30 Olympic athletes who dominated their events

16. Takashi Ono

Not to be confused with the popular judoka of the same name who also hails from Japan, Takashi Ono the gymnast occupies rarefied air both domestically and internationally. In 1952, Ono came on the scene as a newly-21-year-old who placed third in the vault competition at the Summer Games in Helsinki. Four short years later, he took the gymnastics world by storm, roaring through the 1956 Melbourne Games to earn five medals.

Perhaps Ono was just a tad bit disappointed that only one of those five medals gleamed gold, so he came back even stronger than ever in Rome during the 1960 Summer Games. There, he added another six medals to his collection, and this time he made sure that half of them were solid gold.

Not one to back down from a challenge, Ono successfully qualified for the 1964 Olympic Games at the age of 33, which many consider to be quite old for a gymnast. Nevertheless, Ono was a member of the Japanese team that took home the all-around gold medal – especially significant since Japan was the host nation, and it was the first Olympics ever to be held on the Asian continent.

Ono retired not long after, but did so with a whopping 13 medals to his name.

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