Japan’s Olympic gymnastics captain sent home from Paris for smoking cigarettes

Photo by Kiyoshi Ota/Getty Images

Easily the wildest Olympic news so far.

The Japanese Olympic Team announced a bombshell one week before the opening ceremony of the Paris games. Shoko Miyata, captain of the women’s gymnastics team and the No. 1 gymnast in the country is being sent home for smoking … cigarettes.

Photo by Kiyoshi Ota/Getty Images

Miyata accepted the punishment. Her coach, Mutsumi Hirada said her decision to smoke came from feeling the pressure of performing at the games, and implored people to have empathy towards Miyata. Banning the team captain from the Olympics comes as part of Japan’s ban on smoking by all athletes who are representing the country.

It’s part of a larger movement by Japan to attempt to reduce its rate of smokers. While the nation’s figures have been dropping along with the rest of the world, Japan still sees a very high rate of combustible tobacco use amongst citizens, with 16.7 percent of citizens being active smokers in a 2019 survey, compared to 11.5 percent in the United States.

To complicate matters, it’s illegal for the 19-year-old Miyata to smoke in Japan, where the legal age for tobacco use is 20. It leaves Japan with out its best gymnast, and unquestionably the most bizarre reason for an athlete missing the games so far.