Various Olympic museums have been built all over the world in the past 30 or so years.

Almost all focus on Olympic history, omitting the most important aspect of sports—the

physical experience.

We wondered if we could create a museum embodying that celebrated quote of the father of

the modern Olympic Games, Pierre de Coubertin: “Winning medals isn’t the point of the

Olympics. It’s the participating that counts.”

We embraced the challenge to establish the world’s first experiential Olympic Museum in celebration of TOKYO 2020.

We invented a special place where anyone can become an Olympic athlete, transcending barriers of age, gender and nationality to compete virtually with Olympians.

We collaborated with sports science specialists to designate seven categories of Olympian abilities and created experiential content for each.

We designed activity fields for each sport experience, incorporating the white lines which appear in actual competitions to enhance the total immersion feel.

Athletes' great record data never goes out of date. In order to create an experience of a permanent facility, we thought it was important not to use the latest technology but to show the footprints of the legends who are not old. So we decided to create an experience that would allow children and seniors to challenge the Olympian record. Since the Olympics are a celebration of peace, it targets all generations, from children to seniors. In addition, we have prepared multiple types of experience content so that everyone can experience it regardless of gender or disability. Everyone can find a sporting experience that they are good at.

We worked with experts in sports science to categorize Olympian abilities into seven categories and create experiential content for each. All contents are based on the athlete's exercise data. The details are as follows.

JUMP: Pit your jumping ability against that of Olympian gymnasts and basketball players.

SYNCHRONIZE: Try moving in synch with Olympic artistic swimmers and skaters.

RUN: Chase the footprints to experience the feel and sound of record-breakers in Olympic athletics.

THROW: Test each type of sporting equipment to experience its weight and feel, and watch videos of throwing events.

BALANCE: Compete against Olympic athletes whose superior balance makes them the best at sports such as snowboarding and skateboarding.

TARGET: Match skills with Olympic sharpshooters; see how accurately you can hit a target and experience the powerful force of a gun muzzle.

All Games: Move your body to discover the sport with the closest pose on screen.

The democratization of the Olympic Games was achieved by incorporating the recorded data of Olympians into the experience at the museum. Everyone challenged the Olympic athletes and was able to become an athlete on the same stage.

In a 10-day period we were featured over 1,000 times on TV, in newspapers, and in online

news.

Both male and female visitors of various ages and nationalities helped the Japan Olympic

Museum reach a record 200,000 visitors in just 2.5 months.

The number of visitors is still growing exponentially. It was also evaluated by major Japanese newspaper media as follows.“Japan Olympic Museum is a place that epitomizes the changing city of Tokyo, for which sport is central to its transformation. – Nikkei” This space has become a semipermanent

device for participants to actively receive the messages of the Olympic Games and

its founders. Surely we are producing future Olympians here!