4 *** Wednesday 24 July 2019 The Daily Telegraph
Tokyo 2020 One Year To Go
INSIDE THE HI-TECH HQ GIVING
I
t was five years ago, just as the
rest of the Olympic world were
firmly fixing their gaze on Rio
de Janeiro, that the planning
began in earnest. Discreet trips
to Tokyo gradually accelerated,
contacts were established, local
intelligence was sourced and
bookings were already being made.
It is a process that has only
quickened as the months have
ticked down to the stage today,
with exactly one year until the
historic opening ceremony in
Tokyo, where Team GB can predict
with some confidence that their
squad of about 400 athletes will
have never arrived at an Olympic
Games better prepared.
The Daily Telegraph was granted
full access earlier this month to
Team GB’s pre-Games preparatory
camp in Yokohama, and to a
£1 million project to temporarily
transform a local state school in the
heart of the Olympic Park into
their own bespoke performance
lodge. “We think it will be the
jewel in our crown,” says Mark
England, Team GB’s chef de
mission ahead of his sixth summer
Olympics and Paralympics.
It has been a process that takes
in everything from the most
marginal of gains to the decisions
that helped in Rio translate those
95 athletes with “top-six medal
potential” into 27 golds, 23 silvers
and 17 bronzes. “It is about giving
everyone the best chance,”
England says. “A 67 medal return
was phenomenal – we hope to be
in that position again, but it gets
tougher.”
Innovations for next year
include working with Deloitte to
produce immersive technology so
that even those athletes and staff
who have not physically been in
Japan will be able to gain a
powerful visual, emotional and
practical feel for what to expect.
There is also a plan to engage
with the British Tokyo team of
1964 and some of the Team GB
clothing next year will be inspired
by designs that were worn by
legends such as Ann Packer and
Lynn Davies 56 years earlier.
First stop on our tour is the
Yokohama International Pool, aA £1 million lodge, immersive technology and British mattresses – all are playing
crucial roles in Olympic preparations, reports Jeremy Wilson in Yokohama
Sir Chris Hoy and Dame Katherine
Grainger will share their stories.
There is perhaps no sport in
which it is more important to
experience local conditions than
sailing and at Hayama Port, 30
miles south of Tokyo, another
dedicated hub of British athletes
could be found. They included
Hannah Mills, who will be going for
a record-breaking third consecu-
tive Olympic medal next year. The
sailors spend weeks at a time living
in a very quiet Japanese village and,
while Mills admitted the tranquil-
lity could become mentally testing,
she knows it is crucial to gather
detailed experience of the nuanced
local weather and sea conditions.50-metre Fina-accredited facility,
where British swimmers and divers
will not only base themselves in
the final weeks before entering the
Olympic Village but can even use
exclusively during the Games. As
Adam Peaty strode past, British
swimming performance director
Chris Spice, who had the same role
in England’s 2003 World Cup-
winning team, explained how they
were trialling everything from
food, training times and transport
to the light and pool temperature.
“The fact we are 50 minutes on atrain to the Olympic venue is
magic,” Spice says. “It means we
can stay longer and potentially also
return between events. It gives an
added option. Everything is manic
and packed inside the Olympic
environment – you don’t get any
lanes to yourself and it’s hard to
train with any precision.”
The swimmers were staying 20
minutes away in student accom-
modation at Keio University, where
the British gymnasts had just
arrived. They were treating their
time in Japan as a dry run for next
year and, in the days after a 12-hour
flight and with an eight-hour time
difference, had their sports
scientists measuring every aspect
of performance and physiology.
Like swimmers, gymnasts train
both in the mornings and after-
noons and their sport is necessarily
time intensive. A 30-hour week outon the apparatus is not unusual,
and they rarely miss a chance to
develop their spectacular skills – or
risk losing their feel – by taking
time off unless they are injured.
“We are mirroring the timetable
down to when it would be a medal
day,” says James Thomas, the
gymnastics performance director
who has also worked previously in
boxing, judo and wheelchair rugby.
Such movement between sports is
increasingly common within an
Olympic structure in Great Britain
which, especially post-London,
does seem to have embedded a
more cohesive “one team” culture
than any other nation.
When we move on later that day
to the Todoroki Stadium, a
Diamond League-standard venue
that will host our athletics,
women’s football and rugby sevens
teams, England expands on this
philosophy. He was especially
struck in Minsk earlier this
summer for the European Games
when a young British cyclist told
him that she was particularly
motivated by having her name on
the Team GB medal board. “That
was inspiring her – I’m not sure 20
years ago you would have that
sentiment,” England says.
“It’s been documented the huge
personal gain you have as part of a
team rather than winning individu-
ally. We have four values under-
pinning performance: pride, unity,
responsibility and respect. People
are very proud to wear the Team
GB jersey.”
It was certainly noticeable in Rio
how people such as Sir Andy
Murray and Justin Rose, from the
multi-million-pound and largely
individual worlds of tennis and
golf, seemed so genuinely en-
thused by that team culture. A
“home from home” philosophy will
again be proactively created in the
Olympic Village, right down to
bringing mattresses from UK bed
retailer Dreams to British tea and
coffee-making facilities and
creating an area, perhaps again
with artificial turf and Union Jack
deckchairs, where athletes can
congregate. Team GB colours are
coordinated daily and iconic
Olympians such as Sir Ben Ainslie,Quality: Adam
Peaty (above)
and Georgia-Mae
Fenton (right)
train at facilities
that have been
taken over by
British athletesInspiring: The
Todoroki Stadium
in Kawasaki,
which will host
British athletes
next year‘We are mirroring the timetable
to when it would be a medal day’
‘This is a great oasis to finish off
our most comprehensive model’
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