Yōjirō Uetake

Yōjirō Uetake ( Japanese 上 武 洋 次郎 , Uetake Yōjirō ; born January 12, 1943 in Tatebayashi , Gunma Prefecture ) is a former Japanese wrestler . He was Olympic gold medalist in 1964 and 1968 in free style bantamweight.

Career

Yōjirō Uetake comes from Kamakura and moved after his high school days and winning the Japanese championship of high school wrestlers in free style in the bantamweight 1963 to study economics at Oklahoma State University - Stillwater . Coach Myron Roderick turned the extraordinary talent Uetake into a world-class free-style wrestler in a short time. From 1964 to 1966 this won the NCAA Division I Collegiate Championships (American student championship) in bantamweight.

In 1964 he started at the Olympic Games in Tokyo and won the bantamweight gold medal with seven wins . In the decisive battles for this medal, he gave the Soviet champion Aydın İbrahimov and the multiple world champion Hüseyin Akbaş from Turkey no chance.

After the Olympics, Uetake continued his studies at OSU. He wrestled there until 1966 and remained undefeated in 58 fights for the university. From 1966 to 1968 Uetake was a trainer assistant at OSU and prepared specifically for the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City . There he won his second gold medal in free style in bantamweight, but this time did not win all fights, but fought against Ali Aliyev from the Soviet Union and Aboutaleb Talebi from Iran "only" a draw.

After the Olympic Games in 1968, Uetake, who did not take part in either a world championship or an Asian championship, went back to Japan and became the national coach of the Japanese national team of freestyle wrestlers. In this capacity, he looked after the Japanese wrestlers at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich and 1976 in Montreal .

Yōjirō Uetake, who took his wife's surname, Obata, after his marriage, now lives as a businessman in Kyoto . After he was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 1980, he was inducted into the FILA International Wrestling Hall of Fame in September 2005 .

International success

(OS = Olympic Games, F = freestyle, Ba = bantam weight, back then up to 57 kg body weight)

• 1964, gold medal , OS in Tokyo , F, Ba, with victories over Muhamad Siraj-Din, Pakistan , Karl Dodrimont , FRG , Walter Pilling, Great Britain , Choi Young Kil, North Korea , David Auble , USA , Aydın İbrahimov , Soviet Union a . Hüseyin Akbaş , Turkey ;

• 1968, gold medal , OS in Mexico City , F, Ba, with victories over Marco Teran , Ecuador , Zbigniew Żedzicki , Poland , Horst Mayer , GDR a . Bishambar Singh , India a . Draw against Ali Aliyev , USSR a. Aboutaleb Talebi , Iran

USA student championships

• 1964, 1st place, F, Ba,
• 1965, 1st place, F, Ba, before Joe Peritore u. Bob Campbell,
• 1966, 1st place, F, Ba, before Joe Peritore u. Donald Behm

swell

• various issues of the specialist magazine Athletik from 1964 to 1968,
• Documentation of FILA's International Wrestling Championships, 1976

Individual evidence

1. ↑ TheMat.com from September 13, 2005 ( Memento of the original from January 6, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed on July 8, 2010 (English) 

Web links

• Profile of Yōjirō Uetake at the Institute for Applied Training Science
• Yōjirō Uetake in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Short biography in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame (English)
• Statistics in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame (English)