Swimming coach Shintaro Yokochi passed away last Sunday at the age of 87, the Portuguese Swimming Federation (FPN) announced.
Shintaro’s “maximum exponent,” notes the FPN, was Alexandre Yokochi’s participation in the 1984 200-meter breaststroke final in Los Angeles, the only Portuguese swimming final at the Olympic Games to date.
“The board of the FPN offers the most sincere condolences to the relatives,” read a statement, which does not reveal the cause of death.
Born on October 31, 1935 in Yokohama, Yokochi survived the explosion of the first atomic bomb in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and moved to Portugal in 1958.
He rejected a possible participation in the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, as a swimmer, to become coach of the Sport Algés and Dafundo swimming team at the age of 22.
He married and raised a family in Portugal, with Alexandre following in his footsteps as a swimmer, having won a silver medal in the Europeans for Portugal, culminating in seventh place in Los Angeles, among other achievements.
In his career he spent time at FC Porto until he moved to Benfica in 1972 where he started coaching his son, who retired from the elite league in 1992 and is now a university professor in the United States.
On its website, Benfica expresses “its deepest condolences” for Yokochi’s death and expresses its heartfelt solidarity with family and friends.
He led the swimming group at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, in a controversial process, he recalled in an interview with Emphaticallyafter I trained the team a few days before the match, with the results falling short of expectations.
“I was so disgusted that I decided to stay in Portugal to show that I could train a great team for the Olympics,” he said.
His wife, Irma Delgado, and their three children eventually kept him in Portugal, having devoted himself to swimming, as he had devoted “his whole life” to it.
He taught swimming at the Academia Militar, trained the FC Porto team, worked directly with elite swimmers and created the most famous of the Portuguese at Benfica to live “one of the happiest moments” of his life in that final in Los Angeles . life, he remembered.
In addition to swimming, he had export companies and a restaurant in Lisbon, he even participated in veteran championships, his life marked by war and the memory of the atomic bomb.
“I still dream about the war and the bomb. I experienced dramatic moments that I will never forget,” he told the Emphatically.
Source: DN
