is a Japanese pioneering

wheelchair tennis Wheelchair tennis is one of the forms of tennis adapted for wheelchair users. The size of the court, net height and rackets are the same, but there are two major differences from pedestrian tennis: athletes use specially designed wheelchairs, ...

player and

2004 Summer Paralympics ) , nations = 136 , athletes = 3,806 , events = 519 in 19 sports , opening = 17 September , closing = 28 September , opened_by = President Costis Stephanopoulos , cauldron = Georgios Toptsis , stadium = Olymp ...

gold medalist (

Men's doubles Men's doubles, Women's doubles or Mixed doubles are sports having two players per side, including; * Beach volleyball * Doubles badminton * Doubles curling * Footvolley * Doubles pickleball * Doubles squash * Doubles table tennis * Doubles ...

with

Shingo Kunieda is a Japanese wheelchair tennis player. He is the current world No. 1 in singles. With four Paralympic gold medals, 28 major singles titles – an all-time record in singles of any tennis discipline – and 50 major titles overall, Kunieda ...

). Saida, a big

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding ...

enthusiast in his childhood, lost his left leg because of illness. At first, he used to play

wheelchair basketball Wheelchair basketball is basketball played by people with varying physical disabilities that disqualify them from playing a non-disabled sport. These include spina bifida, birth defects, cerebral palsy, paralysis due to accident, amputations (o ...

with his friends. At the age of fourteen, he had an opportunity to get to know wheelchair tennis with his basketball teammates at a seminar which took place in his hometown, and started this sport. As a competitor, his first Paralympics was the

1996 Summer Paralympics The 1996 Paralympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, were held from August 16 to 25. It was the first Paralympics to get mass media sponsorship, and had a budget of USD $81 million. It was the first Paralympic Games where Internationa ...

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,71 ...

, USA. At the

2000 Summer Paralympics The 2000 Summer Paralympic Games or the XI Summer Paralympics were held in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, between 18 and 29 October. The Sydney Paralympics was last time that the Summer Paralympics which were organized by two different ...

in Sydney, Australia, he got the eighth place. With

, he participated in the 2004 Summer Paralympics in

Athens Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh List ...

Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders wit ...

, and won the men's doubles event. The two competed together again at the

2008 Beijing Games The 2008 Summer Olympics (), officially the Games of the XXIX Olympiad () and also known as Beijing 2008 (), were an international multisport event held from 8 to 24 August 2008, in Beijing, China. A total of 10,942 athletes from 204 Na ...

and took bronze in the doubles event.

References

External links

* * 1972 births Living people Japanese male tennis players Wheelchair tennis players Japanese people with disabilities Paralympic wheelchair tennis players of Japan Paralympic gold medalists for Japan Paralympic bronze medalists for Japan Paralympic medalists in wheelchair tennis Medalists at the 2004 Summer Paralympics Medalists at the 2008 Summer Paralympics Medalists at the 2016 Summer Paralympics Wheelchair tennis players at the 1996 Summer Paralympics Wheelchair tennis players at the 2000 Summer Paralympics Wheelchair tennis players at the 2004 Summer Paralympics Wheelchair tennis players at the 2008 Summer Paralympics Wheelchair tennis players at the 2016 Summer Paralympics People from Yokkaichi Sportspeople from Mie Prefecture 20th-century Japanese people 21st-century Japanese people {{Japan-Paralympic-medalist-stub