Koji Ito

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Koji Ito (伊東浩司, Ito Koji^?, born January 29, 1970 in Kobe) is a former Japanese track and field sprinter who, in winning the Asian Games 100m crown in December 13, 1998 (Bangkok) became only the second athlete of non-West African descent to clock a legal and recognizable (+1.9 wind; not at high altitude) time of 10.00 seconds, during a semi-final heat. (Poland's Marian Woronin first clocked 10.00 (with a maximum allowable +2.0 wind) at Warsaw (thus not at high altitude) in 1984.)

Ito also clocked a personal best of 20.16s in the 200m October 2, 1998 at Kumamoto, Japan. These times still stand as Japanese national marks (to January 2005). Ito finished 7th in semi-final heats in both the 100m and 200m events (10.39s and 20.67s respectively) in Sydney; the Japanese men's 4x100m team (Nobuharu Asahara, Koji Ito, Shigeyuki Kojima, Shingo Suetsugu) finished 6th in 38.66s. Suetsugu figures as the heir-apparent to become Asia's great sprinting hope, and may well clock a sub-10. Ito never again matched the form of his high-water-mark 1998 season and retired in 2002.