On the other side of the Pacific Ocean, far from the hustle and bustle of Tokyo's hyper daily pace, Japanese swimmers enjoy a haven of privacy and a world-class training center as they prepare for the imposing challenge of competing for Olympic medals.

Northern Arizona University's Center for High Altitude Training, located in the small mountain city of Flagstaff, has provided gold-medal winners Kosuke Kitajima and Ai Shibata and their national teammates a place to hold training camps for more than a decade. It's become a home away from home, as many of them will tell you without hesitation.

Now as Japan gears up for this summer's Beijing Olympics, the Center for High Altitude Training is as busy as ever.

"Out of the 365 days in the year preceding the Beijing Games, we will have elite Japanese athletes (the vast majority of whom are swimmers) here in Flagstaff for almost 250 of them," said Sean Anthony, the Center's assistant director.

Long-term planning is necessary to make this possible.

" . . . I sat down with JASF (Japan Swimming Federation) director of swimming Koji Ueno last summer about a pre-Olympic altitude-training camp and the team has had dates and lanes in place since that time," Anthony noted. "If everything goes as planned, we will see the Japanese Olympic swim team here in two waves: one in May/June and one in June/July."

Situated at an elevation of 2,100 meters above sea level, Flagstaff has become a well-known international training city.

Ian Thorpe and his Australian swimming teammates spent three weeks there before the Athens Games, for example, and British marathon star Paula Radcliffe and American middle distance runner Bernard Lagat, who pulled off a stunning 1,500-5,000 double at last summer's IAAF World Athletics Championships in Osaka, have used the area's vast array of trails for their outdoor workouts.

The Center was officially designated a U.S. Olympic training site in 2004 and solidified its reputation as a world-class training facility that summer as scores of athletes from around the world trained there and excelled in Athens.

The Center is proud of the collective success of the athletes who have trained there — athletes from 40 countries, competing in 15 sports, have earned 191 Olympic and Paralympic medals in the past decade — and rightfully so.

"We have certainly continued to see an overall increase in the number of Japanese swim teams interested in training here, but actual patronage in a given year still depends on a number of factors, including the timing of major competitions," Anthony said.

Kitajima, the 100-and 200-meter breaststroke gold medalist in Athens, has called the Tokyo Swimming Center his aquatic home since his elementary school days. His club team has been making twice-a-year visits to Flagstaff for years and utilizing the Wall Aquatic Center's Olympic-size swimming pool.

Having lived and worked as a sports journalist in Flagstaff for five years, I've seen firsthand how TSC head coach Norimasa "Nori" Hirai and Anthony have forged a strong friendship that transcends language and cultural barriers.

This has helped easygoing Hirai-sensei do what he does best: prepare swimmers for the world's biggest competitions; and it's helped Anthony continue to act as a skillful management planner for the TSC and other Japanese club teams, such as the Nihon University Swim Team and Waseda University Swim Team, and the national squad (a logistical decathlon: handling a 50-person contingent) to ensure they have successful training camps there.

Away from the pool, Kitajima has grown fond of the relaxed lifestyle in Flagstaff and cherishes his privacy there, where he isn't in the media spotlight 24/7.

And it's no surprise — or secret — that Anthony, who has seen Kitajima blossom into a world record-breaking star, has enjoyed watching Japan's most famous swimmer savor his leisure time in the Grand Canyon State.

"It's nice to be out to dinner with him, Nori and his teammates and just see him smiling and laughing like any other 25-year-old out with his friends," Anthony said. "I am very cognizant of the fact during these dinners, or at times when I see him walking down the street or stretching on the pool deck, that no one here really has a clue who he is.

"And I always think it must be extraordinarily liberating for him in those moments to be able to feel like a regular person, at least momentarily devoid of the kinds of everyday pressures that so often cloud the lives of superstars (whether sport or music or film or whatever).

"Nori told me he really liked this cruiser bicycle (I think it was a low-rider) he saw in Flagstaff at one of the bike stores and it pleased me to no end to picture him biking down the streets of Flagstaff on it with his iPod headphones on, just wonderfully anonymous. The thought of it actually pleased me so much I almost bought it for him."

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IN ADDITION to Kitajima's headline-grabbing performance in Athens and Shibata's victory in the women's 800-meter freestyle, Takashi Yamamoto earned a silver medal in the men's 200 butterfly and Japan collected four bronze medals.

Overall, Japan's eight swimming medals were second only to Australia's 15 and the United States' 28.

Japan's overall success in Athens generated good publicity for the Center for High Altitude Training.

"It's what we call a double-edged sword, yes?" Anthony said. "We certainly have become known internationally as where the best swim teams in the world train and we stake our reputation on keeping our VIP clients like Tokyo Swimming Center, etc. happy. But the more new teams that become enticed to come here, the more difficult it can be to make use of the limited space that we have to keep existing clients satisfied.

"In the end, we pull out all the stops to keep our Japanese teams feeling like we are here for them. I think that any of the coaches with whom we coordinate the training camps . . . knows that we will make their training camp a priority regardless of what other teams are here or want to come.

"And they know that we operate on an on-call basis and that they can contact us at any time for anything. That is our commitment to Japanese swimming. If some of the other teams have a problem with our system of priority, I have only to say that if they displayed the same commitment to coming here as the Japanese, perhaps we would need to consider how they too could have a place at the top of the totem pole.

"We do a lot for the Japanese, but the reality is, they do a lot for us as well."

This weekend's Japan Open at Tokyo Tatsumi International Swimming Center, will serves as a measuring stick for Kitajima and his compatriots to see how their bodies shift to competition mode.

And then it's back to training mode. The Japan Olympic Trials are just around the corner. The six-day meet starts April 15 in Tokyo.

In the meantime, Anthony and the Center for High Altitude Training staff are busy checking off items on their to-do list in preparation for the next wave of Japanese swimmers to arrive in Flagstaff.

It is part of a busy four-year cycle that is now at its peak. The next six-plus months, culminating in Beijing, will be one of continuous hard work on both sides of the Pacific for the swimmers, coaches and respective support staffs who have worked together to form a special bond.

Anthony delightfully recalled his first visit to Japan in November 2004, when as a special guest of the Tokyo Swimming Center, he was able to solidify his relation ship with Japan's top swimming leaders.

"While I was in Tokyo having a wonderful dinner at Koji Ueno's favorite chankonabe restaurant, he expressed his interest right then and there to lock the Japanese team in for the next four years leading up to Beijing," Anthony said. "And right then and there I committed our resources to JASF and have not looked back.

"It was a mutual commitment that carried us through this past 3 1/2 years and, hopefully, will reap dividends in August in a big way."

And that serves as a daily reminder that one should never underestimate the importance of business relationships.