Tadahiro Nomura

Tadahiro Nomura in December 2015

Tadahiro Nomura ( Japanese野村 忠 宏Nomura Tadahiro ; born December 10, 1974 in Koryo Nara , Japan ) is a super lightweight judoka .

Nomura became Olympic champion in the 60 kg class for the first time in Atlanta in 1996 when he defeated the Italian Girolamo Govinazzo in the gold fight. After that, the top athlete from Japan was not seen in international judo for four years until he qualified for his second Olympic Games. At these Olympic judo competitions, which took place in Sydney in 2000 , he celebrated his second Olympic victory by beating Jeong Seok-gyeong from South Korea in the final . He thus enrolled in the Guinness World Record Book as the best super-light weight there ever was. Even after these games, the Japanese retired for three years. In 2003 in Osaka at the Judo World Championships in his home country, his main goal was the gold medal. In the quarterfinals, however, he was in a duel against the reigning world champion from 2001 in Munich Anis Lounifi from Tunisia. With an O-uchi-gari, who should correctly have been rated Ippon, Nomura would have reached the semifinals and would have been one step closer to his goal. However, the judge's verdict was different and shortly before the end of the actual fight time - Nomura still clearly leading - the Tunisian was able to put a grip on and reached the semi-finals, which he lost to Choi Min-ho from South Korea. In the end, gold went to the Korean and bronze to Tadahiro Nomura. The Japanese qualified for the Athens Games in 2004 and showed himself in excellent form and finally won the Olympic final against the European champion from 2003 in Düsseldorf Nestor Chergiani from Georgia. After silver and bronze in 2007 and 2008 at the Otto Super World Cup in Hamburg, Germany, Nomura was defeated in the final of the Japanese Olympic eliminations due to knee problems to Hiroaki Hiraoka, who instead of Nomura went to the Olympic Games in Beijing. This was eliminated in round 1 of the competitions.

Nomura ended his career in the summer of 2015.

Tadahiro Nomura is today the most successful judoka in history with three Olympic gold medals. Nomura's special techniques accompanied him to his great and incredible successes in judo. His opponents had no chance against his Seoi-nage variations (shoulder throw) and Uchi-mata and O-soto-gari techniques.

Web links

• Tadahiro Nomura on Judoinside (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Judoka Tadahiro Nomura ended his career . Sport1 , September 1, 2015.