Judo legend Hitoshi Saito passes away

On the morning of his gold-medal match at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Hitoshi Saito looked relaxed and cheerful. Talking with national team coach Haruki Uemura and other team members, he declared, “This is great. This nervousness. I’m really excited.” But on the inside, it was a far different story for the 27-year-old. One by one, Japan had failed to win a gold medal in men’s judo, and Saito represented the last chance to restore Japanese pride in the over-95-kilogram class.

Longtime rival and judo legend Yasuhiro Yamashita had retired, increasing the expectations on Saito, who had been battling a knee injury. “The atmosphere was indescribable,” Saito, the gold medalist four years earlier at the Los Angeles Olympics, said about the immense pressure to repeat that feat.

Asked about it years later, Saito recalled, “In fact, I was so nervous it was like my stomach was churning. But in that situation, I had to say what I did.”
 

Saito went on to win the gold, capping the performance with the iconic image of him crying openly on the medal podium as he thought, “Now I can return to Japan.”
 

His ability to overcome not only his opponents on the mat but his own nerves, and to pass that on as a successful college and national team coach, remains the legacy that Saito left behind when he died on Jan. 20 at the age of 54.
 

As a coach, Saito minced no words with his athletes, constantly compelling them to fight their fears as they worked on their techniques. “You can’t have any doubts,” he would say to them. Among those he mentored at Kokushikan University and on the national team were Olympic gold medalists Keiji Suzuki and Satoshi Ishii. Their ability to overcome the tension, learned from Saito, led to their success on the world’s biggest stage.
 

Saito’s own success as a competitor can be traced to his rivalry with Yamashita, current vice president of the All Japan Judo Federation who was three years older. “I took on my senior thinking I am Saito, not ‘Yamashita II,’” he would say.
 

Saito and Yamashita met for three straight years in the final of the prestigous All-Japan Championship, but he never defeated Yamashita there or anywhere else. There is a famous story that Saito, who had already won a world championship, said, “I climbed Mt. Everest, but I never got up Mt. Fuji.”
 

He dedicated his life to the sport, and it became part of his soul. On the night before he died, Saito was in delirious state and, according to his wife, Mieko, said such things as “I won’t be rehabbing my knee [which was hurt at the Seoul Olympics] today,” and “How did the match go?”
 

“He was probably recalling the Seoul Olympics,” Mieko said. “He was a judo man right up to the end."