(Reuters) – Japan’s six-times Olympic champion Akinori Nakayama has died at the age of 82, the Japan Gymnastics Association said on Monday.
The Association said Nakayama died on March 9, with local media reporting stomach cancer as the cause of death.
Nakayama helped Japan win men’s all-around team gold and also took the individual rings, parallel bars and horizontal bar titles on his Olympic debut at the 1968 Mexico City Games.
At the 1972 Munich Games he won team all-around and rings golds, and collected 10 medals in total from the two Olympics.
Nakayama also gave his name to a rings manoeuvre still performed by the world’s top gymnasts.
(Reporting by Shifa Jahan in Bengaluru; Editing by Peter Rutherford)
Comments