Ryoko Tani

Tani Ryōko ( Japanese 谷 亮 子 , Tani Ryōko ; born September 6, 1975 in Fukuoka , Fukuoka Prefecture ; born Tamura Ryōko , 田村 亮 子 ) is one of the most successful Japanese judoka and politician. She is a two-time Olympic champion and seven-time world champion.

Tani started judo at the age of eight . On the international stage, she first drew attention to herself in 1991 at the Judo World Championships in Barcelona , when, at the age of 15, she only had to admit defeat in the final to British Karen Briggs .

From 1993 she won the title in her weight class extra light weight in seven of eight world championships.

At the Olympic Games themselves Tani had 1,992 in Barcelona and 1996 in Atlanta settle for the silver medal each. At the 2000 Games in Sydney , she won the final against the Russian Lyubow Bruletova and became an Olympic champion for the first time in her career. She was able to successfully defend her title in 2004 . In 2008 in Beijing she won the bronze medal.

Tani is known in Japan by the nickname Yawara-chan . The word yawara refers to a well-known character from Naoki Urasawa's judo manga Yawara! . Since 2003 she has been married to the Japanese baseball player Yoshitomo Tani , who also took part in the 2004 Olympic Games.

In the 2010 upper house election , Tani stood as a candidate for the Democratic Party on the proportional representation list, achieved second place on the list with over 350,000 preferential votes nationwide and has been elected as a member of parliament for six years. She initially wanted to continue her judo career at the same time and planned to qualify for the 2012 Summer Olympics. On October 15, 2010, she announced her retirement as an athlete. In the summer of 2012, Tani and other opponents of the planned doubling of VAT to Ichirō Ozawa submitted their withdrawal from the party. She joined Ozawa's new party Kokumin no Seikatsu ga Daiichi (later → Japanese Future Party → Seikatsu no Tō ). In the upper house election in 2016 , they did not stand for re-election.

Web links

• Official Website (Japanese)
• Ryōko Tani on Judoinside (English)
• Ryōko Tani in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ YAWARA ・ 谷 佳 知 夫妻 以外 で 同一 五 輪 で と も に メ メ ダ ル を 獲得 し た 夫婦 . In: OlympicPlus. December 1, 2005, accessed June 13, 2010 (Japanese). 
2. ↑ DPJ to field judo star Tani as candidate. In: The Japan Times . May 10, 2010, accessed December 24, 2015 . 
3. ↑ Junko Horiuchi: Judo's Tani juggles election, Olympic gold. In: The Japan Times . July 4, 2010, accessed July 21, 2010 . 
4. ^ Judoka Tani strikes election gold; other celebs mixed. In: The Japan Times . July 12, 2010, accessed July 21, 2010 .