Mikio Oda (織田 幹雄, Oda Mikio, 30 March 1905 – 2 December 1998) was a Japanese athlete and the first Japanese Olympic gold medalist.[1] He was the first AsianOlympic champion in an individual event.[2][3]
In 1931, Oda graduated from Waseda University and was employed by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. On 27 October of the same year, he established a new world record for the triple jump of 15.58 meters. Oda served as coach and captain of the Japanese athletics team at the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.[2]
Upon retirement from competitive athletics, he focused his efforts on sports administration, becoming a member of the Japanese Olympic Committee in 1948 and later taking part in the IAAF's technical committee. He also served as coach for the Japanese athletics team at the 1952 Summer Olympics at Helsinki and the 1954 Asian Games in Manila.[2] During the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, the Olympic flag was raised to a height of exactly 15.21 meters, to pay respect to Oda's achievement 36 years earlier.
He became a professor at Waseda University from 1965. In 1976, Oda was awarded the Olympic Order, the highest award of the Olympic Movement. In 1988, Oda was honored by the government as a Person of Cultural Merit, and in 1989, he was named honorary chairman of the Japan Association of Athletics Federations. In the final years of his life, Oda moved from his home at Aburatsubo in Yokosuka, Kanagawa to a nursing home in Kugenuma (Fujisawa, Kanagawa). His grave is at the Buddhist temple of Tokei-ji in Kamakura.
In 2000, Oda was posthumously chosen as the best Asian male athlete of the century by a panel of track and field experts.