Koji Murofushi

Koji Murofushi Alexander (Japanese室伏 アレクサンダー 広治Murofushi Koji Arekusandā; born October 8, 1974 in Numazu ) is a Japanese athlete. The hammer thrower is Olympic champion and world champion.

Murofushi competed at the 1995 World Championships in Gothenburg, 1997 in Athens and 1999 in Seville, but came across a tenth place not out (1997). At the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, he was ninth.

With the silver prize at the World Athletics Championships in Edmonton in 2001, he advanced to world leaders. He became Asian champions in 2002, and on 29 June 2003, he succeeded in Prague the best cast of the last 15 years: 84.86 m. There was a bronze medal at the 2003 World Championships in Paris / Saint- Denis.

In the hammer throw final at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, he finished with 82.91 m first the silver medal. After the initial first place winner, the Hungarian Adrián Annus, was disqualified for refusing to submit to doping, Murofushi won the gold medal.

In 2007, he was sixth at the World Championships in Osaka in front of his home crowd. At the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, he finished fifth.

At the World Athletics Championships 2011 in Daegu Murofushi won the title with 81.24 m. Eight years after his Olympic gold in Athens itself Murofushi could enjoy a medal again. In London he won the bronze medal in 2012.

The extremely popular sports in Japan is 1,87 m tall and weighs 97 kg. He comes from a family athletes. His sister, Yuka Murofushi is a discus and hammer thrower. His father Shigenobu Murofushi was Olympian (Munich, Montreal, Los Angeles) and held for 23 years, the Japanese hammer throw record. His mother, Serafina Moritz, is a former Romanian javelin thrower from Timişoara. She was European Champion for Juniors in Leipzig in 1968 and Romanian national champion in 1970, before she met in 1972 Shigenobu Murofushi at the University of Turin and moved to Japan with him. In the 1980s, the couple separated and Moritz settled in the United States.