Big in Japan

Those of you who know their way around tracks will have noticed that the track in the last post wasn't the RDW track in Lelystad. Nor was it the track in Aldenhoven, the DEKRA track, or the track at Opel or Ford. We have been riding on the test track of the Japan Automobile Research Institute (JARI) in Shirosato.

We were asked by the Japanese Public Broadcasting Company (NHK) to cooperate in a television program called Supreme Skills (Sugowaza). This program asks two teams to compete against each other to make an extreme effort. This time it was the Japanese team that will also take part in the World Human Powered Speed Challenge in Battle Mountain and Team Cygnus.
The Japanese team also had a chance to check out their performance before they will go to Battle Mountain in September.
After shooting some footage at the team members' homes or work place and at the Team Cygnus workshop in February, the rest of the filming was done in Japan at the end of March. In the Netherlands the film crew consisted of four persons; a director, a camara man, a sound man and an interpreter. In Japan everything was just huge. When we entered the JARI test track, we were under the impression that some kind of event was still going on. But that was just the film crew.

On Saturday we had the opportunity to test the bike a bit and the rehearsals for the filming of Sunday were done.

The program will broadcast on Saturday 7th May; on Japanese television that is.