The Japanese women´s team for the team pursuit
During the whole period from 2014 to 2023 The Japanese women team for the team pursuit for women consisted all the time, except once, of the same three skaters: the two sister Miho and Nana Takagi and Ayana Sato. Of these three only Miho Talagi was the succesful skater on the different distances in long track speed skating. Therefore Miho Takagi, was the motor of this team.
This team had to compete especially with the Dutch team which consisted of the Irene Wüst, Antoinette de Jong.and three times the third skater a skater with olympic medals, Joreint ter Mors and Irene schouten. The other 6 years the third skater. was not a top level skater.
Comparing the list of medals in longtrack speed skating of Miho Takagi with the results of Irene Schouten, it turns out that the lists are very comparable. Both collected their medals in the period from 2015 till 2023.They met each other mostly in the same places only in 2021 Miho Takagi did not participate in the woldchampionships because of corona. Where Miho Takagi obtained her medals mainly on the middle long distances and the team pursuit, Irene Schouten won her medals mainly on the long distances for women and the mass start as can be seen in the table below.
While these two skaters are very comparable with respect to the results, the leader of the Dutch team was Irene Wüst who has obtained a multiple of the medals that have been collected by these two skaters. This means that in principle tthe quality of the skaters of the Dutch team were higher than those of the Japanese team. Therefore it must have been the attention which the Japanese team has given to team pusuit that their team has been so succesfull.
The Japanese skaters remained together and developed a nearly perfect approach to this race. The Dutch team always had to adjust to the changes in the team. It is probable for this reason the less decorated Japanese team could very well compete with the changing Dutch teams. The perfect performance of the Japanese team is very clearly in the video below during one of the races during the Olympic games in 2022 in Bejing.
Nevertheless this perfectly functioning team did not become Olympic champion that year because Nana Takagi fell coming out of the last curve before the finish, being ahead of the Canadian team. Because of this fall they lost this race and became second. It shows that also this perfect functioning team could make errors.
Nevertheless the resuls of the team pursuit races of the men and the women show that adding this new dicipline to the long track speed skating championships made sense because teams of skaters with less qualified skaters on the individual distances can win in team pursuit championships by perfectioning their performance as a team. This will stimulate more skaters to continue in speed skating also if they don´t belong to the top on the individual distances. They can try to reach the top in the team pusuit.