Ihara living out her dream as endurance racer

Fearless: Formula 3 driver Keiko Ihara has not let being female hold her back from competing in the male-dominated sport of auto racing. SATOSHI HINO

Despite being a top-level female racer and entering the sport at a late age, Keiko Ihara wanted to advance to mainstream motor racing.

Determined: Keiko Ihara speaks to The Japan Times at a recent interview in Tokyo. YOSHIAKI MIURA

Well, actually, when she started racing, where she wanted to get to was British Formula Three. That is perhaps because Ihara, who was already 25 years old when she sat behind the wheel of a race car, knew it was realistically the furthest she could possibly reach.

But once she made it there, Ihara's ambitions increased.

"I wanted to compete ultimately in a world championships like the F1," Ihara said in a recent interview with The Japan Times.

This year, her goal was fulfilled at age 38. Ihara earned a seat for the Gulf Racing Middle East team to drive in the inaugural World Endurance Championships.

Even if you haven't heard of the endurance race, you're probably familiar with 24 Hours of Le Mans, which is considered one of the world's three biggest races along with Formula One's Monaco Grand Prix and the Indianapolis 500. Le Mans, which is held in June, is now part of the eight-race WEC series. Japan is in the series and will host the Mount Fuji 6 Hours at Fuji Speedway in mid-October.

In the WEC, there are four different categories and championships — Le Mans Prototype 1 (LMP1), LMP2, Le Mans Grand Touring Endurance (LM GTE Pro) and LM GTE Amateur — and they all take the track simultaneously. The Gulf Racing Middle East, depicted by actor Steve McQueen's driving in the 1971 movie "Le Mans," is in the LMP2 class.

Before being acquired by Gulf to race in the WEC, Ihara had mainly driven open-wheel formula cars, such as F3 and Asian Formula 2000. For her, it was a big adjustment, including the shape of the head-covered car and the length of each race (at least six hours).

With a smile Iihara said she was thrilled to take the next challenge at the highest level.

The Tokyo native said it's an incredible feeling to have reached the peak of one of the FIA-sanctioned world championship series.

"I didn't have an opportunity to race in F1, but I'm extremely excited to have gotten this chance to compete in another world championship," she said, "and I feel fortunate that I got there by having come to the mainstream of the sport."

Ihara, a former race queen for the Benetton Formula One team in the late 1990s, competed in the prestigious British Formula Three International Series in 2005 and '06. (The British F3 has produced numerous future F1 champions: the late Ayrton Senna, Nelson Piquet, Mika Hakkinen, Jenson Button, Lewis Hamilton, among others, and is widely considered the road to get into F1.)

"I've always liked to drive formula cars," Ihara said. "But in terms of the prototype cars in Le Mans and WEC, they're made only for the race, which means they are formula machines, too."

Ihara said that competing in an endurance race requires completely different skills and techniques than the ones she used in sprint races in the past.

"Formula races are sprint races, so people may think it's not so demanding physically because it's a shorter race," Ihara said. "But it does require physical strength. You've got to go 100 percent all the time."

She said endurance race drivers face different challenges in completing races, which are longer competitions, while sharing a car and driving time with your teammates (three pilots share a car in the WEC).

"In the endurance race, you can't go 100 percent all the time because otherwise your car wouldn't tolerate until the end," she said. "And you may not think it's demanding physically, either. But it's a long race, you make substitutions with your teammates, and you've got to take naps and eat in between. So there are certainly some different difficulties in it."

Ihara, who has had success in every international stage in which she has competed, drives Gulf Racing's No. 29, a Nissan engine-powered Lola B12/80 car.

Not just in the WEC, where she's the only female pilot, Ihara is and has always been an exceptional kind because of her gender.

While Danica Patrick is the world's most famous female racer, Ihara's career has overlapped with hers, though they were in different categories.

"When I was in Britain, she (Patrick) was there, driving in a lower category, when I was in the Formula Renault in 2001," recalled Ihara, who didn't have a regular driver's license until she decided to become a pro racer.

Patrick, who moved to NASCAR from the IndyCar series this year, is now a superstar in the United States. Ihara said, however, that Patrick's current stardom doesn't particularly motivate her.

"(It's) because I've always wanted to be in the mainstream of auto racing," Ihara said, referring to British Formula Ford and British F3 as the motor sport's legitimate route to F1.

"If Danica had been successful in any world championships, such as F1 or F3, it would light some fire in me."

Some skeptics may say females will get overexposure in a male-dominated sport. Ihara, on the other hand, views publicity as a good thing.

"I don't have any problems and am happy about it (getting media attention)," she said. "But think about it, even if you were a man, if you are a lightweight boxer and knock out a heavyweight boxer, you would get exposure. So whether I'm a woman or a man, I think if you have an astonishing result, your story will appear in the papers. So my gender doesn't really matter any more."

In March, at the 12 Hours of Sebring in Florida, the first race of the WEC series this year, Ihara's No. 29 car didn't complete enough laps in the practice sessions and failed to advance to the final race.

Ihara's next race will be the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium on May 5.

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The Sports Industry - How to Find Your Dream Job

Though jobs in the sports industry might seem to be plentiful, it is a very competitive field. Divided into ten sections, this industry contains thousands of jobs in, sporting events, trade shows and meetings, sport sponsors, sport related media, sport facilities, sport retailers and manufactures, and professional sport services.

This industry in particular has a large turnover, a complex infrastructure, and an influence on many people's lives via the media and participation. To completely understand the nature of the sports industry, one must know that it is composed of different components:

Different Components in the Sports Industry

o Sporting goods - equipment manufacturers, high street sports retailers

o Facility management, provision and maintenance - motor sport facilities, stadiums, sports and leisure centers

o Sports coaching

o Sports tourism - packages for fans attending the world cup matches, or Olympics

o Sports development - sports development initiatives, governing bodies for various sports, local authority sports development officers

o Sports-related gambling/betting

o Professional sport

o Health and fitness - health clubs, GP referral schemes, personal fitness

o Trainers

o Sports medicine -sports injury clinics, physiotherapists

o Outdoors and adventure activities - mountain biking, climbing, canoeing

To know every section of the sports industry, you must understand the type of activities that take place and the respective organizations that provide them. For instance, if you are planning to get involved with sporting goods, you should know the different types of goods that are available through specialist equipment manufacturers and high end retailers, plus names of the various companies involved.

Likewise, to seek a job in sports development, you should be aware of what 'sports development' is and the various jobs available for sports development officers, as well as the organizations that employ them, like the local authorities and charities governing bodies of different sports.

In general, people take it for granted that jobs are restricted within the sports industry. However, there are many other opportunities available. A job in the sports industry could range from that as a professional athlete, to a ball girl/ boy, to a general manager of a professional sports team. You don't have to work for a professional sports team to get into the industry. You could start working as a trainer or coach for a high school team, a journalist, or a sports agent, or even work as a television broadcaster.

Salary Range in the Sports Industry

The sport, the team and the type of job, are some of the aspects that influence salaries in the sports industry. Following are examples of salary ranges of some jobs in the sports industry:

Coach: $20,000-$400,000+ (College) and $20,000-$70,000 (high school)

Sportscaster: $18,000-$1 million

Sportswriter: $15,000-$1 million

Sports Event Coordinator: $24,000-$90,000+

Education largely depends on the type of job one is planning to pursue. A college degree may not assure a job in the industry but may provide numerous opportunities for employment. Besides, it is almost impossible to get into the sports industry without experience. The best way to prepare for a job in the sports industry is to get maximum exposure.

Tony Jacowski is a quality analyst for The MBA Journal. Aveta Solutions - Six Sigma Online ( http://www.sixsigmaonline.org ) offers online six sigma training and certification classes for lean six sigma, black belts, green belts, and yellow belts.

Orimo still chasing Olympic dream

Forty-year-old star shooter Takehiko Orimo has achieved pretty much everything he could've possibly hoped for in his stellar career in the Japanese hoop scene.

Unfinished business: Takehiko Orimo hopes to realize his dream of one day playing at the Olympics. KAZ NAGATSUKA

But not everything. There is still one last piece of unfinished business: playing in the Olympics.

So in 2011, with a year to go to the London Games, Orimo is going about a tough but challenging task.

"We have the Olympic qualifier in September," Orimo said after a national team news conference on Tuesday. "I've never played in an Olympics and earning an Olympic berth is a fervent wish for the Japan Basketball League."

The last time the Japan men's team qualified was in 1976 in Montreal.

Orimo doesn't want to achieve the goal just to add more glory to his personal career profile — he also thinks it would have an enormous impact on the game in Japan.

"If we make the Olympics, I believe something will change in Japan's basketball," said Orimo, who played in two World Championships in 1998 and 2006.

Orimo, a guard/forward for the Hokkaido Basketball Club (formerly known as the Rera Kamuy Hokkaido) of the JBL, said the national team and its players had not pushed themselves hard enough to reach an Olympics until now.

For example, national team coach Thomas Wisman and the Japan Basketball Association have brought a new approach to the squad, calling up more players, including prospective collegians and high schoolers, and dividing the group into three categories. That is intended to create more competition inside the national squad and spur long-term development.

Completely agreeing with the idea, Orimo said it was something the national team was lacking in the past.

Orimo called the spots for the regular national team members "reserved seats," meaning that no matter how they did, their places were secure all the time.

"So there was really little competition inside the team," said Orimo, adding that he welcomes youngsters challenging for the top-team spots that the veteran players currently occupy.

Even under those kind of circumstances, Japan was still one of the top nations in Asia in the 20th century. But this past decade or so, other countries have had rapid rises and Japan eventually dropped out of the elite group.

Orimo thinks with regret about "what if", recalling his younger days on Team Japan.

"Had I possessed the mind set that I have now at that time, things might have been different," he said.

Playing for one of the two professional clubs in the JBL in Hokkaido, Orimo now has high quality professionalism. But he confesses that he only started to develop it when he moved to Hokkaido from a company-led club, Toyota Motors Alvark, at age 36.

"It was probably too late to know that," he said. "But also I was fortunate to realize that. So I feel like I owe Hokkaido and I am not going to play anywhere else but in Hokkaido."

And now Orimo strongly believes that a professional league would make other players feel the same way he does and that it would eventually help lift the level of the game in Japan — sooner rather than later.

"The league has changed its name, like to the `JBL Super League' in the past, but nothing actually changed but the name," he said. "We've now got to create a professional league."

"Otherwise, it won't develop the game in Japan and won't be a sport that children want to play.

"The majority of the JBL clubs are backed up by big corporations and they're not willing to join a pro league.

"To be very honest with you, I want those organizations to get out of it."

As to the integrating of the JBL and bj-league, Orimo isn't optimistic at all that it will be completed because the rules and customs are too different on both sides.

Although he says a "merger" is not realistic, he doesn't rule out starting up a completely new league.

"The thing is, those who raise their hands should create one (professional) league," he said.

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