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Koizumi calls for gov't to support winter athletes+(Japan Economic Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)TOKYO, Feb. 28_(Kyodo) _ Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told his government on Tuesday to consider ways to support winter athletes following Japan's poor performance at the Turin Olympics, Tokyo's top spokesman said. The government has increased its support for athletes following the 2004 Athens Summer Games where Japan won a record 37 medals in its Olympic history, but training facilities for winter sports have been suffering due to financial shortages, according to Cabinet discussions cited by Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe. Since the 1998 Nagano Olympics, those facilities have been operated by setting up funds, but some of them have run out of those funds, Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Minister Kenji Kosaka was quoted as saying in response to Koizumi's inquiry. Several skating rinks will be closed within a year due to financial problems, with the one on which Japanese figure skating champion Shizuka Arakawa first learned to skate already shut down, according to Kosaka. Japan left the Winter Games with just one medal -- the gold won by Arakawa. "On the part of the government, we will have to consider ways to firmly support athletes," Koizumi was quoted as saying in a meeting of Cabinet ministers. In Turin on Sunday, Kenichi Chizuka, who headed the Japanese Olympic delegation, said in apologizing for the country's lackluster performance that the Japanese Olympic Committee is already moving ahead with a plan to build a national training complex for winter athletes. Chizuka also pointed to a need to shrink the size of Japan's delegation to spur competition. The team sent to Turin was the largest-ever for an overseas Winter Olympics, featuring 112 athletes and 126 officials. |