With the Beijing Winter Games ending on March 13, Japan will turn its attention to discovering young athletes with disabilities who have the potential to become future Paralympic medalists.
Steps have been taken to create barrier-free facilities ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Games. But now that the Paralympics have begun, who is going to ensure such groundbreaking efforts continue?
Japan welcomes Paralympians in spectacular fashion harakahdaily.net - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from harakahdaily.net Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic organizing committee appointed 12 new female members for its executive board on March 3, as it tries to reach a new gender diversity goal and shake a sexism scandal.
The members include Naoko Takahashi, an Olympic marathon gold medalist, and Kuniko Obinata, a Paralympic alpine ski gold medalist.
After former organizing committee chief Yoshiro Mori resigned from his position after coming under fire for making sexist remarks about women, the new committee president, Seiko Hashimoto, set a goal of raising the representation of women on its executive board to 40 percent as part of its gender equality efforts.