Can watching anime help you win an Olympic medal?

It’s late June in Eugene, Oregon, and America’s fastest man Noah Lyles is approaching the starting block at the 2024 Olympic trials. As his competitors prepare their footing and regulate their breathing, the Dazed cover star looks straight into the camera and pulls out a Yu Gi Oh! card, symbolically summoning the legendary Blue Eyes White Dragon to aid him. Lyles proceeds to win the race.

Similar pre-game rituals were performed at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. That year, Greek long jumper Milatidas Tentoglou, Italian race walker Massimo Stano and American shot putter Payton Otterdahl all performed poses from the anime One Piece before going on to represent their countries, and even win gold, in the case of Tentoglou and Stano. These are some of the greatest athletes that humanity has ever produced, and almost every aspect of their lives is geared towards optimising their performance. So, were these anime poses just a bit of lighthearted fun, or could they have actually improved their Olympic outcomes? The answer could, surprisingly, be the latter. 

Bro I was watching Tokyo Olympics and Payton Otterdahl from the USA for shot put made Franky's pose
He even screamed SUUUPEEERRR
One Piece is truly an inspiration pic.twitter.com/763wK0ddJi

— just another guy (@Justotherartguy) August 5, 2021

While physical conditioning is the primary goal of an Olympiad’s training, increasing attention is being given to the mental factors that allow an athlete to get the most out of their bodies. Sports psychology has been shown to produce a quantifiable increase in athletic performance, with one recent study finding that simply smiling before a race led to a 2.8 per cent drop in energy consumption. In the words of Dr Danielle Norenberg, head of psychology at the UK Sports Institute and resident psychologist at the Team GB headquarters in Paris, sports psychology aims to “create environments that promote psychological development and skills that assist athletes to perform optimally when it matters most.” 

Taking some time out of her jam-packed Olympic schedule, Dr Norenberg explains how she employs a range of psychological techniques with Team GB, including visualisation, thought management strategies and pre-performance routines. “I most often use an approach called acceptance commitment therapy, which helps athletes to identify their emotional fluctuations and commit to actions aligned with who they want to be, as opposed to being driven by the emotional sensation without awareness,” she tells Dazed. In short, she finds creative ways to keep athletes focused on success.

“The use of metaphors can be a powerful way to create a consistent and controllable link to their method to perform optimally regardless of the situation,” Dr Norenberg continues. “Typical rituals might entail self-talk or the use of a phrase that is easily remembered, and epitomises how an athlete wants to perform.” 

Greek athlete Miltiadis Tentoglou doing a “Gear Second” pose while winning Gold on men’s long jump in #Tokyo2020 olympics.

An homage to the greatest manga character on Earth, One Piece’s mugiwara Monkey D. Luffy.

Mad respect. pic.twitter.com/mH9N04XBR7

— The Greek Analyst (@GreekAnalyst) August 2, 2021

In light of this, striking an anime pose before an Olympic performance might actually be shown to have some demonstrable benefit. “One Piece is my favourite anime,” US shot putter Payton Otterdahl tells Dazed in the run-up to the Paris opening ceremony. “Having the Olympics in Japan, the home of anime [in 2021], I knew I wanted to pay homage to it somehow.” Thematically, One Piece places a huge emphasis on physical feats, and it is not hard to imagine how this might resonate with Otterdahl’s own gruelling training program. The character he chose to imitate at the Tokyo Olympics, for example, is a cyborg whose body had to be almost entirely reconstructed after being hit by a train.

 “I will often watch YouTube videos of One Piece fight scenes for motivation and listen to the opening soundtrack during my training,” Otterdahl continues, and it is this practice that Dr Norenberg is particularly supportive of. “This pre-performance routine clearly resonates with the athlete and directs his focus in a way that naturally links to how he wants to perform,” she explains. “I often assist athletes to put together playlists that do something similar – music can be a very helpful way to guide attention and help an athlete feel in control.” 

So, what about Noah Lyles’ use of Yu Gi Oh! cards? “Noah is finding ways to keep the sport he loves enjoyable and fresh in a way that also helps him to feel in control of his performance,” says Dr Norenberg. Yu Gi Oh! protagonist Yugi Muto often credits ‘believing the heart of the cards’ for his in-show victories, a phrase which has been endlessly mocked online for its deus-ex-machina style ass-pulls – and it turns out that belief may be more powerful than we realise.

Norenberg is, however, careful to emphasise that these techniques won’t work for everyone. “Simply put, the anime approach will work for athletes who enjoy anime,” Dr Norenberg explains. “Part of sport psychology is eliciting these clues from athletes to help them find controllable ways to deliver.” However, the bottom line still remains: for athletes like Otterdahl and Lyles, their anime-inspired pre-game rituals may very well have been improving their performance.