Mikio Oda

was a Japanese athlete and the first Japanese Olympic gold medalist. He was the first Asian Olympic champion in an individual event.

Biography Oda was born in Kaita, Hiroshima Prefecture. At the age of 17, he set a new Japanese record for the triple jump at the 1923 Far Eastern Championship Games held in Osaka, and also won the long jump and high jump events. He was selected as a member of the Japanese Olympic team for the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, participating in all three events. However, he failed to reach the semifinals in the long jump and high jump, and placed sixth in the triple jump competition. His sporting achievements were recognized with the creation of the Mikio Oda Memorial International Amateur Athletic Game, an annual track and field competition that has been held since 1967.

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.