1964 Tokyo

Tokyo 1964

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Fifty-seven years on, it still remains the most-watched sporting event in Japanese television history.
On 23 October 1964, a nation tuned in to witness Japan beat the Soviet Union in straight sets for the women's volleyball gold medal of the Tokyo '64 Olympic Games at Komazawa Olympic Park.
People went

Tokyo 1964 OG, Volleyball Women - Medal Ceremony. The team of Japan (JPN) 1st receive the gold medal.

Japan Women's Volleyball Team Tokyo 1964

Bewitched: How seeds of Japan's 1964 gold in women's volleyball were sewn over a decade

Endo had lived in a state orphanage since the age of nine\. He had been encouraged to take part in gymnastics by one of the teachers there &ldquo;rather than just lying in bed&rdquo;\. He progressed rapidly and was selected for the 1960 Games in Rome, where he helped Japan to

Endo the star as Japanese gymnasts steal the show

Watanabe was not a giant of a man\. He fought in the featherweight category, where wrestlers with great tactical and technical skill can often overcome those with greater strength\. And yet, even by the standards of the best competitors the sport has known, Watanabe&rsquo;s record of success is astonishing\.

Flawless Watanabe secures featherweight wrestling gold

The Olympics are full of inspirational stories, but few are as compelling as that of Mills, the Native American distance runner who pulled off one of the greatest upsets in Games history and went on to become a prominent advocate of humanitarian causes and racial and social justice\.

Billy Mills: Reflecting on his epic 10,000m victory at the Olympic Games Tokyo 1964, coping with racism and returning to Tokyo in 2021

Ethiopia's Abebe Bikila sets an Olympic record and becomes the first athlete to win the Olympic marathon twice in Tokyo 1964.

Abebe BIKILA

Tokyo 1964 | Olympic Games

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Bikila wins Olympics marathon for the second time

The Olympic Games Tokyo 1964 were a success not only on site &ndash; more than two million tickets were sold, with the public attending all the events in both indoor and outdoor venues \(Opening and Closing Ceremony and the sports events\) &ndash; but also on television, thanks to the first

Tokyo 1964: A remarkable success story

Artificial satellites used to broadcast the Games

TOKYO, JAPAN - MARCH 11:  Randolph Oduber # 14, Hainley Statia # 16, Kevin Heijstek # 13 and other players of Netherlands celebrate after score in the fourth inning during the World Baseball Classic Second Round Pool 1 game between Cuba and the Netherlands at Tokyo Dome on March 11, 2013 in Tokyo, Japan.  (Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)

Fifty-five years ago, Tokyo was already the stage for significant technological advances at the Games!

&ldquo;It was to have been a film; it has turned out to be an epic instead, comparable to the chansons de geste, the mediaeval verse\-chronicles of the heroic deeds of gallant knights; a book of the hours illuminated in the Olympic colours; a sumptuous illustration &ndash; aided by all the

Relive Kon Ichikawa’s iconic film about the 1964 Games

Relive Ichikawa Kon’s iconic film about the 1964 Games

In 1964, the Olympic Games were held in Asia for the very first time\. This was a hugely important moment for Japan, a country that had risen from the ashes of the Second World War, which had ended only 19 years earlier, to become a major economic power\. Reconstruction, peace

IZU, JAPAN - OCTOBER 06: Catharine Pendrel of Canada celebrates at the finish during Women's race the Cycling - Mountain Bike Tokyo 2020 Test Event on October 06, 2019 in Izu, Shizuoka, Japan. (Photo by Takashi Aoyama/Getty Images)

Tokyo 1964 welcomes the world to the Olympic Stadium

The India hockey teams enjoyed a fruitful outing on the opening day of the Olympic Test Event at the Oi Hockey Stadium in Tokyo on Saturday (17 August).
While the women’s side showed great composure to edge past hosts Japan 2-1, the men’s team was in a goal-scoring mood as

Tokyo 2020 | Olympic Games

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Indian hockey teams begin with contrasting wins

On 15 October 1964, day five of the Summer Olympic Games, Great Britain&rsquo;s coxless four of John Russell, Hugh Wardell\-Yerburgh, John James and William &lsquo;Bill&rsquo; Barry, finished a second behind the Danish crew on Tokyo&rsquo;s Toda rowing course to secure a silver medal, seeing off the challenge of the USA\.

Silver medallist Barry relives Olympic joy

"The 1964 Games left countless invaluable legacies, still cherished half a century later," explained Tokyo 2020 CEO Toshiro Muto earlier this year\. "Achieving the same level of environmental, social and economic legacy is our ultimate aim for 2020\."

Tokyo 1964 creates lasting legacies

The story of Billy Mills, the only American to have won 10,000m Olympic gold, is such a remarkable one that it is the subject of a film, Running Brave, released in 1983\. A member of the Ogala Sioux tribe, Mills was brought up in impoverished circumstances in the Pine Ridge

Mills recalls secret source of inspiration

Buster Mathis had been picked for the US boxing team on the basis of an excellent amateur record\. He was to become a very good heavyweight boxer, but not one of the greats\. Fate had that in mind for others\.

Joe Frazier's great career begins with gold in Tokyo

This time, there was no doubting his star quality, but his fitness was in great question\. Forty days before the Olympic marathon was due to start, he had started to feel discomfort while on a training run in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa\. He decided to persevere, but then collapsed

Abebe Bikila makes marathon history both barefoot and with shoes! 

The K&auml;ll brothers were competing in the Flying Dutchmen event in the sailing&nbsp;regatta, where points are awarded on the basis of finishing positions\. But in one of their races, they were presented with an agonising choice &ndash; to pursue a medal, or rescue stranded rivals\.

Käll brothers honoured for noblest of sacrifices

Hayes set a clutch of sprinting records\. He was the first person to run the 100 yards \(91\.4m\) in 9\.1 seconds, and the first person to cover 60 yards \(54\.8m\) in less than six seconds\. The form book had him down as a red\-hot favourite\. He won his first\-round race

Bob Hayes dominates the 100m

Ten members of the team worked at the same spinning mill near Osaka\. The team&rsquo;s coach, Hirofumi Daimatsu, also worked there, where he was in charge of buying office supplies\. Such an ordinary exterior hid a man of extraordinary determination\.

Home nation dominate first volleyball contest

Few Olympians have suffered the disappointment that he faced, having spent years training in hope of victory, and then finding himself in a position where a gold medal seemed almost certain &ndash; only for his chances to be dashed\. The challenge facing such people is to compose yourself and continue

Franck Gorman dives to silver

So for her, the choice of event for Tokyo was rather complicated\. She decided to concentrate her efforts on the 400m and then, almost as an after\-thought, entered the 800m, another event in which she had little experience but lots of potential\.

Packer skips the shops to take 800m crown

Irina&rsquo;s triumph came in a new sport, the pentathlon, but for Tamara, the challenge was to retain her shot put title and take the discus gold\. Two years earlier, she had secured the double in the European Championships, and her greatest rivals there were likely to be her main competitors

Press recovers to win shot and discus double

In Tokyo she replaced the relay with the shot put, a sign of both her versatility and her aptitude for the multiple disciplines of the pentathlon\. As it happened, she was to miss out on medal in both the hurdles and the shot put in 1964\. But in the pentathlon,

Pentathlete Press benefits from strong shot

Packer had been a champion in the long jump, hurdles and sprinting earlier in her life\. In Tokyo, she had won silver in the 400m and gold in the 800m\. And yet, remarkably, her room\-mate&rsquo;s haul was ever greater\.

Rand becomes Great Britain's first female athletics champion

There was heavy rain on the day of the cycling road race, which slowed the pace considerably\. It was already predicted to be a closely\-bunched finish, because the 24km circuit was not believed to be arduous\. And so it proved, with most of the riders still in contention for a

Zanin leaves it late to win congested road race

Č&aacute;slavsk&aacute; was a secretary at home in Prague\. She had started off as a figure skater, but had turned to gymnastics as a child and then blossomed as a teenager\. Her international debut came at the age of 16 and she had made her Olympic debut two years later, at

Čáslavská bewitches gymnastics onlookers

Medved was competing in the greco\-roman wrestling light\-heavyweight division and, even thought he was making his Olympic debut at the age of 27, few were going to underestimate him\. Medved had taken World Championship bronze in 1961, and then had won the world title in both 1962 and 1963\.

Medved brings strength to bear in wrestling win

Now he was confronted by a challenge from history as much as his rivals on the lake\. Nobody had ever won the single sculls event three times in a row\. In fact, at that time, only three men had ever won a hat\-trick of rowing gold medals across all the

Vyacheslav IVANOV

Vyacheslav Ivanov sculls his way to a historic hat-trick

Cuthbert had won three golds in Melbourne, her home Games, back in 1956, with victory in the 100m, 200m and in the 4x100m relay\. She had enjoyed huge acclaim and been seen as a national hero, but she had been forced to withdraw from the 1960 Rome Games with a

Betty CUTHBERT

Betty Cuthbert's golden comeback

By the halfway mark, though, only Clarke was anywhere near the front, accompanied by Tunisian Mohamed Gammoudi and the American Billy Mills\. Mills was so unheralded that, in the run\-up to the Games, not one reporter had asked him a single question\. They should have done, for his story was

Billy MILLS

Billy Mills, America's first and only Olympic 10,000m champion

On the one hand, Poly&aacute;k arrived at the 1964 Games knowing that he could do something remarkable by winning an Olympic medal for the fourth Games in a row, a feat that only one other wrestler had achieved, some 32 years before\.

Polyák wins in final shot at Greco-Roman title

Kiki Caron, of France, was just 16 years old but had set a world best only a few months before\. She might have considered herself the favourite at the time, only for her record to be beaten by the American Ginny Duenkel a couple of weeks before the Games\. Satoko

Ferguson heads glittering backstroke field

Two years after that shock win in Rome, Snell had enjoyed an extraordinary week during which he broke the world record in both the 800m and the mile, his two favourite distances\. He continued in that rich form on his way to the Tokyo Games and arrived in Japan as

Snell draws on reserves for middle-distance double

He had won gold medals in both 1956 and 1960, but repeat success had not damaged his competitiveness\. Oerter set a new world record in 1962, becoming the first athlete to throw more than 200 feet \(approx 61 metres\)\. His biggest challenge, as it turned out, was to come from

Miracle man Oerter bounces back in the discus

Kriss was a soldier, born in Ukraine and now, at 23, making his debut in the Games\. His impact was immediate, though, with six wins and a tie in his first seven bouts\. That was enough to earn him a place in the quarter\-finals, and the respect of his opponents\.

Kriss marches on to beat Hoskyns in epee

There was little doubt she still had the ability\. In 1962, she had swum the distance in a world record time of 59\.9secs, making Fraser the first woman ever to dip under a minute for the 100m\. Indeed, she had set the last nine world records at the distance and

Fraser battles back to make swimming history

But that&rsquo;s exactly what happened, thanks to one of the surprise winners of these Games\. His name was Egon Franke and he emerged victorious\. Franke made an art of doing just enough to get through, winning four of his five bouts in the first round, and then three out of

Franke foils foes in fencing final

Schollander had learnt to swim well thanks to the teaching of his uncle, who ran a swimming school\. At high school, he wanted to play American football, but was judged too small and so turned to swimming instead\. His talent was obvious and, in 1962, he won three freestyle events

Reluctant star Schollander becomes first four-gold winner

His victory should not really have come as a surprise, for Geesink&rsquo;s path to the 1964 competition had shown his huge ability\.

Dutch judoka Geesink stuns home crowd

Gyarmati had first competed in the Games back in 1948, when he was part of the team that won a silver medal\. Four years later, Hungary won gold in Helsinki and retained their title four years later in Melbourne\. There was a blip in 1960 when, for the only time

Insatiable Gyarmati claims one last water polo gold

She had won the national championship the year before, but was still something of an unknown quantity on the world stage\. Her first round race, though, suggested a special talent\. She didn&rsquo;t even win, but the fact that she was just a sliver behind Germany&rsquo;s B&auml;rbel Grimmer &ndash; who broke

Prozumenshchikova becomes Soviet swimming heroine

But it was not easy\. Shakhlin had won the individual all\-around title in Rome, four years before, and aimed to retain it in Tokyo\. Instead, he came up against an inspired rival in the shape of Japan&rsquo;s Yukio Endo, competing in front of his home supporters\. Endo was not to

Legend Shakhlin realises horizontal bar ambition

In Melbourne, Latynina had won four golds\. Three more had followed in Rome and now, at the age of 29, she was returning to the Olympic gymnastics&nbsp;competition for the third time, still hungry for golds and also to boost her total haul of medals\.

Latynina signs off with six gymnastics medals

Tokyo 1964 - Stories Mosaic

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The Japan women's volleyball team, who won gold at the Olympic Games Tokyo 1964. 

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Sharon Marie STOUDER

Sharon Strouder of the USA won four medals on her Olympic debut at Tokyo 1964, aged just 15.

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On 3 October, 2013, Japan bid farewell to a legend who would have been 88 at Tokyo's second Olympic Games this summer.
Kasai Masae (her married name Nakamura), captain of the Tokyo 1964 gold medal-winning women's volleyball team, passed away due to cerebral hemorrhaging.
More than 500 people including her

Olympic Games Tokyo 1964

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