Tokyo Olympic Games
The Tokyo Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (TOCOPG) wants to give the spectators and fans a virtual feel of what the athletes experience first-hand on the field. For that they launched the 'Let's 55 Virtual Experience' in Tokyo on Friday.
The project will provide an experience of what it looks like to compete as a top-level athlete, covering all 55 disciplines on the Tokyo Olympics programme.
With 105 days to go for the quadrennial event, Japan's national hockey team player Ohashi Masaki gave a virtual tour of the pace at which the game is played and what pressures players go through in the 60 minutes they are on the hockey turf.
Masaki, nicknamed 'Samurai Japan', says that on the turf "The ball, the run, the pace of the game -- everything moves at incredible speed. The ball travels very fast, and even I feel it as a player".
He says that the players, despite running at incredible speeds all the time, look refreshed because that is what they learn during training. "That's what's so great about hockey," says Masaki.
On Japan's hopes at the Games, he says, "Of course I would like us to win the gold medal, but I also hope the Games would help promote hockey as well."
He wants to play the role of a team-man to perfection and for that, Masaki says, "Rather than dribbling your way forward in offence, we (should) pass the ball around. In defence, if the opponent dribbles past one of our guys, there's always another guy, then a third guy trying to stop him. I hope everybody notices how we work as a team."
