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“Keeping Motivation is Hard”

Today’s story teller is an Olympic gold medal swimmer, [W:Kyoko Iwasaki].

When she was 14 years old, she won the gold medal at the 1992 Summer Olympic in Barcelona.

Now she stepped out and does various works including coaching.

She became the youngest gold medal swimmer ever; however, at the next Atlanta Olympic in 1996, she took 10th place.

About the place down, she said.

“Following to the Barcelona where I won gold medal, Atlanta was the second Olympic to me, and I think I learned what Olympic is. I mean ‘it is meaningless for the one who enters with halves attitude.’ ”

By winning the gold medal, the people around her were so hopeful of her that she put a lot of pressure on herself; therefore, she couldn’t motivate herself enough for the next Olympic after Atlanta.

At last, she decided to retire while she was at university but she didn’t know how she would broach to others, so she first talked to her parents.

“Tell exactly what you have in your mind to your coach.” Her parents said to her.

When she told to her coach, she was ready to be reproached but her expectation …

“You have done hard enough.” The coach quietly said to her.

Iwasaki’s word,

“At the unexpected coach’s reaction, I got really surprised. Quitting swimming which I had continued like it was natural since I was five years old was a bigger turning point than when I won the gold medal.”

The NIKKEI May/14/2009 by Kyoko Iwasaki (gold medal swimmer)

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