World Cup 2022 winners qualify for Paris 2024 Olympics
A year has passed since the Japan Women’s Basketball Team won the silver medal at the Tokyo Olympics.
Only one year has passed since the Tokyo Olympics, but the 2024 Paris Olympics are less than two years away. There are two ways for the Japanese women’s national team to qualify for the Paris Olympics, one of which is to win the World Cup, which will be held in Australia this fall. If they do not win the World Cup, they will have to finish in the top 4 or better at the 2023 Asian Cup to qualify for the Olympic World Final Qualifier (OQT). At the OQT scheduled to be held in February 2024, if the team is among the top three teams out of the four teams in their group, they will be eligible to participate in the Paris Olympics. However, since the OQT is compulsory for the World Cup winners and the host country, which already have qualifications for the Olympics, the top two teams may qualify for qualification depending on the group.
Toru Onzuka, head coach of the Japan women’s national team, has set the team’s final goal as “winning the gold medal at the Paris Olympics.” For that reason, I would like to win the World Cup to be held this fall and get the right to participate in the Olympics as soon as possible.
The World Cup will be held in Sydney, Australia from September 22nd to October 1st. A total of 12 countries will participate, and 2 groups, A and B (6 countries each), will perform a group round for the first round brute force. The top four nations from each group will advance to the final tournament quarterfinals, after which it will be a knockout tournament.
Group A: Belgium (FIBA Ranking No. 5), China (No. 7), Bosnia and Herzegovina (No. 26), Puerto Rico (No. 17), South Korea (No. 13), USA (No. 1)
Group B: Japan (8th), France (6th), Serbia (10th), Mali (37th), Canada (4th), Australia (3rd)
Maki Takada, who attended a press conference hosted by the Japan Basketball Association the other day, said, “I’m still in training camp for the World Cup that will be held in Australia at the end of September.” She said, “If I can win a gold medal there, I can also qualify for the Paris Olympics, so my first goal is to win the World Cup.”
In addition to aiming to qualify for the Olympics, Takada also has a desire to “enliven the Japanese basketball world.” Takada says. “There are so many people paying attention to us, so I think this is a chance for us to liven up the basketball world.
At the last tournament held in Spain in 2018, the Japan women’s national team suffered a disappointing loss after losing to China 81-87 in a battle to advance to the quarterfinals and finishing in ninth place. I want her to clear up her regrets about the previous tournament, achieve her goal of winning the championship, and gain the right to participate in the Paris Olympics.
