The Road to Gold
A founding member of Japan’s heralded national gymnastics team reflects on his journey to Olympic stardom in 1964.
Shuji Tsurumi marveled at the Soviet athletes. Though the 1959 competition in Moscow was limited to college gymnasts, the 21-year-old Tsurumi couldn’t believe the skill, strength and size of his Russian counterparts.
“It felt impossible to go up against Soviet gymnasts at the time,” recalls Tsurumi, 81, of his first overseas trip. “We often talked about it in our team. We considered the Soviets our chief rivals.”
Soviet gymnasts swept the golds in 11 of 15 events at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia. The Japanese men’s team finished a painful two points behind the Soviet Union in the team all-around competition, and it was clear that something special needed to be done to challenge the Soviets.
In the run-up to the 1960 Summer Games in Rome, Tsurumi and two other rookies joined three Olympic veterans for seasoning as they competed and practiced across Europe.
“Things were still very difficult in Japan back then,” says Tsurumi of Japan’s continuing postwar reconstruction efforts. “There was very little money. Athletics just weren’t a priority at the time.”
Come 1960, those efforts were beginning to pay off. With Tsurumi as a junior member, the Japanese squad managed to take four golds off the Soviet Union, including one for Tsurumi in the team all-around competition.
“Even though we won gold in Rome, we were still sent to America in 1961,” Tsurumi says. “Everyone knew that America was full of top-class instructors at the time.”
For the next three years, Tsurumi and his teammates visited training centers across the United States.
“We would bring a camera to all our overseas matches and record what other countries were doing,” says Tsurumi. “When we brought the film back to Japan, everyone in our training camps would gather around and we’d study.”
By the time the Tokyo Games opened in 1964, Tsurumi was no longer in awe of his Soviet counterparts. Now 26, he’d become an anchor of Japan’s gymnastics squad who bore the hopes of a nation.
“There was certainly an expectation that we’d take a gold medal,” he says.
With strong performances on the pommel horse and rings, Tsurumi helped push Japan two points ahead of the Soviet Union to top the podium in the team all-around event. By the end of the competition, Tsurumi added silvers in the individual all-around, parallel bars and pommel horse.
In total, Japan’s male gymnasts captured five of the eight gold medals up for grabs in 1964. Their Soviet rivals returned home with just one.
As Tokyo prepares to host its second-ever Games, Tsurumi is content to play the spectator this time around.
“I couldn’t say which gymnasts will win [this summer in Tokyo],” Tsurumi admits, “but I do know that now it’s the Americans who are coming to train in Japan.”
The Club will serve as USA House, the hospitality house for the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, for the duration of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
Words: Owen Ziegler
Image: Kyodo News
