ERI in Paris 🇫🇷🗼

Now that I've caught my breath after finishing my third Olympics, there is one thing that has changed in my thinking.
After Rio 🇧🇷 in 2016 and my home Olympics in Tokyo 🇯🇵 in 2021, 2024 was Paris 🇫🇷.
Until now, I honestly thought that competing in the Olympics wouldn't change your life unless you won a medal.
But, to get straight to the point, whether my life changes or not doesn't really matter.
The Olympics and road racing taught me the meaning, joy, and wonder of living life in earnest,
and above all, it was a world-class sports festival held every four years that gave me people to walk that process with, to laugh and cry with, and to race alongside. 💙🖤❤️💛💚


Cycling (outside of track) is a minor sport in Japan, and since the chances of winning a medal are quite low, it is also one of the sports with a very low ranking for funding.
In fact, my result this time was 26th out of 93 participants.
To those who don't know road racing, it's not a placement, nor is it even close, and it's not the kind of sport that gets live coverage with Japanese commentary on Japanese TV.
Since there are almost no Japanese media outlets that accurately convey the race content, I suspect the road race at the Paris Games was one of those events held quietly in Japan.
※That said, TVer broadcast all events live this time, so I'm really glad that everyone in Japan was able to watch it. 🙌🏻 So, between us, the motivation to be on TV was a big reason I was able to work so hard. 🤫😜


Compared to the popularity of the Olympics and road racing in Japan,
as those who know road racing will understand,
the Olympics came to the country of the Tour de France.
It was, in words I cannot express, the greatest enthusiasm of my life, and I definitely raced in front of the largest crowd ever.
I don't think I'll ever experience a race with more excitement and emotion than this again. That's how amazing it was! (My vocabulary is failing me 😅)
Well, during the race, it was so tough (the intensity was 😵‍💫) that I had zero capacity to look around,
but that roar of the crowd—a sound where I couldn't tell if my ears were ringing because it was so hard or because the cheering was so loud—and the sea of people. Everything was on another level.

Usually, when I race with my team, I am strictly a support rider and cannot race for my own position. The only races where I represent my country are the ones where I can race for myself, and the only ones where I can race aiming solely for my own result.
That is why this Olympics, held in Paris, the country of the Tour,
was a race of pride where I wanted to show the world, my rivals who I race against every day, the people who carried my thoughts and raced with me, and for myself, that even an Asian rider can compete at that level!

As a result, the group I sprinted with at the finish included the ace riders from various countries, a group composed of athletes who usually ride as the ace for their respective teams. Of course, rather than saying I 'stuck with them,' it would be more accurate to say I 'managed to hang on,' as I went all-out many times and actually got dropped or nearly dropped.
In a normal race, there were moments—not just once, but several times—where I might have made a passive decision to wait to be absorbed by the group behind and prepare for the next development to aim for a best result.
But that day, the thought of never giving up, not wanting to regret my last Olympics, and wanting to burn out because there is no next time (four years later)—no, I will burn out—pushed me past my limits. 🔥
Because if I had a race I regretted, I'd just end up wanting to compete again in four years, wouldn't I? So I was able to push myself to the point where I couldn't do any more.

Being able to race in that position and finish in that group
is really hard to explain, and though I say it myself,
it was truly amazing, and it was a race where I was genuinely satisfied with my performance.
And above all, I can say with confidence that it was a performance that served as the best possible repayment to everyone who supported me and sent me off with confidence until the start of that day. 🫡


This is because of my first Olympics, Brazil, Rio.
The start and finish were so deserted that it's no exaggeration to say there were no spectators at all. I remember thinking, 'So this is what the Olympics are like; it's surprisingly not that special,' and while I had no nervousness for better or worse, I also don't remember feeling much excitement. Or rather, at the time of Rio, the process leading up to it was so incredibly tense and focused that, looking back now, I wonder if that (the selection process) was the peak of my emotions. 🤔

And then, Tokyo. Postponed due to COVID. Iliac artery endofibrosis. On the day I was supposed to leave for Japan, a flood hit the town and my house where I lived.
Well, a lot happened then too (looking into the distance 😑).
For details, see my previous article below. 👇🏻

Even though it became a spectator-less Olympics due to COVID, spectators were allowed for the road race held outside of Tokyo,
and it was a race I ran with the desire to have everyone in my home country of Japan see the top-level races I usually run in Europe live, to show them how well I could race, and to show them a version of me that could fight. 🫶🏻

And then, Paris.
I'll say it again. If the Olympics come to the country of the Tour, this is what happens. That was it in a nutshell.
I only realized how many people were there in that place from the photos I received after the race 😅, but the adrenaline that came just from the atmosphere I felt during the race—in the middle of Paris, in this peloton, me, a Japanese person, racing in this position—it was the best four hours of my life. ❤️

Before writing this, I read back the Note I wrote after Tokyo for the first time.
Thanks to it being held in my home country, it was temporarily exciting and many people watched and supported me, but it remained a minor sport, and since road racing in Japan is at a level that doesn't qualify for development funding, the federation's budget actually decreased after Tokyo, making it increasingly difficult to secure a spot for the Paris Olympics.
And since there was also the difficulty of focusing only on the Olympics (mentally and in terms of my athletic career), I honestly gave up on even getting a road race spot for Japan for Paris.
Yes, because after experiencing two Olympics, I thought, 'Going to the Olympics doesn't change your life.'

But when I was told that by finishing as high as possible in last year's World Championships and earning as many UCI points as possible in the Asian Games—these two chances alone—there might be a possibility of securing a spot,
I got greedy and decided to challenge for my third Olympics, and in the end, I'm truly glad I did.
If not for that, I wouldn't have even been able to race in that place, so those four hours of racing in the middle of Paris, amidst those cheers, were the greatest reward for continuing this sport for so long. 🤤

And so, the Paris Olympics, an experience of a lifetime.
So, did my life change with this Olympics? Or rather, will it change? I suddenly found myself asking that question again.
And it suddenly occurred to me,
it wasn't that 'my life didn't change at the Olympics,' but that I 'didn't change my life at the Olympics.'

The Olympics is a dream that every athlete wants to compete in at least once.
In the first place, when I was a high school student, I was moved to goosebumps watching the Olympics on TV, and I thought, not 'I want to compete in the Olympics!', but 'I want to support the athletes who compete in the Olympics!'
And I went through university entrance exams and spent my student life at university to realize that.
Then, for some reason, I encountered cycling and ended up becoming an athlete, an Olympian, so
even now, when I come to the Olympics, I find myself feeling a bit strange somewhere.

Moreover, if you are moved by the Olympics you watch on TV and want to go there, I think the idea would be to save money, buy a flight ticket, and buy a ticket to watch.
But I was a high school student who thought, 'I was moved, so I want to support the athletes who gave me that emotion, and through supporting them, I want to go to the Olympics too,' so I realize more and more lately that I was different from the start.

When you want to 'do something' or 'go there,' anyone can physically go to that place if they have the money.
But I think what's important, or rather, what's truly interesting and valuable, is the process of 'how to get there.'
And usually, my desire to 'do something' is often too strong, at the level of 'I want to accomplish something' 😅.
I think that process and seriousness are what change your life.

In reality, the person living in the midst of that process doesn't have something change like magic when they reach the goal, and they don't have the luxury of looking back until they reach the goal,
but when you reach that goal and look back, I feel like there were turning points that changed my life rolling around everywhere.

There are countless moments where I think, 'If I hadn't done that,' I wouldn't be here now.
But there isn't a single thing I regret by thinking, 'If I had done that.'

To be selected as a representative of Japan for the Olympics that everyone dreams of,
a turning point where anyone could or could not make it probably comes suddenly.
It comes so, so suddenly.
There are times when you don't even have time to think. It might be the last 1km of a race. It might be at a time completely unrelated to the sport.

If it's a choice between regretting 'if I had done that' a few years later or not,
even if you make enemies at that moment, even if it's painfully difficult, even if someone tells you not to do it at that time,
you should make the choice that 'you yourself' will 'not regret.'
Not anyone else, but you yourself.
Because it's you yourself who is going to the Olympics, not anyone around you.

The people who say things to you (to me), or in this day and age, the people who say things on social media,
won't take me to the Olympics.
The fact that there are people and teammates who respect your (my) choices and support those choices with the same or even more passion than I do is the reason I've been able to stand on the Olympic stage three times.


In the first place, the choice to buy (get) my first road bike at 20, start competing in earnest at 21, and aim for the Olympics from there is crazy in itself,
and the decision I made as a college student at that time and meeting a crazy coach
was the first and biggest 'if I hadn't done that (if I hadn't made that choice),' and
if not for that, I wouldn't be here now.

And,
in the domestic selection when I had the chance to compete in my first Olympics at 25, despite clear selection criteria being published, there were people who didn't want me to go, and with pressure to somehow exclude me,
I, who believe that strength is justice in the world of athletes (I still think so), threw my handlebars at the Asian Championships and won the All-Japan Championships, even if it meant making enemies of everyone.
And I still sued the federation that excluded me from the selection.

The choice to throw my handlebars at the Asian Championships that year was made by me, not the coach or anyone else (because at the national team training camp just before, everyone was ignoring me—so-called bullying to create a reason to exclude me as a 'player who can't communicate,' though I didn't even think of it as bullying 🤷🏻‍♀️),
and the fact that I decided to go for a long attack in the last few hundred meters at the All-Japan Championships that year, even though it didn't go according to the strategy I had planned with the coach, was not because the coach told me to, but because I judged it during the race myself, believing I could definitely win.
At the very, very end, everything was my own intuition and my own responsibility, and that has changed my life.

Therefore, my answer after finishing my third Olympics is that it wasn't the 'Olympics' itself, but the 'process' of seriously confronting something that makes the Olympics, held every four years, special—something that moves people's hearts—that changed my life.

Returning to my daily life from Paris, the third time is the same.
My daily routine doesn't change; I wake up, train, cook, eat, sleep, and start training again for the next race.
Nothing changes just because I became an Olympian. Or rather, I don't change anything.
I like the place where I can live as myself, and I don't become Olympian Eri Yonamine every day.
But I think this is because the people around me have kept this stance since the first time I went to the Olympics, so I didn't misunderstand in a good way, and they gave me the environment to pursue the happiness of being an athlete, purely pursuing my own performance and results, in a calm daily life.

Also, my parents, before and after I became an Olympian, are not parents who produced an Olympic athlete, but have been and will probably continue to be just Eri's parents,
and the coach who made me from zero, no, from minus, into an Olympian, rather than a coach who raised an Olympian, was Eri Yonamine's coach (and manager, mechanic), and perhaps it was good, conversely, that he was the kind of person who would always seriously compete with me, saying, 'I'm more amazing than the athlete! I'm working harder! 💪🏻'


And above all, the reason I produce efforts and results that I'm not ashamed of to myself or anyone else is, of course, for myself and for the people who supported me, and at the same time,
I always have the personal feeling that I don't want other athletes who couldn't go because of the limited Olympic spots, who weren't selected, to think, 'If only I had gone.' Or rather, I don't want to make them think that,
I want to make them think, 'It was the right choice to send Eri Yonamine, it was the right choice to select her.'
This is because of the difficult selection process, which is complex because road racing is a team sport yet also an individual sport.
But even taking that into account, it's because I believe it's the most powerful way of expression, more powerful than words,
to protest against the unfair selection I've experienced and to ensure that unfairness in selection is never created for the next generation.
Since I know my position and level in my world best, as a realist, I can't give lip service like 'I'm aiming for a medal!', but I knew best myself that if I raced for myself, I could fight in the group after the medal contenders. That wasn't a vague goal or dream, it was confidence.

And the fact that I survived in that group I had envisioned and tumbled into the finish,
I think it's enough if only those who cried and laughed with me that day know how amazing that is.
Someone who was cheering for me on the spot that day said to me casually,

Isn't it okay if not everyone understands?
Those who don't understand won't understand, but those who do will.
You were racing with such an intense look and aura.

26th place is a meaningless ranking to some,
but to me, to us, no matter what anyone says, I can say with confidence that it was a race of my heart.
That's fine, isn't it? On that day, once every four years,
isn't it actually the most important thing whether you, whether we, were able to perform in a way we could be satisfied with, rather than people's evaluations or relative rankings?

And since it's a minor sport in Japan, I think I was able to concentrate only on my performance without the expectations or pressure of medals, and enjoy the race itself from the bottom of my heart.

The goal of my Olympics was to breathe the same air in that place on that day, to have people from all over the world support me on the spot and on TV with the feeling of racing together, to understand the amazingness of racing in that position, to move those people's hearts, and to drink delicious beer and eat frites 🍟 and meat 🥩 with everyone that night.
Because I had a good race, it was really, really delicious.

Remembering that taste, the air of Paris, and the faces of everyone who raced with me that day, I started to cry while writing this.
Life doesn't change, but if I became a part of each of your lifelong summer memories, is there anything better than that?
That alone makes our Paris Olympics a huge success. 🫶🏻

But after all, if we don't get closer to medals, road racing will remain a minor sport forever, and the reality is that there is really no athlete development as a country.
Speaking of cycling (outside of track), since the chances of winning a medal are low, the development budget as a national team has decreased drastically since Tokyo, in my experience.
In other words, the reality is that there is unfortunately no long-term plan or financial leeway to know that if you do this, this will happen, or if you do this, you can go to the Olympics or get an Olympic spot.

Even if you wait with your mouth open, no one will give you food, and no one will teach you how to get food next. Even if you search on the internet or swipe through social media, there is no method or answer for going to the Olympics there.
For a Japanese person to go to the Olympics in cycling, there is currently no way other than to develop on an individual basis.

I think the track team (since it's an event where the possibility of winning a medal is high and expected) is wonderful in that if you live in the same place for four years toward the Olympics as a national team and accumulate races and training on a prepared plan, you can concentrate only on the sport.
It would be a lie to say I'm not envious of the support system and environment that makes me think they must have plenty of development budget,
but that's only if you can fit into that environment and team.

In my case, I'm not good at group activities, or rather, it's extremely painful, so
conversely, since road racing is a minor sport in Japan, the national team is small in a good way, and I feel that the level of care is just right. (※According to my own comparison)
This is because since the Tokyo Olympics, there has been a turnover of people inside, and the information, logistics, and organization for races have become almost the same as my usual team in Europe,
and I was able to spend this Olympics feeling more like my usual races than ever before. 🇯🇵🤝🏻
To all the national team staff, thank you for your flexible response and thorough care. 🙏🏻

Looking back again,
the way to go to the Olympics, cycling, and racing,
I repeated trial and error many times with my coach,
I was honest with my emotions, stuck to my own justice, and we took all the responsibility ourselves,
so I think that's why I was able to go to the Olympics three times, now that I think about it.

Well, the number of times I won the All-Japan Championships or the number of Olympic appearances really doesn't matter to me; the content of the race is more important, and that's what I want to convey, but
I think it's fine if those who understand, understand.
Like the deliciousness of a Coke right after a race, or the deliciousness of beer we toast with everyone after a good race,
it's hard to explain in words.

If you go to the Olympics, wear the Japan representative suit, put on the national team uniform, and become an Olympian, your life doesn't change; rather,
the process of challenging for the Olympics, the uncompromising effort to perform on that day once every four years, and the fact that I walked with teammates who supported me physically and mentally to achieve that and raced the Olympics together was more important to me. Thank you all so much. 🫡

Finally, one last episode.
To ensure my bike (wheels) was perfectly prepared for these Olympics, someone went out of their way to travel all the way from Japan to Paris just for that day to perform the maintenance.
For the entire four hours from the start of my race until I crossed the finish line,
wondering if the wheels and tires they maintained would hold up without a puncture or any trouble until I finished,
they were apparently more nervous than I was, watching my race on-site.
I didn't actually see the situation at the time (since I was in the middle of the race), but I could picture exactly how they were, and
the moment I heard about it, I suddenly thought, 'So this is the difference between someone who lives life seriously and someone who doesn't know how to live seriously.'

Their self-developed product was used on a bike racing in the Olympics, they traveled all the way from Japan just for that day to service it, and then spent four hours feeling as much, if not more, tension than the athlete.
Of course, I was the only one racing, but they were actually racing in the Paris Olympics with me.
It wasn't just about coming to watch the Olympics; it made me truly happy to realize that this is what it means to rejoice together and cry together 🥹.

To everyone who came to Paris that day, and to everyone who watched me cross the finish line while crying with my coach, you were all racing in Paris with me. Thank you so much 🫶🏻
And, of course, to everyone who cheered for me on TV, thank you for racing in the Olympics with me too 🫶🏻 Because if I had been dropped, I wouldn't have been on TV, so I couldn't afford to be dropped, even if it killed me 🐒

Because the regulations were strict due to it being the Olympics, I couldn't even take a photo with my coach, who usually appears everywhere, after the race, so I don't have a photo (I'll leave a photo from the World Championships exactly one year ago in its place 😂)

A memory of a lifetime, better than any photo.
“ERI in Paris🇫🇷” has successfully concluded with the upload of this note 🫡
And Coach, I, too, lived this day so seriously for just this one moment,
and while I am currently completely drained,
we were able to 'turn everything into strength' for this day, just as always.
And we were able to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.
Thank you.

I want to thank everyone involved, to the point where I should go and thank each person individually, but since that's impossible, I'll take this opportunity to do so.
Thank you so, so much 🙏🏻

There won't be a fourth time, you know 😘
Because I've given it my all 🫠

Turn everything into strength.
I gave every bit of my strength 🫡