45-year-old Olympic enthusiast lost his dream.
The Japanese Kazunori Takishima has been robbed of his dream with the ban on spectators for the Olympic Games. His plan was to set a new world record for the most attended events at the Olympic Games in Tokyo. This project cost the 45-year-old over 30,000 euros and ended abruptly on Thursday. “I stayed up until three in the morning and my head was completely blank,” he said of the hours after the news was announced.
Takishima, who runs a real estate agency in Tokyo, has not been interested in sports for most of his life. A visit to the Olympic Winter Games in Turin, where he saw figure skater Shizuka Arakawa win gold before his eyes, kindled the fire in him. Since then he has attended 106 events at the Summer and Winter Olympics, 28 would have been planned in Tokyo.
With 134 attended Olympic events, he would have surpassed the previous world record of 128. In the past few years, this large number was only possible thanks to sophisticated schedules, some of which only allowed him four hours of sleep. In Rio 2016, he even collapsed on the lawn in front of the stadium and then slept for an hour. “There were seconds when I wondered why I was doing this,” he said.
The 45-year-old is getting his money back, but that doesn't really comfort him: “All the fun I was looking forward to was gradually taken away. Banning fans at the sports facilities was the end of the story.” He hopes to break the record at the winter games in Beijing next year or at the summer games in Paris in 2024. After the heavy blow, however, according to his statement, it will not be the same.
