Yuko Arimori, vice president of the Japan Association of Athletics Federations (JAAF), blackmails the Hokkaido Athletics Association for failing to pay 7.35 million in registration fees!
Nanbu Memorial Athletics Canceled?
For Vice President Arimori, Hokkaido was the starting point for her rise from an unknown runner to a member of the Olympic team.
In her first year with Recruit Co., she ran a training camp in Shibetsu City on a straight road cut through the wilderness, and asked then coach Yoshio Koide to switch from track events to marathon running. Two years later, she won the silver medal at the Barcelona Olympics.
After that, she suffered a heel injury and underwent surgery, but in August 1995, she participated in the Hokkaido Marathon, running 42.195 km for the first time in three years, winning in 2 hours, 29 minutes, and 17 seconds, and making a miraculous comeback to take third place at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996. She is the only Japanese female athlete to have competed in two Olympics. The only Japanese women’s track and field medalist in two consecutive Olympics is heartbroken over the current situation in the northern region of Japan, which she says is “almost like a second home.
The local Hokkaido Shimbun (November 1) reported under the headline “DOCOMO Puts 15 Million Yen in Deposits and Savings, Unable to Secure Operating Expenses,” that a single employee had manipulated the accounting and entered a different account than the actual amount of deposits and savings.
There are widespread doubts about next year’s Nanbu Memorial Athletic Meet, which has a long history and has been hosted 36 times since 1988 by the Hokkaido Athletic Association. Since the event is named after Chuhei Nambu, the triple jump gold medalist at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1932 and a native of Sapporo, the worst-case scenario must be avoided at all costs.
As the vice president of the Athletics Federation, I don’t want to cancel the event, but I don’t know what it would mean to cancel it. But I hope that the members of the Hokkaido Athletics Association will think about what would happen if the event were to be cancelled. If that happens, it will affect everything. It would be as if you were saying, ‘Are you going to throw away the event that you cherish the most?
The athletes, the judges, and the people around them who have supported them should be outraged. If the Sanyo Women’s Road Race in my hometown (Okayama) were to be cancelled, I would ask, “Why? If the Sanyo women’s road race in my hometown (Okayama) was canceled, I would say, “Why? I would be like, “Why? As a former athlete, I can tell you that top athletes put their lives on the line, and junior and senior high school students are working hard, dreaming of the future. Everyone is desperate.
