Wrestler Kusaka Wins Olympic Gold in ‘a Fun 6 Minutes’; Sumo Was Part of Training; Backflip Part of Celebration

By Tsukasa Sano / Yomiuri Shimbun Sportswriter

17:41 JST, August 8, 2024

PARIS — Amid loud cheers and applause, Japanese wrestler Nao Kusaka walked around the mat with the Japanese flag on his back and then did a cartwheel into a backflip to the delight of the audience.

“I grew up watching the past Olympic champions do this, so it was my dream to do here, too,” the 23-year-old said with a mischievous smile after rising the top in his Olympic debut.

Kusaka defeated Kazakhstan’s Demeu Zhadrayev 5-2 to take gold in the men’s Greco-Roman 77-kilogram division on Wednesday.

In the final, Kusaka was behind by two technical points but turned the tables in the second period. He kept going aggressively toward the end and won the match without allowing his opponent to score any additional points.

Japan bagged a wrestling gold medal for the second consecutive day after Kenichiro Fumita clinched Japan’s first gold in Greco-Roman in 40 years by winning the men’s 60-kilogram division.

Kusaka emerged at the height of his power in the middleweight division, which has a large population worldwide.

He defeated the Tokyo Olympics bronze medalist in a domestic trial to make his World Championships debut in September last year. He finished third in that contest, earning a ticket to the Paris Games. He then won his first Asian Championships by defeating the world champion from Kyrgyzstan to begin the Paris Games as the athlete ranked first in the world.

The source of Kusaka’s strength is sumo, a sport he had practiced along with wrestling from the fourth grade of elementary school until graduating from junior high school. Even now, he routinely performs shiko leg stomps as a training to build lower-body strength. He mastered a fighting style in which he does not get brushed aside by foreign wrestlers, and the 77-kilogram division is the heaviest Olympic wrestling division in which Japanese wrestlers have ever won, including in freestyle wrestling.

His given name “Nao” comes from Naoko Takahashi, who won the gold medal in the women’s marathon at the Sydney Olympics two months before Kusaka was born.

On getting a medal the same color as hers, Kusaka said, “It was a fun six minutes,” echoing Takahashi’s remark, “It was a fun 42 kilometers.”