Hideko Maehata

Hideko Maehata (Japanese前 畑 秀 子, Maehata Hideko; born May 20, 1914 in Hashimoto, Wakayama Prefecture, † 24 February 1995) was a Japanese swimmer.

She was the first Japanese woman to win a medal at the Olympics. At the Olympic Games 1932 in Los Angeles, she won over 200 m breaststroke silver medal behind the Australian Clare Dennis. At the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936, she was in the absence of defending champion superior Olympic champion over this distance and thus became the first Japanese woman who became Olympic champion. It would be up to the 1972 Olympics in Munich, until with Mayumi Aoki again a Japanese woman should be Olympic champion in swimming.

In 1979, she was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the international swimming sport and 1990 Bunka Kōrōsha, the person with special cultural merits, appointed.