Masamitsu Ichiguchi

Masamitsu Ichiguchi ( Japanese市 口 政 光, Ichiguchi Masamitsu ; born January 12, 1940 in Osaka Prefecture ) is a former Japanese wrestler . He was Olympic champion in Tokyo in 1964 .

Career

Masamitsu Ichiguchi learned, like almost all top Japanese wrestlers of those years, to wrestle in schools and universities. After good performance at the Japanese University Championships, he won the Japanese Olympic elimination for the Games in Rome in 1960 in the bantamweight in Greco-Roman style. In Rome he showed good fights, but was eliminated by a defeat in the 5th round against the Soviet athlete Oleg Karawajew and came in 7th place.

At the 1961 World Cup in Yokohama , his home country , Masamitsu was disappointed because he could not do anything against the top European wrestlers Bernard Knitter from Poland and Ion Cernea from Romania and was eliminated after the second round.

1962 began for Masamitsu with a victory at the Asian Games in Jakarta in bantamweight, where he found no adequate opponents. How much he had improved, he then showed at the World Championships in Toledo / USA , where he won the world title in a superior style.

At the Japanese championship in 1963 he surprisingly lost to Kōji Sakurama and was therefore not at the world championship in Helsingborg . In 1964 he succeeded in taking revenge against Sakamura at the Japanese championship and thus qualifying for the Olympic Games in Tokyo . In Tokyo he presented himself in excellent shape and became Olympic champion with five victories.

Masimitsu ended his career as an active wrestler after Tokyo, even though he was only 24 years old. He finished his studies and was then wrestling trainer at various universities and in the Japanese wrestling association. In 1985 he was in charge of a Japanese selection of wrestlers, which on a tour of Europe also won 7-2 against his Saar selection in Riegelsberg . In the 1990s he became a member of the Japanese Olympic Committee.

International success

(OS = Olympic Games, WM = World Championship, GR = Greco-Roman style, Ba = bantam weight, up to 57 kg body weight)

• 1960, 7th place , OS in Rome , GR, Ba, with victories over Larry Lauchle , USA , Kemal Ali El Sayed , Egypt and Yasar Yilmaz , Turkey , a draw against Bernard Knitter , Poland and a defeat against Oleg Karawajew , Soviet Union ;
• 1961, 9th place , World Championships in Yokohama , GR, Ba, after defeats against Bernard Knitter and Ion Cernea , Romania ;
• 1962, 1st place , Asian Games in Jakarta , GR, Ba, ahead of Siraj Un-Din, Pakistan , Narin Ghume, India and Manawach, Indonesia ;
• 1962, 1st place , World Championship in Toledo / USA , GR, Ba, with victories over Edvin Vesterby , Sweden , Yasar Yilmaz, Bernard Knitter, Kamel Ali El Sayed and Amari Egadse , Soviet Union;
• 1964, gold medal , OS in Tokyo , GR, Ba, with victories over Nouroulla Noor, Afghanistan , Fritz Stange , Germany , János Varga , Hungary , Jiří Švec , Czechoslovakia and Tsvetko Paschkalow, Bulgaria

swell

• various issues of the specialist magazine " Athletik " from 1960 to 1964,
• Documentation of FILA's International Wrestling Championships, 1976,
• International Wrestling Database of the University of Leipzig,
• Website www.saarringer.de

Web links

• Profile of Masamitsu Ichiguchi at the Institute for Applied Exercise Science
• Masamitsu Ichiguchi in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )