EGN NEWS DESK
Shoko Miyata, the 19-year-old captain of Japan’s Artistic Gymnastics Olympic squad, has exited the sporting occasion after smoking cigarettes, in violation of the group’s code of conduct, the Japanese Gymnastics Association (JGA) stated on Friday. It’s understood that Miyata consumed alcohol, additionally.
In Japan, smoking cigarettes and consuming alcohol is illegitimate till the age of 20. However, the JGA incorporates further guidelines successfully prohibiting its athletes from smoking and consuming throughout group actions even when they’re above the age of 20, per the Japan Times.
TIME has reached out to the Japanese Gymnastics Association for additional remark.
Miyata’s exit comes because the Japan group is hoping to win a group medal for the primary time for the reason that 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Now, the group might be pressured to compete with 4 athletes as an alternative of 5, limiting the quantity of depth it will possibly convey to every side of the competitors.
“She was spending her days actually burdened with a lot stress,” her coach Mutsumi Harada stated per Reuters. “I’d implore individuals to grasp that.”
JGA officers stated that Miyata had arrived in Japan on Thursday after leaving the group’s Olympics coaching facility in Monaco. Miyata is a really robust gymnast who had beforehand received a bronze medal on the stability beam on the 2022 World Championships and got here in eighth in the course of the 2022 all-around ultimate.
The psychological well being of Olympians has more and more come underneath the highlight as extra athletes open up in regards to the stress of competing on the world’s highest degree. Simone Biles, essentially the most adorned gymnast in historical past, dropped out of the Olympics in Tokyo as a result of psychological well being considerations.
“I hope younger girls take away that it is OK to not be OK. You can converse up for what you imagine, and you are able to do issues alone,” she stated in a 2021 interview for the official Olympics web site.
