Nao Kusaka screams after winning the gold medal in the Greco-Roman class up to 77 kilograms at the Olympic Games in Paris on Wednesday.
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 and a backflip, much to the delight of the crowd.
“I grew up watching previous Olympic champions do this, so it was my dream to do it here as well,” the 23-year-old said with a mischievous smile after reaching the summit in his Olympic debut.
Nao Kusaka (above) will compete against Kazakhstan’s Demeu Zhadrayev in the men’s Greco-Roman 77kg class on Wednesday at the Olympic Games in Paris.
Kusaka defeated Kazakh Demeu Zhadrayev 5-2 on Wednesday to win gold in the Greco-Roman men’s 77-kilogram class.
In the final, Kusaka was two technical points behind, but in the second period he turned the tide. He kept going aggressively until the end and won the match without his opponent being able to score any more points.
Japan claimed a second consecutive gold medal in wrestling after Kenichiro Fumita secured Japan’s first gold in 40 years in Greco-Roman wrestling by winning the men’s 60-kilogram class.
Kusaka reached the pinnacle of his career in the middleweight class, a class that has many competitors worldwide.
He defeated the Tokyo Olympic bronze medalist in a national trial to make his debut at the world championships last September, finishing third in that event and earning a ticket to the Paris Games. He then won his first Asian Championships by beating the world champion from Kyrgyzstan to go into the Paris Games as the athlete ranked No. 1 in the world.
The source of Kusaka’s strength is sumo, a sport he practiced alongside wrestling from the fourth grade of elementary school until he graduated from high school. Even now, he routinely performs shiko leg stomps as a workout to build lower-body strength. He has mastered a fighting style that does not displace him against foreign wrestlers, and the 77-kilogram division is the heaviest Olympic wrestling division that Japanese wrestlers have ever won, including freestyle wrestling.
His first 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.
When presented with a medal matching hers, Kusaka said, “It was a fun six minutes,” echoing Takahashi’s comment, “It was 42 fun kilometers.”
Hiroto Sekiguchi / The Yomiuri Shimbun
Nao Kusaka screams after winning the gold medal in the Greco-Roman class up to 77 kilograms at the Olympic Games in Paris on Wednesday.
