Hideaki Yanagida

Hideaki Yanagida (Japanese柳 田 英明, Hideaki Yanagida, born January 1, 1947 in Hachirōgata, Akita Prefecture) is a former Japanese wrestler. He was Olympic champion in 1972 and in the years 1970 and 1971 world champion in free style bantamweight.

Career

At the age of 23 years, only 1.59 meters tall but very agile and physically strong Hideaki Yanagida climbed to the top of the Japanese freestyle wrestler bantamweight. In the following three years he won four major international championships. Here, the gold medal in Munich in 1972 meant without doubt the highlight of his career.

In 1970, he was in Bangkok winner at the Asian Games in front of the South Korean An Jae - Woon. In the same year he won the world title in the bantamweight, where he added another in 1971 in Sofia in the same weight class at the World Championships in Edmonton with seven wins.

At the 1972 Olympics in Munich Hideaki Yanagida needed again seven victories to win the gold medal. He beat his toughest rival Richard Sanders from the United States certainly on points.

In both the 1970 and 1971 World Championships and the Olympic Games in Munich Hideaki Yanagida denied a total of 21 fights, of which he won. Rarely was a wrestler in his weight class as superior as he.

International success

(OS = Olympic Games, WM = World Championship, F = free style, Ba = bantamweight, then to 67 kg body weight)

Swell

• Journal athletics,
• Documentation of International Wrestling Championships FILA, 1976, pages O -88, W -91 and W -96,
• Intern. Ringer database of the Institute for Applied Training Science at the University of Leipzig