Shoko Miyata, the 19-year-old captain of Japan’s Artistic Gymnastics Olympic squad, has exited the sporting event after smoking cigarettes, in violation of the team's code of conduct, the Japanese Gymnastics Association (JGA) said on Friday. It’s understood that Miyata consumed alcohol, also.
In Japan, smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol is illegal until the age of 20. However, the JGA contains additional rules effectively prohibiting its athletes from smoking and drinking during team activities even if they are above the age of 20, per the Japan Times.
TIME has reached out to the Japanese Gymnastics Association for further comment.
Miyata’s exit comes as the Japan team is hoping to win a team medal for the first time since the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Now, the team will be forced to compete with four athletes instead of five, limiting the amount of depth it can bring to each aspect of the competition.
"She was spending her days really burdened with so much pressure," her coach Mutsumi Harada said per Reuters. "I would implore people to understand that."
JGA officials said that Miyata had arrived in Japan on Thursday after leaving the team’s Olympics training facility in Monaco. Miyata is a very strong gymnast who had previously won a bronze medal on the balance beam at the 2022 World Championships and came in eighth during the 2022 all-around final.
The mental health of Olympians has increasingly come under the spotlight as more athletes open up about the pressure of competing at the world’s highest level. Simone Biles, the most decorated gymnast in history, dropped out of the Olympics in Tokyo due to mental health concerns.
“I hope young women take away that it's OK to not be OK. You can speak up for what you believe, and you can do things alone,” she said in a 2021 interview for the official Olympics website.
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