The first is the testimony of Hidehiko Yoshida (Park 24 General Manager) who was a gold medalist at the Barcelona Olympics and fought with Inoue, who was 22 at the time, at the Sydney Olympics. Yoshida thought when he first saw the representative training camp during the Inoue era. Can I really win with this? (To # 1 / # 2 8 times in total)
–Mr. Kosei Inoue was appointed as the representative director at the young age of 34 in the winter of 2012 when the London Olympics were over. Frankly, what did you think of Mr. Yoshida?
Hidehiko Yoshida (hereinafter referred to as Yoshida)I and Yasuo are nine different years old, aren’t they? The practice itself was really used in the old all Japan. It was a world of effort, guts, and spirit, how much to drive. Former coach Shinichi Shinohara also said, “I can’t practice hard anymore, so I’m quitting (player)” when I asked “What are you going to do now?” When I lost the Sydney Olympics and ended up with a silver medal. I really understand that feeling. In our time, we were just thinking about how quickly we could quit. However, after Yasuo became the director, I started to incorporate scientific practice menus, and the practice itself became very short. So, when I first saw Yasuo’s representative training camp, I wondered if I could win with this. To be honest, I didn’t expect to see such results in succession at the Rio Olympics (2016) and the Tokyo Olympics (2021).
――The Japanese judo world has an image of being extremely reluctant to “change”, probably because of past achievements.
YoshidaI would like to ask Yasuo about that. It was changed a lot. After all, people impose what they have done. Basically, in our time, judo was the idea that you had to be strong in judo. No matter how heavy a heavy object is lifted by the bench press, judo power (from Judoji) will not be applied. So when I was practicing, I dared to work with a heavyweight guy. But now I’m training well.
