Because Japan doesn’t have a high-profile national championship or a helpfully scheduled pre-Olympic continental championship (and because the men’s team hogs all the attention), the women’s team has a tendency to be overlooked or be an afterthought in addressing the major players at international competitions.

When discussing who replaces Romania as the next member of the Big Four, Japan never comes up. And yet, Japan has qualified for the last six consecutive team finals (including the last two Olympics), an achievement matched only by the US, Russia, and China. As far as perennial powers in recent years go, Japan is the fourth one. This is my way of saying it would be foolish to underestimate Japan’s ability to do some damage at these Olympics, exactly like I’m about to do.

Not really. Japan has more than enough talent to make this team final, but it will be a close-fought thing and is not a comfortable proposition. The team’s recent top scores from the two national championships and NHK Trophy would put Japan somewhere on the cusp of the team final (in, but just in)—acknowledging of course that comparing scores from different national meets is a fool’s game—and the rise of teams like Germany, Brazil, and the Netherlands back into the mix is making it that much harder to feel comfortable about the prospects of recent sure-things like Japan and Italy.

Team
Sae Miyakawa – 2015 floor 4th place, the one who has all that floor difficulty like front 1/1 + double front, should medal all the time
Mai Murakami – 2015 AA 6th place, 2016 Japanese champion, weirdly doesn’t make teams sometimes even though she’s obviously the best one, on this team though, sleeper pick in AA
Aiko Sugihara – 2016 Japanese AA bronze, 2016 Japanese bars and floor silver, line and leg form are her cool jams, deceptively competitive floor
Asuka Teramoto – 2015 Japanese champion, 2014 beam 4th place, the one you’ve seen a billion times, here to save beam forever
Yuki Uchiyama – The one you haven’t heard of, 2015 Japanese silver and world team alternate, here to make sure Murakami doesn’t have to do all the bars.

Projected Olympic Lineups
Vault – (Sugihara) Murakami, Teramoto, Miyakawa
Bars – (Murakami) Uchiyama, Sugihara, Teramoto
Beam – (Uchiyama) Sugihara, Murakami, Teramoto
Floor – (Teramoto) Sugihara, Murakami, Miyakawa

Deciding who will do the AA in qualification is quite straightforward for Japan. Miyakawa’s bars and beam are weak—she won’t be forced to do them—and while Uchiyama is fine on vault and floor, she’s clearly below the level of the others. Murakami, Teramoto, and Sugihara will do the all-around, with Murakami and Teramoto expected to be the highest scorers and advance to the final.

The potential team final v. qualification lineups are a bit trickier to figure, especially for beam because it’s such a problem. I’d love to see Uchiyama get a shot on beam in the team final because she has wonderful qualities and a more difficult routine than Sugihara (6.1 to 5.9 attempted at NHK), but she has fallen a bunch this year. To me, she’d still have to earn that spot in qualification because right now, Japan is looking at a lot of lower 13s on beam—a devastating possibility. The team absolutely must value hitting above scoring potential. A 13.6 is workable. A 12.5 is not. Continue reading Olympic Preview — Team Japan →