Tokyo 2020: World Cup-winning Japan women’s football team to kick off Olympics torch relay

‘Nadeshiko Japan’ selected for their historic World Cup victory in 2011 that lifted a nation recovering from a devastating earthquake and tsunami

Torch will travel across all 47 of Japan’s prefectures and stop by at areas still recovering from past natural disasters

2-MIN READ2-MIN

Japan’s national women’s football team celebrates with the Fifa Women’s Football World Cup trophy after defeating USA in the final in 2011. Photo: AFP

Published: 5:27pm, 17 Dec 2019Updated: 10:45pm, 17 Dec 2019

Members of the 2011 World Cup-winning Japan women’s national football team have been selected as torch-bearers for the “Grand Start” of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics Torch Relay, the Games’ organisers announced on Tuesday.

The relay is set to take place at the J-Village National Training Centre in the Fukushima Prefecture on March 26, 2020, around four months before the Games begin.

Japan’s World Cup-winning team led by coach Norio Sasaki (centre). Photo: Japan Football Association

The Tokyo 2020 Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympics Games confirmed the move was based on the team’s historic performance in Germany eight years ago when they became the first Japanese football team – and Asian nation – to be crowned Fifa world champions. “Nadeshiko Japan” also finished runners-up at the 2015 edition in Canada and won a silver medal at the London 2012 Olympic Games.

The win in Germany lifted the nation which had suffered a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami off the coast of Tohuko earlier in the year, the highest recorded earthquake in Japan’s history. The earthquake and deadly tsunami killed 15,894 people.

Japan's Homare Sawa (centre) celebrates her goal during the 2011 Fifa Women’s World Cup semi-final between Japan and Sweden in Germany. Photo: EPA

“The fighting spirit the team displayed during the World Cup inspired many people struggling in the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake, which had struck the country earlier that year. Their achievement was recognised by the conferring of a National Honour Award on the whole team in August 2011,” an official press release stated.