"This year is an Olympic year, but is the Hakone Ekiden really helping Japanese athletics develop?" "Students are not running the Hakone Ekiden because of the Olympics!" This exchange happened in a video on the ABEMA News Youtube channel between comedian Shigeo Takahashi of comedy duo Savannah, and Susumu Hara , head coach of Aoyama Gakuin University which had won the Hakone Ekiden for the seventh time three weeks earlier. Speaking with tremendous energy, Hara went on: "If you think about it rationally, fundamentally the only people who would say they are interested in the Olympics are Japanese people. Japanese are the ones who place so much importance on the Olympics. If you go to the U.S., they have football and basketball. Our press conference after winning this time was an Olympic-level event. There were 50 or 60 news media companies there, a hundred of them, and all the reporters were clamoring for quotes. That has nothing to do with the Olympics. The H...
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