Ayumi Ogasawara

Ayumi Ogasawara
Ayumi Ogasawara
	Curler
Born	Ayumi Onodera; November 25, 1978 (age 45); Tokoro, Kitami, Hokkaido
Team
Curling club	Sapporo CC,; Sapporo, JPN
Skip	Ayumi Ogasawara
Third	Sayaka Yoshimura
Second	Kaho Onodera
Lead	Anna Ohmiya
Alternate	Yumie Funayama
Career
World Championship; appearances	4 (1999, 2001, 2005, 2015)
Pacific Championship; appearances	6 (1994, 1998, 2001, 2004, 2013, 2014)
Olympic; appearances	3 (2002, 2006, 2014)
Women's curling
	Representing Japan
Pacific Championships
World Junior Championships

Ayumi Ogasawara (小笠原歩, Ogasawara Ayumi^?) is a Japanese curler, born November 25, 1978 in Tokoro, Kitami, Hokkaido as Ayumi Onodera (小野寺歩, Onodera Ayumi^?). She currently skips her own team in Sapporo, Hokkaido, which represented Japan at the 2014 Winter Olympics.

Career

At the age of 12, Ogasawara began curling in her hometown Tokoro, joining Akiko Katoh's junior team together with Yumie Hayashi. Then Ogasawara became the second for the team. The team represented Japan at four World Junior Curling Championships (1996, 1997, 1998 & 1999), winning a silver medal in 1998 and another silver in 1999. The team later represented Japan at the 2002 Winter Olympics, finishing in 8th place with a 2-7 record.

After the 2001-2002 season, Ogasawara and her longtime teammate Hayashi moved to Aomori and formed a new team there. The team, called 'Team Aomori', represented Japan at the 2006 Winter Olympics. At the Games, Ogasawara threw last stones as skip and led her team to a 7th-place finish with a 4-5 record, including a surprise win over one of the usual curling powerhouses, Canada. After the 2005-2006 season, Ogasawara and Hayashi announced their temporary retirement. Ogasawara got married and had a child before returning to the sport in the 2011-12 season.

In 2011, Ogasawara and Hayashi, whose name had changed to Yumie Funayama after marriage, formed a new team in Sapporo.^[1] The team qualified for the 2014 Winter Olympics through the Olympic Qualification Event held in December 2013. At the Olympics, Ogasawara, a mother of one, was chosen to be Japan's flag bearer, as it is unusual for women in Japan to compete in sports after having children. At the Games, she threw last stones as skip, and the team finished in 5th place with a 4-5 record, winning against two former World Championship teams, Switzerland's Mirjam Ott and China's Wang Bingyu.