Sailing: Yukie Yokoyama and Cheryl Teo to stop Tokyo 2020 campaign

SINGAPORE – Citing post-traumatic strain disease (PTSD) that followed a near-dying incident remaining 12 months, countrywide sailor Yukie Yokoyama announced that she and Cheryl Teo would stop campaigning for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Under the duo’s Instagram account @sgp470_teamkigai, the 22-12 months-vintage wrote on Saturday (March sixteen): “Firstly, I have to apologize for not updating sooner. I will admit; it has taken me some time to garner enough energy to pen this down subsequently. “PTSD has tormented me given that a close to the loss of life incident that passed off in the course of a schooling camp in Japan remaining February. It had taken an exquisite toll on me, both physically and mentally, which became similarly exacerbated through internal and external pressures to medal on the Asian Games in Jakarta.

“After consulting with several psychologists and professionals, I have decided to stop campaigning for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and to position my mental fitness first. “Cheryl and I believed we might want to make the Olympic dream come alive and invested one hundred% in this marketing campaign. However, life seems to have other plans for us.” During a training camp in Okinawa in February 2018, a 4-meter wave washed over the women’s 470 duo’s boat and caused it to capsize. While Teo changed into swept overboard, the 1.47-m Yokoyama observed herself trapped in one of the white sails. She could not forget how she eventually freed; however, she shared that she considered quitting cruising then. After several months and many sessions with a sports activities psychologist, she decided to hold competing, with a penknife in her lifestyles jacket.

In an interview before the 2018 Asian Games, wherein the pair completed fourth, Yokoyama said: “I was suffering, seeking to tear the spinnaker open due to the fact I couldn’t pass and concept, ‘I’m truely going to drown.’ “That’s the closest moment I’ve been to dying while cruising… The one moment I almost decided it is not worth losing my existence over.” Teo additionally wrote a wistful publish on the equal account and relived the various milestones of their partnership, which commenced from Yokoyama’s technique in July 2015, their first occasion in Enoshima in September 2016, deferring school May 2017, and prevailing the SEA Games gold in August 2017. The 19-12 months-vintage introduced: “For the past four months, I constantly notion to myself, ‘Is the whole lot sincerely over? Why did I not discover in advance? Why cannot I do something about it? Why did this need to manifest to Yukie? Why did this take place for me? I will by no means find a correct solution to a million of whys, and one million of regrets which modifications nothing’.

“When Yukie told me that she desired to give up, I knew there had been no factor in forcing her to continue. Her mental fitness is of extreme significance, and the Olympics is just any other occasion. “I did attempt to ask several others and made efforts to preserve my sailing campaign for 2020. However, it appeared like there was no manner I ought to retain my cruising journey, at least for now. It, without a doubt, pains me to say that I must give up on Tokyo, specifically when we knew it turned into possible. “My adjacent ones around me will recognize how hard I tried to fight for it, and I, in reality, thank them for being around in the course of this section of my existence.

I consider the whole thing happens for a purpose, and there may be no doubt there can be light on the give up of the tunnel.” However, Yokoyama, who became the 2013 Sportsgirl of the Year, left the door open for a comeback. She wrote: “This is not a retirement announcement. I hope that with time and more professional guidance, I will be capable of finding the affection I had for cruising again, whether or not within the shape of an Olympic campaign or giving returned to the casing network in something ways.”