Following Miho Takagi's ironwoman performance captaining Japan at the Winter Olympics, where she collected four medals from her five speed skating events, her Paralympic counterpart Momoka Muraoka aims to take one step further and go five for five in Beijing.
The 25-year-old Muraoka competes in sit skiing, one of three disciplines in para Alpine skiing, and an event that has given Japan a gold medal in each of the past four Paralympics.
She set the bar high for herself for these games after medaling in five events in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in 2018.
All sit skiers have an impairment affecting their legs. They are allocated different sporting classes depending on their sitting balance, which is very important for weight shifting and maneuvering during races.
Sit-skis, also called chair-skis in Japan, are individually manufactured. They consist of a molded seat mounted onto a metal frame, an adjustable shock absorber as well as a conventional ski binding and a ski.
To keep the country's Paralympic gold run going, multiple Japanese companies have worked together to develop better sit skis to ensure athletes with disabilities have the best possible equipment to help them reach their goals.
Japanese Paralympic team captain Muraoka was diagnosed at age four with transverse myelitis, an inflammation of the spinal cord.
Seeking to achieve her five-medal dream at the March 4-13 games, she will battle once again with her archrival, Germany's Anna-Lena Forster.
Muraoka is ranked No. 1 in the world in two of the five events she is entering in Beijing, while Forster, who won two gold medals at the Pyeongchang Games, holds the No. 1 spot in the other three.
The Saitama Prefecture native's first and only Paralympic gold of her career came in the women's giant slalom sitting event in 2018.
She may also face a challenge from previously unheralded Chinese athletes with a home-hill advantage at the National Alpine Skiing Centre in Yanqing.
Among the other Japanese athletes competing on the slopes, Akira Kano, who has a spinal cord injury, will aim to get himself back on the Paralympic podium after missing out on a medal in 2018. The 35-year-old sit skier has four Paralympic medals, two gold from 2014 and one gold and one bronze from 2010.
Kano will contest the men's downhill on Saturday and super-G sitting on Sunday.
Takeshi Suzuki will be contending for a medal in the men's slalom sitting on March 12. Slalom requires skiers to make the shortest and most frequent turns.
Taiki Morii, an all-round Alpine skier, is taking part in his sixth Winter Paralympics and seeking his first gold. He has won a medal at every games since 2006, four silver and one bronze.
In the standing events, Hiraku Misawa, a one-legged skier who flings himself down the steepest runs at top speed with the help of his specialized gear, and Ammi Hondo, a single-pole skier who was born without fingers on her left hand, are Japan's other medal hopefuls.
Of the 29 para athletes representing Japan at the Beijing Games, 14 of them -- nine men and five women -- are Alpine skiers.
Related coverage:
Paralympics: Nitta gunning for epic cross-country finish in 7th games
Late-bloomer Noriko Kamiyama proves Paralympic life starts at 49
IPC to exclude Russian, Belarusian athletes from Beijing Paralympics
