Athlete of the Week: Akito Watabe (JPN)

As probably all of us know, some things in life come harder than others and while fortune is smiling on some, dropping successes and good luck into their path, there are the select ones who have to work extremely hard and stay true to their path to be able to climb the top of the mountain for once. Japanese superstar and team leader Akito Watabe certainly is one of those individuals, who have to summon an incredible amount of resilience and character strength not to become jaded.

With eight World Cup victories, 45 podiums, a World Championship team gold from Liberec 2009 and last but not least an Olympic silver medal from Sochi 2014, the 28-year-old is by no means a small fish in the Nordic Combined pond but there has always been someone taking the big titles and glory away.

Since 2012, Watabe has always been among the top three of the World Cup overall (with Jason Lamy Chappuis stealing his thunder in 2011/12 and Eric Frenzel beating him in 2014/15 and 2015/16) and he can look back on an insane streak of eight second and four third places in the winter of 2015/16. And even at the Nordic Combined TRIPLE 2016, when everything looked like Watabe would be the one to finally beat Eric Frenzel on Sunday, the reality was that Frenzel caught and overtook the Japanese in the crazy blizzard race that set this day’s results upside down.

At first, it looked like this tendency would continue also on Watabe’s „home“ weekend in Sapporo, a weekend that is noticeably important to the Asian spearhead of the discipline. Even with German archrivals Eric Frenzel, Johannes Rydzek and Fabian Rießle out of the picture, suddenly there was veteran Björn Kircheisen stepping it up on the past Saturday, outmanoeuvring Watabe in the last turn onto the home stretch and taking away the victory.

Watabe was having none of this on Sunday. In a quite remarkable show of determination, strength, self-confidence and, yes, resilience, the 28-year-old flew away from Switzerland’s Tim Hug and Manuel Faißt on the last lap of the race and finally, finally returned to his winning was after his last victory in Oslo in March, 2015.

In his typical modest and sympathetic way, Watabe’s first thought after the competition was was about the fans and how he can be a good promoter of his sport in his country: „It’s just an amazing day for me. It’s so great to be able to show a perfect day to all the Japanese fans. I am so happy and satisfied.“

In conclusion, a result like this could not have been more deserved for our Athlete of the Week. And maybe, maybe this little bit of extra confidence and the long hard lessons in modesty and resilience will give Watabe that special edge in the fight for titles and podiums at the World Championships in Lahti.