Sawao Kato

Sawao Kato
Sawao Katō 1970
Personal information
Nationality:	Japan
discipline	Apparatus gymnastics
Birthday:	11th October 1946 (age 73)
Place of birth:	Gosen
Size:	163 cm
Medal table
Olympic games 8 × 3 × 1 × World championships 1 × 0 × 0 ×
Medals
Olympic games gold Mexico City 1968 Individual all-around gold Mexico City 1968 ground gold Mexico City 1968 Team all-around bronze Mexico City 1968 Rings gold Munich 1972 Individual all-around gold Munich 1972 Ingots gold Munich 1972 Team all-around silver Munich 1972 Pommel horse silver Munich 1972 Horizontal bar gold Montreal 1976 Ingots gold Montreal 1976 Team all-around silver Montreal 1976 Individual all-around  World championships gold Varna 1974 Team all-around

Sawao Katō ( Japanese 加藤 澤 男 , Katō Sawao ; born October 11, 1946 in Niigata or Suwadaira Prefecture) is a former Japanese gymnast and university teacher .

Katō took part in three Olympic Games between 1968 and 1976, in which he won a total of 12 medals, including 8 gold. This makes him one of the most successful gymnasts at the Olympic Games and the most successful Olympic participant in Japan. In addition to the Italian Alberto Braglia (1908 and 1912), the Soviet gymnast Wiktor Tschukarin (1952 and 1956) and his compatriot Kōhei Uchimura (2012 and 2016), Katō is one of the four athletes who were able to repeat their all-around victory at the Olympic Games.

Katō later worked as a professor of health and sports science at Tsukuba University until his retirement in 2010 .

Olympic successes

1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City

• Gold in the battle of the twelve
• Gold in the team ranking
• Gold in floor exercise
• Bronze on the rings

1972 Summer Olympics in Munich

• Gold in the battle of the twelve
• Gold in the team ranking
• Gold on bars
• Silver on the pommel horse
• Silver on the horizontal bar

1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal

• Gold on bars
• Gold in the team ranking
• Silver in the twelve battle

Web links

• Sawao Katō in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Sawao Katō in the database of the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (English)
• Sawao Katō in the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 加藤 沢 男 . In: デ ジ タ ル 版 日本人 名 大 辞典 + Plus at kotobank.jp. Retrieved March 20, 2013 (Japanese). 
2. ↑ Sawao Kato in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)
3. ↑ Birgit Fischer, Mark Spitz, Carl Lewis: That's what the most successful Olympians do today. In: Spiegel Online photo gallery. August 5, 2016, accessed January 5, 2017 .