Sumiko Watanabe

Sumiko Watanabe started athletics from a young age. She won the 100 m dash at the Japanese Athletics Championships for three consecutive years (1931-33) setting her personal best, which was also a national record at the time, in the 1932 final. At these three championships she also helped win titles in the 4x100 relay, each time running the anchor leg for the Nagoya Girls School. In 1930, Watanabe competed in the 3rd Women’s International Games held in Praha. At the age of 15, she competed in the Los Angeles Olympics, making her still the youngest athlete on the Japanese athletics team through 2020.

Watanabe later married a teacher at Umemura Gakuen School and took over her husband’s duties as a deputy director when he was detained in Siberia after World War II. Subsequently, she served as a professor physical education and as the first director of the Women’s Athletics Division at the Chukyo University. At the 1964 Tokyo Olympics she coached the Japanese women’s team.

Personal Best: 100 – 12.2 (1932).