"My goal from my first year was to follow, overtake and beat Kawai." Looking back at his four years on the athletics team, Kawatsura mentions his rival, Motoki Kawai, first of all. In the same year, Kawai was also a good friend, and together they led the championship-winning Chuo University sprint race.

"I was the slowest when I entered Chuo University," says Kawatsura. At high school, he fell just short of reaching the national championships, and it was difficult entering Chuo University on a sports recommendation. Even so, he didn't give up on trying to get into Chuo, "where the level of study and athletics is high", and trained hard to confirm his acceptance by meeting the university's requirement to appear in the Japan Junior Championships.

After entering university he bitterly recalls watching Kawai place in the Kanto Inter-College and National Inter-College tournaments as a first year student. "I modified my form as a second year and finally blossomed," he says when looking back at that time. "I became able to think for myself and recognize what was required. I started to use my head and run," he says in stressing how he re-invented himself.

Kawatsura, who devised his training program for himself and practiced while visualizing himself in his ideal running style, explains that, "Running is like choosing clothes." He says this is because he was always thinking about what was missing from his running and trying to add that while he was running. In addition to that, recording things in a notebook that he noticed in his daily training and at other times was extremely useful.

The results of this training were outstanding. At the May 2010 Kanto Inter-College meet, third year Kawatsura appeared as the second runner in the Men's 4x100m relay, and the Chuo team won, setting a new Japanese student record in the process. As a fourth year, he left an even bigger mark. In the 2011 Inter-College, Kawatsura won the Men's 200m in 20.56, topping the international A standard. He also added the men's 100m and men's 4x100m titles to capture the Triple Crown, and was selected as MVP of the tournament.

"The Kanto Inter-College triple crown left the greatest impression on me. It proved that the work I had done myself wasn't a mistake. As a poor runner, I learnt that, if you work hard, even the slowest athletes have potential."

Kawatsura put everything not only into athletics but also into his studies, and took a course for students aiming for the legal profession in his first year. From his third year, he "wanted to be in an environment with people holding aspirations," and even belonged to Professor Tadahiko Fukuhara's seminar, which has many students who continue on to the Graduate School of Law.

Kawatsura says, "I love the Chuo University training ground the most." Although he has a place close to his home where he can train, even from the spring he will travel more than an hour to train at the Chuo ground. He aims to qualify for the London Olympic Games. "My goal is to break the 10 second barrier," he says, continuing to fix his sights on the future.

(Watanabe)