Japanese gymnast Shun Fujimoto proudly displays Olympic gold medal he won during team gymnastic championships and the cast on his injured leg on the grounds of the Olympic Village in Montreal Thursday July 22, 1976. He first hurt his leg in floor exercises but finished his rings program with a triple somersault and twist.
It’s painful to watch video of Japanese gymnast Shun Fujimoto’s rings’ dismount at the 1976 Olympics.
The Montreal Forum crowd didn’t know it, but Fujimoto had earlier broken his knee in the floor routine, an injury kept hidden for fear of tipping off the Soviet Union, Japan’s main rival.
“Although I was injured, I had to do it anyway — for me, for the team,” he would say later. He didn’t even tell his teammates: “I didn’t want to say anything to my team about my leg. I didn’t want to upset them.”
Despite excruciating pain, Fujimoto performed flawlessly on the rings, his gritted teeth and a slightly raised right foot after his dismount the first hint of trouble.
The force of landing from eight feet in the air — after a twisting triple somersault — had dislocated his knee and torn ligaments.
At the time, he said “the pain shot through me like a knife … it brought tears to my eyes.”
His courageous performance — his best ever on the rings — helped Japan win gold, beating the Soviets by four-tenths of a point. It also turned him into an Olympic legend.
Would he do it again?
“No,” he told the Montreal Gazette in a 1991 interview.
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