Naoya Tsukahara
| Naoya Tsukahara | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Personal information | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Country represented |
 Japan Australia
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Born |
June 25, 1977 Nagasaki, Japan |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Height | 1.60 m (5 ft 3 in) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Weight | 65 kg (143 lb) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Discipline | Men's artistic gymnastics | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Level | Senior | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Medal record
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Naoya Tsukahara (Japanese:塚原 直也 Tsukahara Naoya, born June 25, 1977) is a former Japanese artistic gymnast and 2004 Olympic Gold Medalist now coaching and competing for Australia. He is the son of the former Japanese gymnast, Mitsuo Tsukahara, who was also a multiple gold medalist in the Olympic Games during the 1960s and 1970s. He competed at the 1996, 2000, and 2004 Olympic games as well as many World Gymnastics Championships for Japan's team from 1996 until 2006. In 2009, he moved to Australia, gaining citizenship in 2012. He currently represents the Australian national gymnastics team, most recently competing at the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games.
Naoya participated at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. The Japanese team finished 10th in the team final. Individually, Naoya qualified into the all-around final and finished 12th in the final.
Although Naoya did not get any medal in the 1996 Olympics, he had been quite successful after that. In the 1997 World Championships, he won two bronze medals in all-around and on parallel bars. In the 1999 World Championships, he had pushed himself to a higher level of success, winning a silver in all-around and on parallel bars.
Following his successes at the World Championships, Naoya eventually came to his second Olympic Games, the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. This time the Japanese gymnastics team was edged by the Russian team for a bronze medal. Individually, Naoya qualified 6th and 10th into the horizontal bar and all-around final respectively. He finally finished 18th in all-around final, and a fall in the horizontal bar final made him come last, with a score of 8.825.
After the 2000 Summer Olympics, Naoya could not regain his form of 2000. In addition, there were some fabulous gymnasts rose in Japan, including Hiroyuki Tomita, Isao Yoneda and Takehiro Kashima. Naoya's character in the national team changed from an all-around competitor into an anchor for the Japanese gymnastics team.
...
Wikipedia