entire match; sometimes I get a feeling like, "Let me perform quickly," because I can see for myself that I definitely won't fail this match. I think that kind of feeling is what it's like to be in the zone.

I understand. There really is something like that, isn't there?

I think the state called the zone is when things are already automated, and you even forget you're concentrating, and only your body moves.

That's the kind of talk about the zone I hear from others too. It means being completely absorbed, doesn't it?

It might not be the zone, but there's often talk about looking back later and becoming conscious of what was happening at that time. In terms of the brain, there's a term called postdiction; what the brain judges isn't that an emotion is born and then you act after you understand, but rather that after the body reacts first, it remains in your consciousness later as "that's what happened then." I think the zone might be something close to that.

There's a possibility that the body moves on its own, and when you think about it later, a reversal in time has occurred where you realize what you were doing.

Right after I won the gold medal, I was still slapping my face to psych myself up and prepare. Then I thought, "Oh, that's right. I won," and my consciousness caught up later.

When I look back at the match, what felt like 10 seconds with my normal senses is actually just an instant when I see the video. So, I think I must have been in a state of super-concentration.

That's probably completely the zone. It's the sensation of time expanding. How the brain organizes time is also interesting.

Information arrives with a delay.

People say that, don't they? Does the sense of time get distorted and expand?

That's truly mysterious.

Changing the subject a bit, I'd like to talk about the lives and careers of athletes. Since you're all involved in various ways, such as how athletes get better, what are your thoughts on that?

In terms of effort versus talent, I personally perceive myself as more of the effort type. However, when I accompanied the team as a director to the Rio Olympics, I conducted a survey on what type they were, including five gold medalists like Uchimura and Kenzo Shirai.

Then, everyone gave answers like, "I'm the effort type." From my perspective, both Uchimura and Shirai look like bundles of talent, but in their own minds, it seemed they understood it as the result of having done what they needed to do.

Also, in those responses, there was an item asking whether the practice environment was good or bad, and people who might be seen by others as having a poor environment invariably answered "it was good."

This is my own interpretation, but I think there's also a power to perceive the given environment positively. I tore my anterior cruciate ligament before the Olympics and was objectively considered unlucky. But at that time, I was able to encounter sports psychology, so I have the perception that such preparation was necessary to go to the Olympics.

I felt that he, who answered "it was good," probably also had a positive way of thinking, like "because of this environment, I was able to acquire this ability," even if the practice environment itself wasn't necessarily good.

Since last year, I've been doing various surveys with students in the Keio Athletic Association. Students in clubs that are getting results said that while their environment isn't that good, they are constantly thinking about how they can win within it.

I also think it's very important to be able to objectively perceive what should be done in a given environment, even if it's not a blessed one. Conversely, I think a blessed environment can be difficult in some ways.

That's true. This is a story from Masayo Imura of artistic swimming. Before JISS was built, there were almost no deep pools for synchronized swimming in Japan, and even the national team had to borrow facilities from some university.

They were doing it at the University of Tokyo.

They borrowed the university and only had two hours. But the concentration at that time was extraordinary; because they could only do it there, their greed and concentration for practice—to get everything done—was amazing.

After JISS was built, their competitive power dropped for a while. She said it was because they were in an environment where they could practice anytime, and that concentration became dull. Certainly, the environment improved, but she was talking about which one was better in the end.

I feel that the awareness of how one can perceive the environment in that way leads significantly to competitive power.

That's an interesting point. Ms. Tanimoto, what kind of things are you doing now regarding how to improve the Olympic Village for the athletes?

Regarding the Olympic Village, I think it's important to satisfy the athletes' wishes, but I also want to create the "plus-alpha" part that comes from interaction with other sports. I think good things will always work positively as a synergistic effect.

I felt that at the Athens Olympics. Kosuke Kitajima and others were in the room right across from us, and the swimming team was getting excited. Then the judo team got excited along with them.

Since I felt that it spreads to people in other sports like that, I thought it would be good to have a place in the Olympic Village where people can interact. Now, I feel like I'm gradually giving that shape.

To be a bit more specific, we're creating rooms in the Olympic Village, bringing in manga and such from Japan in the form of an athlete cafe or manga cafe, so that athletes can relax there and naturally interact with people from other sports.

The IOC is now also placing great importance on having people like welfare officers to help with mental conditioning. By having welfare officers stop by the manga cafe to create an environment where people can talk casually, or by setting up a trainer room where athletes pass by most frequently, the number of athletes stopping by to ask for care has increased considerably.

The number of people doing research after their careers as athletes is also increasing.

Mr. Mizutori's and Ms. Tanimoto's careers are examples, but close to me is Kenta Chida, who won a silver medal in the fencing team event at the London Olympics. Currently, he is a faculty member of the Faculty of Policy Management while studying at the Keio Graduate School of System Design and Management.

We are doing biomechanics research together to verbalize and effectively communicate his own experiences, and I really sympathize with his stance of aiming for coaching backed by science.

When moving careers, it takes a lot of courage to enter a completely different field, but the experience of being a medalist or competing in a major tournament is not something many people have. So, as a way to generalize the knowledge gained at the top and spread it to the world, I think positions as researchers or university faculty are something we can look forward to.

I think it's also good for researchers who have been engaged in research for a long time because it increases their "drawers" of knowledge.

I also think it's very important for former athletes to increasingly enter the field of research. I think all athletes are researchers to begin with.

They are constantly thinking about how to win and how to get better. I think that is exactly the image of a researcher, so I hope they will increasingly enter the research field.

It's true that there are fields that are difficult to turn into science, but there are also fields that are easy to quantify from an athlete's unique perspective.

For example, the aforementioned biomechanics and fields related to the body are areas that are easy to perceive objectively, so the reconciliation of the subjective and objective often becomes a research theme. Not just researchers, but I often hear about people who were on the Japanese national team becoming yoga or Pilates instructors or trainers, and I feel these are fields with an affinity for athletes who used their bodies as their capital.

Regarding the talk of science, a lot of technology has come out and various measurements can be made, but it's also very important to communicate that to the field in words they understand, and this part is actually extremely difficult.

When we show them that an analysis in a study showed such-and-such an angle, it often ends with them just saying, "Oh, I see." Therefore, we are now working on training people who can act as a bridge to connect that to performance improvement. In that case, former athletes are the perfect people because they have the most experience and knowledge of what they have done in the field.

The number of people involved in sports in various ways is really increasing. Even for those who are not former athletes, I think there is a possibility to be active by making full use of technology, such as wanting to become an analyzer or wanting to create an app.

I think it's the same at Keio, but in the athletic clubs at the University of Tokyo, the number of students who join saying they want to be analysts from the start, rather than players, is increasing. Previously, it felt like injured players would take on that role, but now it's from the beginning.

Our baseball team also has about 10 analysts, and many of them are students with no baseball experience. I believe an analyst from the University of Tokyo's soccer club has a contract with a team in a European league.

That's right. It's becoming a business.

An increasing number of companies are also particular about visualizing data properly so that people other than those involved can understand it.

As for methods of sharing data, by using SNS or making full use of networks, people in different locations can now immediately view videos or analyzed footage, and information is being transmitted. If the purpose can be made clear, it becomes a very good reference.

Recently on YouTube, famous players like Yu Darvish in baseball have been sharing incredible techniques. Because of this, there are stories in some circles that children now have more knowledge than youth baseball coaches and don't listen to what the coaches say.

However, I think it's an interesting era because there are positive aspects to society as a whole changing in that way.

I hear the same stories in professional baseball. Like, "Coach, you're wrong" (laughs).

Finally, I would like to hear your opinions on how sports will develop in the future, including science and technology. Please also share what you expect from universities.

Science has already entered sports in a massive way, and baseball is at the cutting edge of modern science. Whether it's data analysis or video analysis, military technology has been repurposed, and ball trajectories are now analyzed using rocket ballistics. We are being forced to change whether we like it or not.

On the other hand, Mr. Mizutori's talk about gymnastics was very interesting, and I think actual physical movement is still ahead of science. There are still many areas like that, but I worry that if technology continues to permeate at the current speed, it might lead to negative side effects.

For example, the traditional appeal of sports—being deeply moved by the performance of top athletes at the Olympics—might be somewhat dampened if too much science is involved. From an entertainment perspective, there is a possibility it could become less interesting than before, so I want to keep an eye on those potential drawbacks.

From a slightly different perspective, the number of children is decreasing, and in some regions, the number of children participating in specific sports has dropped so much that tournaments can no longer be held. Therefore, I think we will see more children playing two or more sports, as is common overseas.

On the other hand, there are children who are not good at sports, so there is a risk that polarization will increase further. However, even among those who aren't athletic, there are children who could excel as analyzers, as mentioned earlier, or who have the excellent communication skills needed for managers and trainers. Personally, I hope universities and graduate schools will draw out that potential and cultivate human resources who can expand the scope of sports into other fields in the future.

If we don't do that, the number of people involved in sports will decrease, and there will be fewer people to support athletes or watch sports.

It is difficult for universities to handle everything, but I think it is necessary for universities to create an environment where the right people can be placed in the right positions. I believe Keio has a strength in its affiliated schools, so I want to strengthen that collaboration.

What I expect from a university is a place where one can study specialized fields. After retiring, I wanted to learn about expressiveness. I felt frustrated during lectures after winning the gold medal because I couldn't get my message across to everyone, and I realized that skills like data-based numbers and languages are important as a form of expressiveness to communicate with the public.

I want to be someone who can convey the experience of winning an Olympic gold medal. To become a person with that added value, I felt I had to learn that kind of expressiveness, so I went back to university to study. I would definitely like students to learn expressiveness at university as a means to convey their specialized knowledge.

I think that as scientific knowledge and technology are introduced, there may be parts of sports that evolve and parts that, conversely, degenerate.

Regarding degeneration, for example, in gymnastics, a technique called the one-armed giant swing on the horizontal bar has been disappearing recently. It was done quite often in Yukio Iketani's era, but it is rarely done now. This is because it has become scientifically clear that rotating with one arm increases the incidence of shoulder injuries and places a heavy physical load on the body.

Also, society is becoming stricter about things like preventing heatstroke, and I feel that various things are being stopped based on scientific judgment, saying "this is not good, so let's stop doing it."

Of course, introducing a scientific perspective for safety is essential, but as a result, it might become harder for extraordinary athletes or records that defy common sense to emerge and survive.

It depends on whether you focus on records and top athletes or view sports from the perspective of safety and popularization, but I felt there are both expectations for science and concerns about it going too far.

I agree there are aspects that degenerate when too much science is involved. For example, if you speak logically about the Summer Koshien (High School Baseball Championship), the conclusion would be "let's stop doing this." But high school players aim for that and can't stop.

Listening to everyone's stories, I thought the fact that various changes are occurring is very interesting in itself. I believe new things will continue to happen. In that context, when reconsidering the strengths of Japanese people from an international perspective—actually, the baseball club has a project to go play baseball in Africa in August—what is emphasized there is being polite and being able to give proper greetings.

I feel once again that those are areas we must maintain as part of our Japanese identity. Amidst things that change and things that don't, I look forward in many ways to seeing how things will develop as new science continues to be introduced.

Thank you very much for today.