{"id":23197,"date":"2026-02-02T12:21:43","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T10:21:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jhb-webdevelopers\/channelafrica\/news\/japan-eye-record-winter-games-medals-haul-in-milano-cortina\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T16:34:02","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T14:34:02","slug":"japan-eye-record-winter-games-medals-haul-in-milano-cortina","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/japan-eye-record-winter-games-medals-haul-in-milano-cortina\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Japan eye record winter Games medals haul in Milano-Cortina&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"x_divRplyFwdMsg\" dir=\"ltr\">\n<div aria-hidden=\"true\" data-olk-copy-source=\"MessageBody\">The Asian winter sports powerhouse which collected more medals than any other nation from the continent in China four years ago, will be looking to earn medals across a number of sports, including figure skating, snowboarding, speed skating and ski jumping among others.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"x_elementToProof\" dir=\"ltr\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"x_elementToProof\">&#8220;We have received a lot of very encouraging information, so I feel there&#8217;s plenty of reason for optimism,&#8221; Ito told a press conference, four days before the Games open in the northern Italian city.<\/div>\n<div class=\"x_elementToProof\" dir=\"ltr\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"x_elementToProof\">&#8220;We believe that good results will follow when the athletes are able to perform at their very best. From our point of view, we would like to do everything we can to support the athletes so that they can win more medals to surpass the best record at the previous Beijing (Winter) Games.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div class=\"x_elementToProof\" dir=\"ltr\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"x_elementToProof\">In Beijing Japan won medals across seven different sports with three gold medals. A total of 120 Japanese athletes have been registered for the 2026 Games with another 161 being coaches and staff. The Japanese team will also be closely monitoring social media to block any online abuse of athletes. Some Japanese athletes had been the target of online abuse at the 2024 Paris Games.<\/div>\n<div class=\"x_elementToProof\" dir=\"ltr\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"x_elementToProof\">&#8211;Reuters&#8211;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":23198,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-23197","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Japan have set their sights on a new Winter Games medals record at the 2026 Milano-Cortina Olympics, hoping to top the 18 collected in Beijing four years ago, team chief Hidehito Ito said on Monday","published_date":"2026-02-02 00:00:00","news_description":"Japan have set their sights on a new Winter Games medals record at the 2026 Milano-Cortina Olympics, hoping to top the 18 collected in Beijing four years ago, team chief Hidehito Ito said on Monday","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/23197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/23197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26241,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/23197\/revisions\/26241"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=23197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}