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Masaji
Kiyokawa
One of the surprises that the Olympic Games of Los Angeles had in store for sports fans was the outstanding presence of the  Japanese swimmers, who won four gold medals in the individual events and one gold medal in the single team event out of the altogether six swimming events that were included in the Olympic programme.
Particularly sensational was the participation of Kiyokawa, an until then unknown nineteen-year-old swimmer, who not only did he get in the famous Japanese Olympic team, but he also distinguished himself by winning a gold medal. Kiyokawa became first Olympic winner in the 100m backstroke, beating his more famous compatriots Shigeo Arai and Tatsugo Kawaishi.
Four years earlier, during the Olympic Games of Amsterdam, Kiyokawa, who was a school student then, was impressed by the feat of his fellow countryman Yoshiyuki Tsuruta, who was the first Japanese to be an Olympic winner in a swimming event (200m breaststroke). But there was no way he could have dreamt that four years later he would travel to the USA together with his idol as a member of the Olympic swimming team of his country.
Kiyokawa is one of the Japanese athletes, the talent of whom was distinguished thanks to the advance of organized and systematic sport in his country especially from the 1920s. The successes of the Japanese swimmers in the Games of 1928 urged the heads of the swimming federation to elaborate an organized plan in the following years. According to that plan, for the first time in the history of Japanese swimming, training centres were organized, and young athletes with special talent in swimming were brought together. The supervision of their progress and training had been undertaken by federal trainers, who also had the responsibility for the final selection of the athletes that would compose the Olympic team for the Los Angeles Games. From the first trainings the heads of the team singled out Kiyokawa for his persistence to be one of the participants in the Games and mainly for his talent in the backstroke. Therefore, in the years before the Games of 1932 the young Japanese was already the holder of the best national performance in the backstroke.
Kiyokawa participated in the Olympic Games of Berlin (1936) as well, where he was third Olympic winner in the 100m backstroke. Later he became honorary member of the IOC (International Olympic Committee).
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