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Waseda Olympians, 54 medals and counting
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Waseda Olympians, 54 medals and counting

Fri, Sep 11, 2015
Waseda Olympians, 54 medals and counting
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Mikio Oda

Figure skater Yuzuru Hanyu is most likely the first athlete to come to mind when discussing Waseda Olympians. However, Waseda’s history of producing Olympian medalists goes back to 1928, when track and field athlete Mikio Oda became the first Japanese to win an Olympic gold medal at the Amsterdam Olympics. Since then, Waseda athletes have gone on to win 54 Olympic medals, 13 of them gold.

Although Mikio Oda was the first Japanese athlete to win an Olympic gold medal, he was accompanied by fellow Waseda swimmers Nobuo Arai, Katsuo Takaishi, and Hiroshi Yoneyama who won three silver medals and one bronze in their respective events.

The “friendship medal”

In the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics, Waseda alumni Shuhei Nishida won a silver medal in the pole vault competition tying with his friend and teammate from Keio University, Sueo Oe. After the two declined to compete against each other to decide a winner, Nishida was arbitrarily awarded the silver and Oe the bronze. After returning to Japan, Nishida and Oe had their Olympic medals cut in half and spliced together to make the “friendship medals,” a half bronze and half silver medal.

In 1964, 43 students and alumni competed at the Tokyo Olympics where Yojiro Uetake took home the gold in the bantam weight division for freestyle wrestling, and swimmers Kunihiro Iwasaki and Yukiaki won the bronze in the 800m relay.

At the 1992 Albertville Winter Olympics and the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Olympics, Kenji Ogiwara and Takanori Khono won gold medals in the nordic combined team competition. Figure skater Shizuka Arakawa won the gold medal at the 2006 Torino Winter Olympics.

At the 2014 Sochi Olympics, Yuzuru Hanyu became the first Japanese to win a gold medal in the men’s figure skating event and the first Waseda student to win a gold medal in 22 years since Kenji Ogiwara won a gold at the nordic combined event at the 1992 Albertville Olympics.

Natsumi Hoshi with the Waseda BEAR

Other notable athletes include swimmer Natsumi Hoshi who won a bronze medal at the 2012 London Olympics 200m butterfly event. Hoshi will compete alongside fellow Waseda Olympians Daiya Seto and Kanako Watanabe at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.

 


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