The Yomiuri Shimbun
Table tennis gamers Miu Hirano, entrance left, and Hina Hayata, proper, arrive on the Charles de Gaulle Airport on Thursday.
By Tsukasa Sano / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer
16:04 JST, July 19, 2024
PARIS — A bunch of Japanese athletes that can be competing on the Summer Olympics arrived in Paris on Thursday.
“The Games will start very soon, and I’m feeling that,” stated girls’s desk tennis ace Hina Hayata, 24.
“I hope I can give 100% to the matches,” Hayata stated, after touchdown at Charles de Gaulle Airport in a Paris suburb.
The flight took more than 10 hours from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, however the athletes had been all smiles.
“It’s going to be the first time for me to compete at an Olympics abroad and with spectators,” stated males’s desk tennis participant Tomokazu Harimoto, 21, who can be competing in his second consecutive Games. “It’ll be important for me to stay calm, like I usually do, when playing.”
The desk tennis athletes will make their ultimate preparations at a coaching camp earlier than heading to the athletes’ village for the Games.
The first portion of the Japanese contingent checked in on the village on Thursday, the day the athletes’ village formally opened. The group comprised about 45 athletes, coaches and different workers from varied sports, together with boxing and rugby sevens.
“I’m really looking forward to life in the athletes’ village,” stated Sewonrets Okazawa, 28, a boxer who will compete within the males’s 71-kilogram-class. “I’d like to do my best in preparing for the matches.”