Mitsuo Tsukahara

Mitsuo Tsukahara competed in three Olympics and won a total of nine medals including five golds – three with the team and two in horizontal bar. He also won three consecutive gold medals with the team at the World Championships (1970, 1974, and 1978), adding another gold in horse vault and silver in all-around and rings in 1970. At the 1970 World Championships, while winning the gold medal on vault, he also first performed competitively the jump which has since been named after him. The original “Tsukahara” was a quarter-on entry handspring followed by a salto backwards in tuck position, but many variations on all apparatuses have been used since.

After his retirement Tsukahara started coaching and in 2009 he was awarded with a Medal of Honor with purple ribbon. His wife Chieko Oda competed in the 1968 Olympics and their son Naoya Tsukahara, also a three-time Olympian, like his father, won gold with the team at the 2004 Olympics and also won six World Championships medals.