Shōzō Sasahara

Shōzō Sasahara

Shōzō Sasahara ( Japanese 笹 原 正 三 Sasahara Shōzō ; born July 28, 1929 in Yamagata ) is a former Japanese wrestler and sports official . He was a 1956 free style featherweight Olympic champion.

Career

Shōzō Sasahara grew up in Yamagata and attended a commercial high school there . As a teenager, he joined a Kendo club without achieving great success in Kendo. After high school, Sasahara worked in the US Army in Japan , but began studying at Chūō University in 1950 . There he started wrestling and through hard training developed into an excellent freestyle wrestler.

In 1954 he was world champion in featherweight at the World Championships in Tokyo . In the decisive battles he defeated Nikolai Musashvili from the USSR and the 1952 Olympic champion Bayram Şit from Turkey . In 1954 Shozo Sasahara also won the USA championship in free style, in which he had participated as a guest, in the lightweight (then up to 67 kg body weight).

In 1955 Sasahara also won the World Youth Festival in Warsaw and in 1956 the World Cup in Istanbul , where he defeated the class from Enju Waltschew Dimow from Bulgaria , Linar Salimullin from the Soviet Union and again Bayram Şit.

The Olympic Games in Melbourne in 1956 were the culmination of Sasahara's career . He won six fights and became an Olympic champion in superior style . He defeated u. a. for the third time in a row Bayram Şit, Linar Salumullin and Joseph Mewis from Belgium, who surprisingly made it to the final .

After the Olympic Games in 1956, Shozo Sasahara ended his active wrestling career. He was first assistant coach and later head coach at Chūō University. One of his students there was Osamu Watanabe , who also became Olympic champion. Shōzō Sasahara later struck a career as an official, became president of the Japanese Wrestling Association and vice-president of the Japanese National Olympic Committee. In September 2006 he was inducted into the FILA International Wrestling Hall of Fame for his services to wrestling .

International success

(OS = Olympic Games, WM = World Championship, F = freestyle, Fe = featherweight, back then up to 62 kg body weight)

• 1954, 1st place , World Cup in Tokyo , F, Fe, with victories over Alan Rice, USA , Gerhard Füglein , FRG , Nikolai Musaschwili , USSR a . Bayram Şit , Turkey u. despite a loss to Gezá Hoffmann , Hungary ;
• 1955, 1st place , World Youth Festival in Warsaw , F, Fe, before Nasser Guivetchi , Iran a . Triganow, Bulgaria ;
• 1956, 1st place , World Cup in Istanbul , F, Fe, with victories over Werner Schneider (wrestler) , FRG, Enju Waltschew Dimow , Bulgaria, Linar Salimullin , USSR u. Bayram Şit;
• 1956, gold medal , OS in Melbourne , F, Fe, with victories over M. Nazir, Pakistan , Bayram Şit, Myron Roderick , USA, Erkki Penttilä , Finland , Joseph Mewis , Belgium a . Linar salimullin

literature

• various issues of the specialist magazine Athletik from 1954 to 1956,
• International Wrestling Database of the University of Leipzig
• Documentation of FILA's International Wrestling Championships, 1976

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Nine New Members Inducted into the FILA Hall of Fame ( Memento of the original from July 3, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed on July 12, 2010 

Web links

• Profile of Shōzō Sasahara at the Institute for Applied Training Science
• Shōzō Sasahara in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )