Profile
Wheelchair rugby athlete (Class 1.0)
Tomoaki Imai is an employee of Mitsubishi Corporation.
Hometown: Abiko City, Chiba
Date of Birth: March 12, 1983
- 2009Starts regular wheelchair rugby training
- 2013Selected to play on Japan's national wheelchair rugby team
- 2014Competes at the IWRF World Championships in Denmark (Japanese national team places 4th)
- 2015Competes at the Mitsubishi Corporation IWRF Asia-Oceania Championship 2015 (Japanese national team wins)
Wins award for best 1.0 class player - 2016RIO 2016 Paralympic Games (Japanese national team wins bronze medal)
- 2017Competes at the Tri Nations Wheelchair Rugby Invitational in the USA (Japanese national team wins)
Competes at the IWRF Asia-Oceania Championships in New Zealand (Japanese national team comes in 2nd place) - 2018Competes at the IWRF World Championships in Australia (Japanese national team wins)
- 2019Competes at the World Wheelchair Rugby Challenge 2019 in Japan (Japanese national team comes in 3rd place)
- 2021Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games (Japanese national team wins bronze medal)
Tomoaki Imai
Started playing wheelchair rugby in 2009 and was selected to represent the Japanese national team as a 1.0 class* player in 2013. In 2015 he contributed to the team's victory at the IWRF Asia-Oceania Championships and won the award for best player in the 1.0 class. Part of the Japan national team won bronze, the country's first Paralympic medal ever, at the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro and a key member of the team that won gold at the 2018 Wheelchair Rugby World Championship.
* Wheel chair rugby divides players into seven classes according to the severity of their disability, from 0.5 to 3.5 points. The four players on court are not allowed to have a total point score higher than 8.0. Tomoaki Imai is in class 1.0, which is the second most severely disabled class.
